2015 NOLA Motorsports Park Strategy Review

I made some predictions about caution laps in last week's NOLA Motorsports Park Pre Race Strategy Guide, although I feel like the demolition derby masquerading as an IndyCar race wasn't a fair standard to judge my predictions against.  But the race is official, so it's time to see how I did.

I used caution data from NOLAMP's sister track, Barber Motorsports Park, to identify laps that had been run under caution in at least 3 of the last 5 races.  I thought these laps potentially had a higher chance of being run under yellow at NOLAMP.  The results are below.

Predicted Caution Lap	2015 Caution?
1 and 2	No
67	Did Not Happen

Given the frequency of cautions in the first 2 laps at Barber, I thought there was a good chance of a caution in the first 2 laps at NOLAMP.  There wasn't.  The only other lap that was regularly run under caution was lap 67, but that lap didn't happen in 2015 because the timed race ended before the leaders reached lap 67.  The slower laps, frequent pit stops, and frequent cautions during wet races mean that wet races can take substantially longer than a normal dry race.  IndyCar declared that the race would end after a set amount of time so that the race would fit in the broadcast window that NBC Sports Network had for the race. 

Caution Breakdown for NOLA Motorsports Park

Lap	2015
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16	Yellow 1
17	Yellow 1
18	Yellow 1
19	Yellow 1
20
21	Yellow 2
22	Yellow 2
23	Yellow 2
24	Yellow 2
25	Yellow 2
26	Yellow 2
27
28	Yellow 3
29	Yellow 3
30	Yellow 3
31
32	Yellow 4
33	Yellow 4
34	Yellow 4
35	Yellow 4
36	Yellow 4
37	Yellow 4
38	Yellow 4
39
40
41	Yellow 5
42	Yellow 5
43
44	Yellow 6
45	Yellow 6
46	Yellow 6
47	Yellow 6

Cautions per Year

	2015
Total Cautions	6
Total Caution Laps	26
Average Caution Length (Laps)	4.3
First Caution Lap	16
Last Restart (Laps Remaining)	5

In the pre-race strategy guide I noted that 5 of 11 restarts from yellows that began after the first 2 laps of the race were followed by another caution period within 3 laps.  Frustratingly, this trend continued at NOLAMP.  Every restart was followed by a caution period within 3 laps of the restart.

Lap Number of the Winner's Pit Stops*

Year	2015
Winner	Hinchcliffe
Stop 1	13

*Each cell contains the lap number and track condition (green or yellow) for each of the winner's pit stops.

James Hinchcliffe won the race using an aggressive one stop pit strategy.  Qualifying was rained out, so Hinchcliffe had to start in 16th place (based on his position in the championship points, which are used to set the starting order when qualifying is rained out).  He was certainly faster than the cars around him early in the race: he went from 17th on lap 3 to 14th on lap 10, before drivers started pitting to switch from wet to dry tires.  Regardless of his speed, Hinchcliffe's poor starting position would have precluded him from racing his way to the front of the field.

The Schmidt Peterson Motorsports team realized this, and since Hinchcliffe isn't a championship threat, correctly decided to gamble on pit strategy and go for a win.  Hinchcliffe pitted on lap 13 and saved fuel for the rest of the race (26 caution laps and 6 green flag laps).  He ran out of fuel before arriving in Victory Lane, so he probably would have run out of fuel if the race had been 3 laps longer.

Hinchcliffe wasn't the only driver to benefit from clever pit strategy.  Helio Castroneves, James Jakes, and Simona de Silvestro made their final stops on lap 29 or 30, one caution period before the majority of the field made its final pit stop.  This was well before they needed to stop for fuel: Castroneves, Jakes, and de Silvestro made their first stops between laps 12 and 15, and most of the laps between lap 12 and lap 30 were run under caution.  Fortunately, their strategists realized that the end of the timed race would arrive before their drivers would run out of fuel and called their drivers in for fuel before the rest of the field.  

As expected, the right pit strategy paid big dividends to teams willing to roll the dice.  Schmidt Peterson Motorsports and Hinchcliffe deserve credit for a well earned win.  SPM had the guts to gamble that there would be a lot of yellows after Hinchcliffe's pit stop, and Hinchcliffe survived 5 restarts in treacherous conditions to reach the checkered flag.

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