Time to Start New in IndyCar and Get Rid of Brian Barnhart

With next week’s hearing to discuss the outcome of the top three finishing positions for last Sunday’s Move That Block 225 that should be enough to fire Brian Barnhart.

Why in the world would he let Ganassi and Newman/Hass dispute that they should have their drivers Oriol Servia for Newman/Hass and Scott Dixon for Ganassi finish first and second respectively?

I mean come on, it’s not Ryan Hunter-Reay’s fault the track was way too wet to go back to green and he couldn’t accelerate without wrecking his car. By him not being able to have grip Oriol Servia and Scott Dixon passed him. 

That’s all fine and dandy, but Barnhart decided to be fair to all drivers and revert the field back to the running order prior to the restart. How can you revert to the running order before the restart, but change the finishing order of the top three? That makes about as much sense as do I say throwing the green flag out on a wet race track. Oh wait that genius already did that.

Calls like that make me believe that it’s time for a new competition leader in IndyCar. Not only is this getting all confusing, but also his calls are getting more and more dangerous.

Let’s rewind back to May at the end of the Indianapolis 500. J.R. Hildebrand was winning the race and well on his way to win.  The IndyStar, a local newspaper in Indianapolis, published a report of the speed trap zone for Hildebrand and rookie Charlie Kimball on the last two laps of the race.  Kimball was the lapped driver Hildebrand was attempting to pass in turn 4 on the last lap of the 500.

The report showed Kimball should have been black flagged on lap 198 due to not running at a fast enough speed to keep up with competition. Kimball was almost 100 mph slower than the leaders speed. If Barnhart wanted to at least let him finish the race then he could have ordered him to race in the warm-up lanes between turns one and two and then in turns three and four, and run on the inside lane of the front and back straights.  He obviously didn’t do that.  On lap 199 the last lap Kimball was over 120 mph slower than Hildebrand’s (the leaders) speed.  Hildrbrand caught Kimball as he was going less than 100 mph in the North Chute. That’s entirely dangerous!  Hildrbrand had no time to react and got in the marbles and the rest is history.

I know Kimball was running out of gas and the last lap ran out of gas, but come on Mr. No Brain Barnhart. We all knew that he was slow either black flag him or order him to the warm-up lane that way drivers don’t catch him in the one groove turns.

Another notable mistake he made was black flagging Helio at the end of last year’s race at Edmonton for blocking.  Are you serious you’re going to black flag a guy for moving over one lane on an airport track wide enough to race jets on while he was leading on a restart? 

Let fast forward back to last Sunday's race in New Hampshire.  When he made the call to go back to green with nine laps to go, he should have been fired on the spot.

When all 18 drivers running at the time unanimously said they don't have grip the track's too wet to go back to green, he should have listened. It was embarrassing seeing those cars look like they were on ice and wrecking.  That's millions of dollars of racing equipment ruined off of a bad decision.

Now they're having a hearing next week about the top three in the finishing order.  What good can come from that but more confusion. You can't change the finishing order when you revert back to the running order before the green flag. Last I checked you can't advance your on track position under yellow unless the car in front is stalled.

All these bad decisions came within a one year span. It's time for a change. It's getting dangerous and IndyCar needs all the help they can get with getting back to what they were.  Confusion doesn't help.