Several revisions and some new additions to the Verizon IndyCar Series’ rulebook will change the look and feel of the open-wheel series in a few different ways this season.

The first two items – a change to the points structure and an overdue tweak to how engine change penalties are served – were detailed last week, but some of the most significant alterations for 2014 remain tucked away and deserve to be highlighted.

RACER spoke with IndyCar president of competition Derrick Walker to get his insights on some of the key items that will shape the season ahead, starting with…

MARSHALL PRUETT: There’s a big change in restart procedures this year. Why abandon double-file restarts at most tracks? Was that heeding the call from the drivers’ union to do away with them?

DERRICK WALKER: Well, a lot of the tracks that we do those at are somewhat limited for space going into the first turn, and the potential for the whole track to be blocked was always there. We consulted a lot of different people, drivers mainly, and came to the consensus that the decision we ought to come to is to change that format because of the space available at some of these tracks. When you put that many cars together and they’re all going at it, it might look exciting but the potential is there for more accidents because people are so jammed up. Particularly at street races, it’s tough to get enough space there to be able to do it successfully without just crashing into everybody. Baltimore was a prime example of when it goes wrong, and we didn’t want to temp that from happening again. That was always my concern was ultimately to get track blockage one of these times that really stops the race and you dig everybody out.

So we think the single-file restarts can actually be just as exciting. We have to do a better job at policing when you start going. Sometimes there’s been a tendency to have very little discipline in the pack. And maybe it’s not always been possible to monitor that. We think with our current equipment, and our concerted effort to try and hold the pack together to the acceleration point before we let them go, is a safer way to do things.

MP: I also saw a bit of a change in terms of the pits and whether they’re open to close on full-course yellows. I know there was an effort last year to try and leave them open when possible and not be so one-dimensional per se. Open things up, open strategy up a little bit but see that you’ve basically gone to full-course yellow equals closed pits?

DW: Yeah and that was a difficult decision. I know there was an effort last year to try and leave them open when possible and not be so one-dimensional per se. Open things up, open strategy up a little bit but see that you’ve basically gone to full-course yellow equals closed pits?

It’s difficult sometimes to manage it properly so that everybody gets equal treatment. It requires somebody to – and in the case of an incident – to choose who’s going to get to finish their lap. And also monitoring who’s coming ’round going through the yellow area. How slow are they going through that area knowing that the pits are still open?

And so it really wasn’t that successful, I thought. It might have been perceived by one or two cars that were up front that they got their opportunity to finish their lap but then there was equally a lot of people that really didn’t like it because they didn’t get a chance to finish their lap. And then, of course, the whole point of the thing is the safety issue. And in some cases you’ve got a car that’s quite far off the track and is not an issue and it’s a local yellow and you can afford to wait a little bit longer. Then there’s other times where a car is in harm’s way and the driver may or may not be looking for help, and you don’t know that when he’s sitting in a car that if he’s hurt his back or whatever. He’s not always automatically telling you that he needs help right now and to throw a full-course yellow. People trying to race back to the pits with a crash somewhere on the track just wasn’t something I wanted to see continue.

Now, defining one rule that fits all has been very challenging. The simplest way – not necessarily the best way – but the simplest way is to close the pits. And then there’s no incentive to race around to the finish and get your lap or whatever.

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MP: There’s also been a change on qualifying stoppages and qualifying time periods, too.

DW: Yes, what we will try to do in cases where it’s qualifying is always try our best to give the drivers at least five minutes of green time to finish their qualification. So that may not always be possible but that’s going to be one of the things that we try to do is to give everybody a chance to get at least a segment of five minutes if possible at the end. Where if it gets yellowed or red in a qualification, then we try to allot some time to everybody to get their one quick lap or three laps in or whatever. And various tracks have different schedules. Sometimes we can get over, sometimes we can’t. We’re going to try and do that.

MP: You’re also looking for ways to turn some fully course yellows into local yellows, or to at least get the field around and past an accident site before a full-course yellow, correct?

DW: We don’t yet have a long-term fix for this yet, but it is something we’re experimenting with in St. Pete. We have a lot of data about where the cars are and the speed or time they’re doing, so for example, around the racetrack we’ve got a lot of segments that we time regularly. We have that information in Race Control. And it is possible to pick out if you say there’s a yellow at Turn 2, the minute that yellow goes it is possible to see the car that comes through that yellow area, do they slow down or don’t they? Because if you know what a fast turn through that segment is, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know what speed they’re doing.

So in theory, if there’s a full-course yellow, if somebody’s going through a yellow segment in two would take longer to go through that segment if they had backed off in that yellow. And we can calculate that. And we can monitor that. And we can basically penalize from that data anybody that exceeds through the zone. And what that means is we’re able to have more localized yellows and not go full-course yellow quite as soon until we really need to put vehicles out there. But it allows everybody to continue on around the lap and get finished, get their lap finished.

So, if you’re the guy who’s on a hard lap or needs a pit stop or whatever and we can localize that yellow for a period of time, then the pits can remain open. He can still come in and get his job done. But what it really does is everybody knows in that area when it’s yellow you have to slow down because we can actually measure what you’re doing and can actually pick out the ones that are speeding in an area where we need safety to be the first consideration.

MP: You’ve added to the rule requiring teams to not cover up their cars when the bodywork comes off, extending it from no covers on pit lane to no covers in the garage, under their tent, or anywhere. Most teams don’t like the rule, and the engine manufacturers tend to hate it…some have gone to great lengths to prevent photos being taken, despite the rule. Manufacturers don’t want their engines exposed, teams don’t want their shocks and wings exposed… You appear to be sending a message of: How can we tell people we have interesting technology if everyone’s covering it up and hiding it? Is that a fair assessment?

DW: Well, it’s all about the fans. I think if I’m a fan and I’m interested in cars, which most of them certainly are, and I come along and you’ve got a car that’s all covered up or your wing covers or whatever that we’ve had over the years, I think it’s just an unnecessary part of what we do. I don’t think we have to be that secretive. We’ve all got the same cars, there is some variations and there will be some variations, but it’s really catering toward the fans to say let the fans see what it’s all about, let’s not cover it all up and be shrouded in secrecy of some sort. If the fans are interested in seeing our cars and our stars, let them look at it. Let’s not shun them away and cover them up everywhere.

And I would question anybody who disagrees with that rule to tell me if they really think that competitors, manufacturers, you name it, you think they don’t have a lot of pictures of what you’ve already got? You really think nobody’s seen what you’ve got underneath the hood?

But, anyway, it’s all about the fans and it’s not up for discussion. It is what it is. You can’t cover up your car in that way and we will enforce it. It’s something that’s just a basic right of the fan to come along and be able to see the cars.

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MP: The last question I had was the philosophy of how you plan on calling the races this year. I think I definitely saw last year of more – I don’t want to say “boys have at it,” because I hate that expression – but it’s a good descriptor of, if we’re coming out of Sebring where it seems like drinking a cup of water would get you a stop plus 80-second penalty; every little thing was a penalty, at least looking at last year, IndyCar didn’t feel that way. What are you asking your Race Control team to apply this year with IndyCar? Is it to let them race and don’t be heavy-handed unless it’s required? Or do you want them in there correcting behavior all the time?

DW: Well, I don’t think we favor over regulating racing but at the same time, if there is a rule in the book then there needs to be a penalty to go with it. And when I look at what’s been done in the past it’s not been clear as to what the policy is or was. That’s not saying it didn’t work and that’s not saying people thought that it was any better or any worse than anybody else’s race control.

What I’ve tried to do over the wintertime – well, not me but our group here – what we tried to do over the wintertime was improve the equipment so we can deliberate on the real cases when it’s required. And know that we have more views to be able to recognize a penalty when we see it. And that hopefully will help us from taking on something that looks like as though it’s a bigger deal than it really is, and we go after the real penalties. And then once we’ve identified and agreed – and here again it’s a little different in the system this year – once we’ve agreed on the penalty, then we have some clear guidelines as to how that penalty should be served and what the price should be paid for that penalty.

So if you look at what happened last year, it was very much a one-man decision. Sometimes people weighed in on it like driver consultants or the race director, and sometimes they didn’t. But it was really that race director, to a large extent, who made the call. This year we have a different steward system which basically is a group of three people working as a team to make decisions.

One of them is the race director and the other two are invited to sit in in Race Control and give an opinion. We interview these candidates for the job. We make sure they understand enough about the rule book to take up a job as a steward. We also walk through different examples of how incidents that we would call, say like blocking or whatever, and we make sure that they understand what IndyCar means when we say blocking or any other infraction.

So it’s not that we’re trying to get them to just think IndyCar’s way, but every series has a different way of looking at it, or every generation looks at blocking or any other infraction in a different way. Some say it shouldn’t happen, some say you should let them rip and all that. So there are different views but we have to define what IndyCar wants to be the rule. And these people who are going to be stewards have to understand what IndyCar’s objective is.

So now there are three stewards watching the race, something happens and anyone steward of the three can call for a review. So that means that while the race director is one of the stewards is watching the race and running the race, the other two stewards go off to the side to the replay machine and the data, timing line data and everything and try to piece together the incident that one of them saw which they thought was justified for review.

And once they’ve got that ready – and this all happens very quickly, it’s not something that goes on for 30 minutes or anything – the race director turns around, he looks at the data and the three of them say yes or no if it’s in infraction. The majority of those three decide whether it’s going to be a penalty. So the rule is clear. This is the rule, three have voted, two said yes, one said no, or whatever it is, so that means that rule gets enforced and a penalty is assessed.

And there is a chart that says there’s a minimum you get, there’s a mild penalty and there’s a maximum penalty. Because every situation has a little bit of a different spin and you have to give the chief steward, which in this case would be the race director, you have to give him some leeway to make judgment on the severity of a penalty. So then that penalty gets initiated and based on what they decide is the degree of punishment needed, the penalty has to be served.

So, that doesn’t actually answer your question about are we going to be more severe or not – I would say in that situation, if we don’t have the right stewards you could have potentially more tougher regulations on certain incidents. But I think what we’re really trying to do is we’re trying to say, well, if there’s a rule there and it is important enough, then it should be ruled on. It shouldn’t be one guy gets nailed and one guy doesn’t.

So it could be a warning…so the situation could be just a simple warning or it could be you get a drive-through or you get a monitoring penalty. It could be a disqualification even if it’s an extreme situation.

And those were always there before, they were just never written down. There was always that discretion. And that’s the concern that we have is too much is discretionary; how much can we make it more black and white? The only part that’s discretionary on this is the severity of what the penalty would be. The penalty is going to be voted by three stewards. And picking the stewards is obviously a very, very important thing to do.

And so we put in some mechanism that says it’s not just one guy’s choice and there has to be a clear understanding as to what those rules are so that you don’t have interpretation differences, as you may have seen over the years along the way from different series. So it’s a little bit more potential for more regulations, but it’s not intended that way. It’s really saying when we’ve got a penalty that needs to be looked at that we have a slightly different system for looking at it and making a decision based on more than one pair of eyes and better equipment and a procedure that goes with it. We’ve gone to a more procedural method for these things, essentially.

MP: You have Beaux Barfield as race director, and he’s had a team with him since he joined that has expanded and contracted. Who have you chosen for the three-steward process to go with Beaux?

DW: We’re starting off at St. Pete with some guys that have been there before, just because we don’t want to experiment with the new system until we’ve got, we’re pretty well sorted out. So you would have Beaux as the race director, and he would also be the senior steward, you’d have Brian Barnhart as a steward and you’d have Johnny Unser as a steward. So these three guys are the stewards and so they have been around Race Control through all the different ups and downs over the last couple of years. So it’s not like we’ve got somebody who just came in and has never done it before.

We’ve got plans to interview several other people to pick them for two other duties. And after the race we will review their actions and decisions and what kind of job they did. We also tape Race Control and get the audio as well. So after the race we look at it and say, well, how did we do, did it work? Was it fair? Was it too much? Too little? So a lot more examination of what we do and what we don’t do. But the intent is not necessarily that Big Brother’s going to be out there whacking everybody on the head because of it. That’s just saying when you get caught with a penalty we have a slightly different system that deals with that that hopefully is a fairer one and a more consistent one.