Penalty or no penalty?
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Penalty or no penalty?
debris on the track
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BB answers the question re :D ario and no penalty
Question: Why wasn’t Dario penalized for hitting the tire on pit road? (Brad, Pittsboro, Ind.)
Answer: This from chief steward Brian Barnhart: “After reviewing the situation, and taking into consideration all the circumstances, including the intent, the effect on competition and the effect on safety, race control officials in their discretion didn’t feel it was a violation worthy of a penalty.”
http://blogs.indystar.com/racingexpe...and-milwaukee/
It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood.
^read the above at another forum this morning.....
What a load of crap. When anyone besides Dario hits an air hose leaving the pits, they didn't intend to do it, there really wasn't any effect on competition, and it was probably safer than what Dario did. Did you see the way the guy was standing on the tire and d@mn near went down, how safe is that? Give me a break.
I usually try to give Barnhart the benefit of the doubt, as I think (thought?) he normally tries to be fair. But this one is just blatently favoritisim for Dario. What a sham.
As I saw someone else say somewhere, Dario better stop whining about being "screwed" at Texas. He just got all his points back and then some.
We wanted a penalty but did not get it. The rule is fairly straight forward, and we were not aware that now "intent" comes into play.Quote:
Originally Posted by SarahFan
That said we were happy with our results, and Dario drove a heck of a race.
We were more upset a few years back, when Marco blocked Justin at Chicago on the last restart a few years back, which robbed him of the ROY award, which went to Mutoh.
Eagle, you say "we", who do you work for?
I agree with EagleEye that the rules do not include a clause for intent and how could they possibly know intent from the steward's location. Dario's intent was to complete a fast pit stop. Chuck is also correct that nobody leaves or enters their pitbox with the intent to run over a hose or slide into their team tire guy. It's all about safety and if I were the guy on the tire I sure wouldn't have felt very safe. I'm impressed that he kept his cool and did a good job with his own pit stop.
I believe the comment during the race was that the pit boxes were extremely tight this year, and thus an incident such as what happened was not surprising. If that is that case, and intent can be used as part of racecall judgement, then I have no issue with this call. However, I am not convinced that this was entirely an accident, and thus that intent was negligable. To me, Dario is far too good a driver to make that "mistake" by "accident". I think he was annoyed that the tire guy was a bit on the edge of the penske pitbox and wanted to give him a little nudge. I don't think the intent was to knock him down, like basically happened, but I do think that there was more to this incident than a harmless mistake. Keep in mind that this in not a rare occurence, the Penske and Ganassi pit crews had a few incidents last season where they were leaving tires out and/or doing other things to make it a bit more of a challenge to get into each others pits. A half a second is huge on a pit stop and can decide a race. Don't think that this is not part of their strategy. OTOH, while I'm suspect on Dario, if Danica had done it, I would definitely agree with Barnhart that it was simple driver error.
I felt cheated
In most other pit incidents I thought the drivers didn't intend to mow down pit crew members but this time I thought the intent was definitely there. Dario -- Ganassi -- need I say more. Funny how people interpret things differently.
This is why folks are constantly getting hit on pit row. Is Barnhart taking his cues from Vince McMahon?
You want to see see drivers tip-toe into the pits then there should be zero tolerance! I've said it before. You hit someone in the pits -- you park it. Tough titties! Of course there would have to be a judgement call if the incident involved another team but pit boxes are pretty well defined.
Do we have any information on how far out the guy was supposed to be? It was my understanding that pit crews have a certain limit on how far they can be from the wall. Not that that would excuse Dario, but I'm sure he's been through more than enough training on how to get past pit crews.
If that guy was standing out too far - Dario's coming in at a high speed, and depending on everyone doing their job and hitting their marks. I could just as easily see Penske pushing their guy out just a tad to force a penalty.
Honestly, I can't see either team cheating in that way, but there's a whole 'nother side to this story, right? We need the info on the pit limits.