Months of speculation about where IndyCar would find someone capable of wearing the many hats of former President of Competition and Operations Derrick Walker were answered last week – and it turned out that the series’ choice was already right there in the building.

Jay Frye will step up from his previous role as Hulman Motorsports’ Chief Revenue Officer to take the helm as IndyCar’s new competition boss, and while the ink is still drying on his new business cards, he tells RACER that he already identifying areas to target for improvement.

Q: As you begin your tenure as IndyCar’s President of Competition, what areas have you identified that need only minimal attention or tweaks?

JAY FRYE: Obviously, the racing is spectacular. And one thing I’ve been incredibly impressed by is the drivers and how hard they run every lap of every race. The teams are the same way. But really, the last few years I’ve had a huge amount of respect and appreciation for the teams and everybody in the paddock about their dedication and how hard they work, and what they do to put on a great show every weekend. And I just want to make sure we’re doing everything possible that we can, from every possible angle, be supporting our teams. To me, as a former team person, that is one of our biggest priorities.

Again, on a good note, the racing is really good and that’s something, the races are exciting every week. I think that is something we’ve got to make sure in anything we do there’s an effect on the actual product, that the product is very good.

Q: How about that middle tier – the areas where you expect to do a fair amount of work right away?

JF: We’ve talked about race control, and officiating is difficult in every league. You go home tonight and watch television and there will be some debate coming from some sort of call that an official made in some league.

If you look at the NFL as an example with the high-tech instant replay they’ve got, it goes back to a review team New York, you sit there, watch a replay three or four times and they have three or four different opinions on what happened or not. It’s difficult, and they have everything at their disposal.

We want to make sure we do a better job of this, to make sure we have all the right tools, we have all the right training, and it is consistent. We want the teams understand what the rules are and, to put it in a simplistic form, what the penalty is for a certain situation, that everyone is aware of what the outcome can be. I think, as a former competitor, that’s very important.

On the people side, we need to make sure, in a steward system, that we have people that are highly engaged, highly respected, passionate about the sport, understand what our goals are and what our rules are, and just continue to become more consistent and more deliberate in our interaction.

Again, I think if we do a lot of this, the debates will be less. Not to say a debate is unhealthy, because when you watch the replays of other leagues, there are times I’ll be watching a game with someone and they’ll have a completely different opinion than mine based on the play we just watched. That’s part of sports; that is not unhealthy. We just want to make sure we’re clearer on our decisions to people understand what they are debating.

Q: What about complete overhauls? Are there any areas in the Competition department where you see a need to start from scratch?

I don’t think so, I think a lot of it is fine-tuning; I think we’ve got a lot of really good people. Even from a people perspective, I’ve seen it before where you will have some that are maybe floundering, and maybe the reason they are floundering is they aren’t in the right position. You put them in the right position and they flourish. Maybe that’s some of the stuff we look at next.

I’m not saying right now that people will be moved around, but it could if it’s needed. I know we’ve got a lot of really good, hard-working people. I go to every race every weekend, I’ve been curious and gone up to race control, gone in the competition truck to talk to them and see how they are doing, all before I was put in this new position. We’ve got a good group, they work hard and it’s part of our jobs to make sure the people are in the right spot. And I’m learning here, too.

I have a huge amount of respect for [former IndyCar President of Competition] Derrick Walker. I have no problem calling him. He treated me incredibly well and it was a pleasure working with him the last couple of years. Derrick and I go way back, from my Valvoline days when we sponsored his IndyCar program. There’s no finer man that works harder and has earned everything that’s he’s got than him, and I’m not afraid to ask questions if he can help me to understand something or to be better in my role.

Q: Walker was asked to do the job of six people when he was in your position—write the rules, lead race control, lead the safety team, seek new manufacturers, set long-term goals for speeds and technology, and come up the concept for the next IndyCar chassis. Some areas got more attention than others, and achieving excellence in every area was all but impossible. Will you hire more staff to share the load, or pass down some of the areas of responsibility to those currently in the building?

JF: First of all, I like to be accountable. It’s a good thing to be able to be accountable for what you are doing. That is always in my philosophy. You hire really good people, you provide them the tools and the resources they need, and you support them in any way you can to help them do their job. You surround yourself with good people like that, they are all pointed in the same direction, and you get great results.

When in 1996 when we started MB2, we had 10 full-time people in an 8000 square-foot building and one car. Those 10 people – we had 13 other part-timers that were the weekend warrior types – but those 10 people, all of them did four or five jobs. That is how we operated back then.

Now what you have is, you will have five people do one job. The sport has become so specialized. It’s changed in a big way. Again, when there’s changes in this direction, you have to make sure you have good leadership that are making sure all these people are pointed in the right direction. When you had 10 before, and everybody was working hand in hand, it was a little different dynamic than it is now.

Again, I don’t see it as a problem, I think we have really good people, and if we need to go out and hire others to help complement and maybe do different things, we certainly have the ability to do that. I’ve been a big believer in not necessarily having the most people, but having the best people.

Q: Some of the hiring and R&D projects that were wanted for your department last season became impossible due to budget cuts. Have you had any indication from Hulman Motorsports that you’ll have the funds to hire more lieutenants, or to commission technical studies, or expand areas you see as needing more dollars?

JF: As a whole, the last couple of years, I have always seen that if it is something we need to do or we have the ability to do it, then we do it. Again, I can’t speak for Derrick, the frustrations he had or anything like that, but just like in any business, you have to be smart with your budget and what you are doing.

As far as the teams, we want to make sure we can help them in a methodical, smart way where we can help them reduce their operating budgets in some way. The racing is great and there are ways to do that. There are two different ways I grew up in the sport, and the first team was MB2. We were a B level team that won some races and competed at a high level, but we were always limited in what our resources were.

And then went to Red Bull. Red Bull had a whole different dynamic. I looked at the budget the first time there and I about fell out of my chair, thinking, ‘this is what we’ve been racing against?’ It was just a whole different mindset.

Again, at Red Bull we tried to be smart with the money and do things differently. It is the same way here. I think we’re very capable of getting anything we need to succeed. From the revenue side, too, there’s lots of ways we can do things to pay for things or even save operating expenses. There’s lots of ways to skin the cat.

Q: Improved driver and fan safety was a question and concern raised more than once in 2015. IndyCar’s investigation into the cause of Justin Wilson’s death was recently completed and shared with the family, but what kind of improvements are being considered to prevent the next helmet strike or aero kit piece from breaking free and scaling the barriers? And how much of an emphasis will be placed on improving safety as you get started?

JF: It’s big, and it has to be part of the fabric of what you do every day. Safety has to be one of the number one priorities in everything we do every day on a consistent basis, 365 days a year. We have people doing it every day. We have the Dr. Trammells and the Holmatro Safety Team, and they are phenomenal. And we have all these smart people in the paddock.

What I would love to do as a project is to ask all our teams to help us, to come up with their own ideas about how to improve safety. There would need to be a procedure or method to it, but I bet it would amaze us, some of the stuff our own paddock would come up with. All of the mechanics, all of the engineers, the drivers, and everyone with so much experience; I know we’d get more great ideas by working with our teams than to rely on a small team inside just our department.

And it has to be something you work on every single day, because if you’re not, you only react when you have something bad happen. And because every day something changes with the cars, the tires, or we’re racing different venues, we need to make sure the venues are up to standard in every way

I’ve seen a lot of the bad side where I came from, so safety is very personal for me. Kenny Schrader was in our car that was part of the Dale Sr. incident. Ernie Irvan got hurt a couple times in our car. Jerry Nadeau got hurt. Johnny Benson had a problem. Even out of the car – the situation with Brian Vickers with blood clots. We’ve had experience dealing with things and I’m going to hopefully use my experience to help enhance what we’re doing. We need to always do more and we need to do it every day.

Q: Derrick stated his desire to chase the speed record as part of the 100th running of the Indy 500. I know it’s very early to ask, but in light of the issues at Indy this year, and a bad crash at Pocono, do you foresee carrying that speed record ambition forward in May?

JF: If we go to our competitors and ask, I’m not sure at this point it would be a priority. I don’t think it would be very well-received, but it is something we have to make sure we can evaluate. Qualifying is very exciting, and the track record piece is very exciting.

Everything we do we have to do it smart. We have to be methodical and to evaluate if we can go for records. We’ve got to make sure the end result is something we need, or that people want. If everything is okay to try, okay. But if it’s not, then you don’t.

Q: Where does the Dallara DW12’s replacement, fall on your list of priorities, or on a calendar for introduction?

JF: It’s like aero kits. One of the things was to differentiate the cars. Did it accomplish that? Yes. That’s good. Did it create competition? Yes, it did. That’s good. Then you ask, what did it cost? Again, I haven’t gotten the whole report yet, but it appears that there were some issues with what it cost to achieve all this.

We have to be smart about this stuff. It’s the same when we’re talking about making a new car. We need to go back and evaluate that and what was the cause and effect and how the one we currently use played out. And then take what we learned there and apply it to what’s next, in my opinion. Bottom line, we can’t create costs for our teams that causes no effect.