This was written for Racing On magazine in Japan in July, 2002. I still believe Paul Tracy is the rightful winner of the 2002 Indianapolis 500, a victim of IRL/CART politics.
The Indianapolis 500 prides itself on tradition. That’s great when it comes to things like pre-race ceremonies, but one Indy tradition that unhappily endures is controversial officiating. And the 2002 edition of The Greatest Spectacle In Racing produced perhaps the baddest and the saddest example of creative rule interpretation and decision-making in the long history of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
This much is indisputed: Paul Tracy was racing Helio Castroneves for the lead in Turn 3 on Lap 199, seconds after a crash between Laurent Redon and Buddy Lazier occurred behind them on the track. But Indy Racing League Chief Steward Brian Barnhart ruled that the caution period for the accident began before Tracy made his pass and he therefore declared Castroneves the race winner.
Tracy’s team owner Barry Green believed video evidence and testimony from other drivers showed Tracy completed his pass prior to the instant the yellow caution light blinked on. Green filed a protest, which was denied by Barnhart a day later.
Green then filed an appeal, which IRL founder Tony George elected to hear himself. Team Green and Team Penske presented evidence on June 17 (22 days after the race), and George issued his decision on July 3.
George could have asked a panel of experts to rule on the matter, but by appointing himself judge and jury, he unnecessarily introduced CART versus IRL politics into the equation. Few industry observers believed George would award the victory to a CART team and driver and take it away from the IRL’s flagship organization.
So the decision that kept Castroneves and Penske as the winners didn’t surprise many people. But no one expected the case behind the decision to be as weak as it was. And George’s presentation to the media was shocking. Never known as a great public speaker, the Indy chief panicked when he found the last page of his prepared notes missing. He only regained his composure after a series of frantic hand signals from his spin-doctor Fred Nation.
An 11-page decision bearing George’s signature based its case on the determination that the order cars are placed in at the commencement of a yellow caution period is a “judgement decision not subject to protest or appeal.” However, George said he decided to hear the appeal “because of the unique facts and circumstances of this situation” and the Indianapolis 500 status as “the biggest single day sporting event in the world.”
That portion of the decision alone prevented Green from fighting for his cause. But George also claimed the IRL had data (provided by Penske but never released to Green or to the public) that demonstrated Castroneves backed off on the entry to Turn 3 because his in-car caution light flashed on for the Redon/Lazier accident.
Barry Green was informed of George’s decision by fax a few minutes before Tony’s shaky showing for the media. Two hours later and about eight miles away at northwest Indianapolis race shop, the losing team owner presented his case to the press.
“First of all, on the bottom of the protest decision it states that we may appeal the protest,” Green said. “The only question that I believe we had to answer was whether car #26 was past car #3 before the yellow light came on and the caution period began.
“Rule 7.14 in the IRL Rulebook says that racing will cease with the display of the yellow flag or the yellow light,” he continued. “Now I’ll read Page 7 from Tony’s decision this morning which says, ‘During a race, a yellow caution period begins when Race Control calls it on the radio.’ Folks, that is not what the Rulebook says. Racing does not cease until the display of the yellow flag or yellow light. That is what the Rulebook says.”
Green also believed that his team of mathematicians and videographers had accurately reconstructed the sequence of events in Turn 3 that took place between the time of the Redon/Lazier accident and the moment the yellow track light came on. By their calculations, Tracy had just nosed in front of Castroneves when the yellow light flashed on as the pair exited Turn 3.
“Castroneves said in a sworn affadavit that he saw the yellow dash light and lifted off,” Green said. “But we can verify that he never lifted off until he got to the exit of Turn 3. That is where the wall light came on, and Paul Tracy is clearly ahead prior to the wall light, after the wall light and after the 3 car lifted off. Our calculations demonstrate that Castroneves could not have lifted until after Paul had passed him.”
Green said it was not his style to make waves. But he felt his case was so strong he had no choice.
“I had to do the right thing,” he said. “On behalf of all my guys and their families I had to at least argue my point. The more I looked into it, the clearer the picture was. Since that day I have spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars, not only trying to prove to the IRL but prove it to myself.
“I guess you could just say that I am very disappointed in Tony George and the IRL,” he added. “I believe Tony lost his way here.”
Ironically, Green was on the favorable end of one of the last big controversies to plague the Indianapolis 500. His driver Jacques Villeneuve inherited the victory in the 1995 race when leader Scott Goodyear’s Reynard-Honda passed the Pace Car with just 10 laps to go. It didn’t matter that video evidence showed that the Pace Car made an unusually slow entry to the pits – Goodyear was black flagged, and when he didn’t heed the signal, sanctioning body USAC stopped scoring him and placed him 14th in the final classification, though he finished some 10 seconds ahead of Villeneuve on the race track.
An innocent bystander in that situation was Honda, which was in position to take a storybook Indy victory after ignominiously failing to qualify on its debut the year before. The political split between CART and the IRL the following year meant that Honda never had another shot at the Indy – the Holy Grail of American open wheel racing.
Of course Honda will controversially drop its CART program at the end of this year in favor of badging an IRL engine designed and produced by Ilmor Engineering. Honda wants Team Green and its other CART teams to to jump to the IRL with it, but they have resisted because they are not interested in the League’s all-oval format. And based on Team Green’s experience at Indy this year, those teams and Honda must again be questioning whether the Indianapolis 500 will ever feature a level playing field.
This wasn’t the first time the result of the Indianapolis 500 was not decided on race day, and it wasn’t the first time that it involved Penske Racing. In 1981, Bobby Unser won for Penske on the track, but Patrick Racing filed a protest because its driver Mario Andretti (who happened to finish second in the race) said Unser passed a number of cars illegally while exiting the pits after a yellow. The USAC stewards agreed, and when the official results were posted the day after the race, Unser was penalized a lap and Andretti was declared the victor.
But the saga wasn’t over, because Roger Penske filed an appeal. Some four months later, USAC’s reversal was overturned and Unser was fined and reinstated as the winner of the race.
To many observers, Castroneves’ disputed victory at Indy this year is the second of Penske’s record 12 Indy wins with an asterisk next to it. Barry Green is certainly one believes that.
“I have to feel sorry for Mr. Penske, really, because I think this race is not going to sit well with him,” Green said. “It cannot after he saw the evidence we had.”
Bruno Junqueira, this year’s Indy pole winner, grew up racing karts in Brazil with Castroneves and the two remain friends. But Junqueira has his own opinion about who deserved to win the race.
“Paul is the guy who drove the 200 laps the best on that day,” Junqueira said. “Okay, I think I had the best car and I believe I would have won if I didn’t run into problems. Paul didn’t have a good car, but he passed people and he put himself in position to win the race.
“Helio deserved to win Indy in 2001, but he didn’t deserve it this year,” Bruno added. “He got lucky and he knows it.”
Paul Tracy has been hailed as the moral victor of this year’s Indianapolis 500 by everyone from Mario Andretti to Alex Zanardi, and the sometimes controversial Canadian has been a model of good behavior throughout the appeal process. Maybe it is appropriate that the last word goes to him.
“It’s frustrating because this is a sport and it started out as a sport to race head-to-head against other guys,” Tracy remarked. “We raced head-to-head on the track, and I feel that I won the race, but we weren’t able to win the political side of it. That’s frustrating for Barry and I think it’s frustrating for a lot of the fans that it’s come down to politics.
“It’s sad for the sport and it’s sad for open-wheel racing,” he added. “I think this just shows how deep the gap is between IRL and CART. It’s so wide now that it’s frustrating.”
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