IndyCar driver flips race officials the ‘double bird’
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| Will Power gestures to IndyCar race control after the cars went green on a wet track and three cars crashed, including him. |
After the race Power apologized for his behavior following the incident.
"First of all, I have to apologize for losing my temper after the accident that ended our race," said Power. “Regardless of what happened on the race track, my behavior was inexcusable and I apologize to our sponsors, the fans, the IZOD IndyCar Series officials and the Penske Racing organization. I should not have behaved the way I did and I am sorry. It's definitely no excuse but I was just very frustrated because our car ran so well and our team had worked so hard to put ourselves into a position to get a good finish and I thought it was just ridiculous to restart the race under the dangerous conditions that existed on the race track. I am just glad the officials decided to make the decision to revert the finishing order back to what it was before the final restart. I want to thank my team for their hard work today and, again, I'm sorry for the way our race ended and how I handled the situation."
08/14/11 IndyCar driver Will Power offered this gesture to race officials in the scoring tower (which was obviously followed by an apology from ABC):
Afterward, Power lashed out at IndyCar's Brian Barnhart for his poor judgment.
"He makes such bad calls all the time," Power told ABC's Jamie Little. "This has got to be it. They cannot have this guy running the show, because that was a decision that put a lot of drivers in danger.
"You saw how many people crashed on the front straight. It was no condition to race in. Shame on him."
“This is the worst officiating I’ve ever seen,’’ Andretti said. “It was wetter than when they threw the yellow (on lap 206). You just don’t do that.’’
“It’s a good thing that we didn’t make it to turn one or everybody would have crashed,’’ Hunter-Reay said.
Minutes after the race was red-flagged following the big crash, Barnhart agreed that restarting the race was the wrong thing to do.
“The official result will be the positioning order prior to the last attempted restart,’’ he said. “That’s going to be an aborted restart. Obviously the track conditions were not in a position that was safe for us to run. … It’s a mistake on race control’s part.’’