Baltimore safety truck incident nearly results in crash at start of race
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Last Sunday’s Baltimore Grand Prix almost began in chaos, as a Holmatro Safety Team truck barely got back behind a concrete barrier at Turn 1 before Will Power and Graham Rahal brought the field through the turn on the opening lap. The incident sparked widespread shock from the fan base, and INDYCAR has now responded.
The sanctioning body has suspended the driver of the truck, whose name will not be identified, for the upcoming Twin Ring Motegi and Kentucky Speedway events. He will be reinstated for the season finale at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
According to INDYCAR, the truck had been readjusting tire barriers on the pace laps and was supposed to return to its original position between Turns 2 and 4.
“Protocol was not followed at the start of the event and we had to take action by issuing a suspension,” said INDYCAR president of competition Brian Barnhart, who also revealed that the suspended HST member had “more than 20 years working with various safety teams.”
“Over the course of this past week, we have met with all of our team members who operate vehicles on track during competition, reinforcing all of our procedures. We want to make sure we do everything possible to avoid any situation like this in the future.”
Tony Johns of PopOffValve.com has expanded upon this by telling of radio communication problems between the track marshals according to someone from that group. There’s more revealing information in the piece, which certainly doesn’t create a very good feeling involving Race Control’s handling of the situation.
It’s still unbelievable how this happened and how narrowly close this all came to the potential death or serious injury of Rahal, who had the outside line and would’ve likely hit the truck if it had been any slower in getting to its Turn 1 station.
Communications breakdowns like this simply cannot exist in this level of the sport.
