Derrick Walker said he and his three race stewards had no problem with Will Power’s initial restart in Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg which resulted in an incident in the back of the field. But they weren’t happy with the eventual winner’s final restart on lap 87.

“We all thought that first restart looked very slow but, after looking at the replays and car data following the race, there was no brake checking by Will or slowing down,” said Walker, IndyCar’s president of competition and operations. “He brought the field down at the pace car speed and accelerated exactly where he was supposed to and it was a good restart. And Johnny (Rutherford, pace car driver) did exactly as we asked him and pulled off late.

“The trouble was that some guys near the back pulled out of line and paid the price.”

Rookie Jack Hawksworth got sideways and collected Marco Andretti on the lap 82 restart. After that wreck was cleaned up, the cars crept through the final corner in single file before Will applied the power – way too early, according to Walker.

“He accelerated too soon on the second one and earned himself a warning,” said Walker. “Had the race continued and he did it again, we would have penalized him.”

After two years of double-file restarts, Walker changed back to single file for everything except Iowa, Pocono, Milwaukee and Fontana.

“There are places like St. Pete that are wide enough for double-file restarts but we didn’t want to keep switching back and forth – we want to establish continuity,” he explained.

ABOUT THOSE SPEEDS…

Walker also wanted to clarify his stance on increasing speeds at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“We’re in the business of speed, so if we all do our jobs inevitably they will increase,” he said. “But we won’t deliberately package the rules to dramatically increase speeds. We could allow our engine manufacturers to run all the boost their little pistons can handle and ask Firestone to build super-soft tires but speed isn’t the single motivating factor. Sure, we’re about the evolution of our cars but we’re also about the safety of our competitors and fans.”

IndyCar CEO Mark Miles has made it no secret he’d like to see Arie Luyendyk’s track record of 236.239mph fall by 2016 – the 100th running of the Indy 500 – and a lot of fans have expressed that same desire.

“The cars will get better, the tires will get better and we’ll have aero kits so there will be speed enhancements,” continued Walker. “And we need to manage speeds to the best of our ability.

“But will we make selective rules to get speed records? Of course not.”