Oilpressure

I had planned to write about this on Friday, but with the death of Jim Nabors I decided to postpone this topic  to today. Last Wednesday came some news that no one saw coming – that Brian Barnhart will leave his position at IndyCar as Vice-President of Competition and Race Director in order to become President of Harding Racing.

This is not the first time that Harding Racing has turned heads. One year ago, had any of us even heard of Harding Racing? I’ll confess I had not. Before their debut in the 2017 Indianapolis 500, they assembled quite a collection of racing and engineering talent.

Talented engineer Larry Curry had resurfaced from a troubled past that included jail time and a public firing from Vision Racing to become Harding’s team manager and competition director. Two-time Indianapolis 500 winner and CART champion Al Unser, Jr. was also rescued from his own troubled past and became heavily involved with the team. Gabby Chaves was the driver. He had no self-inflicted troubled past, but he has been the recipient of some bad luck in his short IndyCar career – being bounced from his ride with Bryan Herta just as the 2016 IndyCar season was about to get underway, and not being able to find another fulltime ride – until now.

All this brand new team did was finish ninth in their very first race – the 2017 Indianapolis 500. Their next race – they followed that up with a fifth place finish at Texas two weeks later. Their third and final race of the season was not as spectacular. Chaves ran at the back of the field all day, but brought the car home in one piece in fifteenth.

Still, you would have to say that their maiden season was a successful one. They did it the right way – running a few races and figuring out what went right and what went wrong, in order to build for the future.

Well, the future is now – or more precisely, the full 2018 IndyCar season.

Team owner Mike Harding always felt that he had a strong core to his new IndyCar team, but he also felt there was still a key piece missing. That’s when he made a pitch to Brian Barnhart, who stresses that he was not out looking for a job. Harding came to him and presented a package that was so tempting, he couldn’t turn it down.

Brian Barnhart has worked at IndyCar for the last twenty-three years in various capacities; including Director of Racing Operations and League President. It was his role of Director of Racing Operations that also required him to be Chief Steward at races. It was in this role that he infuriated many fans. The fact that he acted as sole judge and jury in race control earned him the infamous nickname of The Iron Hand of Justice. Fans and drivers alike reached their boiling point at the way the rain-shortened race at New Hampshire was handled by Barnhart – culminating in the famous “double-birds” offered up by an enraged Will Power.

It’s a shame that most fans remember Brian Barnhart that way.

I have criticized some of Bran Barnhart’s decisions and decision-making process on this site in past years. But I always tempered those comments by saying that I believed him to be a good man. Readers even challenged me on that as if they didn’t even want to hear anyone say anything good about someone they held in such low-esteem.

But I stand by those comments. I’ve met Barnhart a couple of times – once at Barber and once at Indianapolis – both times being introduced to him by mutual friends. I’m sure he had no idea who I was, but he treated me very well and allowed me to ask him a couple of questions each time. This was several years ago, so I don’t even remember what the questions were. They were probably stupid questions in his eyes – and yes, there are such things as stupid questions – but he took time to explain whatever it was I asked him about.

I walked away from both encounters feeling guilty that I had ever written anything bad about the man, regardless of the fact I know he never saw or heard about what I wrote.

Looking back, do I think Barnhart made the right call every time in Race Control? No. Do I think he could have handled some of the backlash better than he did? Yes. But by and large, Barnhart got it right most of the time. It’s just when you get it right, it never gets talked about. And I’ll promise you that every decision he made was with only one agenda in mind – whatever he thought best overall for the sport.

Brian Barnhart has forgotten more about racing than most of us will ever know. It’s my opinion that he has been the rock of stability at the offices over on 16th Street across from The Speedway. Is there anyone else who has had a longer current tenure with IMS/IndyCar?

The reaction to Barnhart’s departure has been pleasantly surprising. When we first got the news on Wednesday morning, I thought it would be met with a lot of …don’t let the door hit you on the way out type comments. There have been a few of those, but overall it seems that people now understand what he meant to the series.

Mike Harding certainly understands, with probably a little help from Al Unser, Jr. Barnhart was on Little Al’s crew for both of his Indianapolis 500 wins as well as his two CART championships. He was a mechanic for car owners like Roger Penske, Pat Patrick and Rick Galles.

In a sense, Brian Barnhart is going back to his roots. After over twenty years of working for the sanctioning body, Barnhart is going back over to the team side of things.

At 56 years of age, Brian Barnhart is taking on a new challenge in the sport he loves at an age where some people are starting to make their plans for retirement.

Some fans will be thrilled with the news that Barnhart is leaving IndyCar. Those who have studied the sport for decades and know more about him, than what we saw on display in New Hampshire in 2011 will not be so happy. Like so many others, we won’t realize what a gem that IndyCar had in Brian Barnhart until he is gone. Mike Harding knew it. Pretty soon, we’ll all find out.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on December 4, 2017 at 4:04 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.