The Race Director: Is This What Should Be Focused On?

After three years as IndyCar race director, Beaux Barfield has announced that he will be moving to IMSA and taking over as their race director starting with the penultimate round of the 2014 season at Austin in a fortnight.

Barfield's IndyCar tenure started out tremulous with many complaints and a few mistakes (such as penalizing a driver for jumping an aborted restart). Over the last season and a half, I thought things had generally improve for Barfield not just with consistency in calls but he was becoming more respected with teams and drivers after it appeared they wanted his head from the start. Thinking back to the recently finalized 2014 season, I can't think of one time Barfield individually was chastised for a call. Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of times race control was chastised (the St. Petersburg restart, Pagenaud-Power at Long Beach, Aleshin-Rahal at Long Beach, Pagenaud-Power at Belle Isle, Power taking out Newgarden, Wilson and Rahal in Belle Isle 2, Marco Andretti getting the blue flag while running on the lead lap because leader Takuma Sato could not lap him, the whole Toronto weekend more specifically the decision not to race on Saturday in the rain). The complaints were not directed at just Barfield this year, they were directed at race control as a whole as Barfield had Brian Barnhart, Johnny Unser, Arie Luyendyk, Tony Cotman and Jon Beekhuis rotating through race control, helping making calls.

Before this season, I can't recall a time in IndyCar when drivers/teams were calling out race control instead of the individual who was in charge. That is a good thing. More people have paid attention to IndyCar race director than it has ever have deserved. Especially in the time of Brian Barnhart as race director, you had fans living and dying on decisions and getting so worked up that it caused people to stop following the series. Don't get me wrong, there were times people were rightfully upset and Barnhart wasn't infallible (he restarted an oval race in the rain, case closed) but it should never have come to that for IndyCar.

During this past season I was wondering why there has to be one race director? Other sports don't have one official calling every single game. IndyCar already has a president of competition and operations in Derrick Walker so why couldn't IndyCar, instead of having one guy have a rotating set of three or four officials through out the year? IndyCar has already made a step in that direction with aids to the race director but instead of having the position race director be set for every race in the season, have it rotate.

Let's say IndyCar picks Beekhuis, Cotman, Luyendyk and Unser to be their officials for 2015. One week Beekhuis is race director with Cotman and Unser assisting and the next week it's Luyendyk as the race director with Beekhuis and Cotman assisting and so on. I think this would prevent one guy from becoming the series whipping boy. The problem is everyone sees things differently. Hard racing to one is avoidable contact to another. The series has to write in stone what could cause a penalty. There are already rules in place about blocking but contact is a grey area. It could be as easy as saying any contact with another car behind the roll hoop could be substantial enough to warrant a penalty. Then there is the red flag rules. The red flag was used at Indianapolis and Toronto 2 but was not used at Barber, Texas, Houston 1 and Iowa, all races that saw a late caution. I have felt the use of the red flag should only be in place for ovals only and the rule should state that if a caution comes out between five laps to go and fifteen laps to go, a red flag may be used once to clean up an accident.

Now that Barfield is gone I have to ask is who becomes the new race director really worth focusing on? There is plenty of offseason IndyCar has to fill so on the bright side it give the few dwindling fans something to talk about and worked up about but is it really worth it? Whoever becomes the next race director isn't going to bring fans into the series. It's not going to change the general publics perception of the series. It's going to be in one ear, out the other news when it all gets squared away this winter.

If you were to look at IndyCar through the dynamic of a family, the race director position is like paying the bills or find the best retirement plan. That's what the grown ups should focus on. The fans or the kids in this case should worry about drivers and liveries and the schedule. The fun stuff. Don't worry about the grown up stuff, it is out of your control, no pun intended.