IndyCar local yellow flags to appear in cockpits

The IndyCar Series has incorporated an important safety change during the offseason that will prompt its drivers when local yellow flags are active on road and street courses.

Through the EM Marshaling System, IndyCar has made use of large LED panels at many corners where the locally-stationed volunteer corner workers both wave a yellow flag when a problem or incident has occurred in their region and trigger the light panel to match the same color as the flag. In 2025, engaging the light panel will also send an in-cockpit alert that will be hard to miss.

Through 2024, the activation of the yellow caution lights on the dash of each Indy car was an action reserved for IndyCar’s race control, done only when a full-course caution was needed. In the new adjustment, locally-activated cautions will also cause the steering wheel lights to glow – giving corner workers the swift ability to warn drivers of an issue specific to their wider corner domain – that might not have reached race control.

Local cautions are far more common than full-course cautions, and both will reach the steering wheels – in the drivers’ line of sight – to help create more awareness and to possibly give drivers more time to react to an escalating crash like the one seen in Turn 1 at Toronto last year.