Kanaan and Montoya criticize backmarkers at Milwaukee
"When you're two or three laps down, there is no point of you holding people up for position," Kanaan said after finishing third. "I just don't understand that. I know who these guys were. What goes around comes around.
"I won't waste my time talking to them. If you haven't figured that out…that means you're just stupid."
Neither named who they thought were the worst offenders, but rookie Jack Hawksworth did get a fair bit of television time for a driver who finished a lap down. Montoya said at one point or another he was held up by Marco Andretti, James Hinchcliffe and by Josef Newgarden, who finished fifth.
"Really got to come up with a formula," Montoya said. "It's understandable at the beginning of the race that you want to stay on the lead lap. When you have 20, 30 laps to go, you're just in the way. You're about to hit the wall every lap; it's kind of embarrassing."
Montoya, who most recently raced in NASCAR, said he would have liked to have had a bumper to nudge slower cars out of the way.
The phenomenon isn't entirely new to the Mile, said the two drivers who both raced here in the 1990s, it's just more pronounced.
The difficulty in passing slower cars comes from a combination of factors such parity — the slowest cars aren't that much slower — as well as aerodynamics and the track's short, flat design.
IndyCar officials said through a series spokesman that they saw incidents during the race that merited penalties, but they had communicated with teams and would review traffic etiquette and possible changes to the cars to facilitate passing.
"I don't think it's the package," Kanaan said.
"I think it's the person behind the package," Montoya replied. JSOnline.com