Yahoo Autos Arrow McLaren SP hires longtime IndyCar official Brian Barnhart after Taylor Kiel's exit
When Brian Barnhart left his IndyCar race director role to jump back into the team side in late-2017, he referenced “getting to my retirement age.” After six years working for a several versions of Harding Racing as team president, and then scaling back as solely a driver strategist of late with Andretti Autosport, the decades-long series veteran has taken on a new, larger challenge.
Thursday, Barnhart was introduced at Arrow McLaren SP’s race shop for a new, yet to be titled managerial role, the team confirmed. In the wake of the departure of team president and longtime AMSP team member Taylor Kiel this week, it’s presently unclear whether Barnhart will be Kiel’s direct replacement. McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown told the Associated Press he and the five-member board that runs the team since McLaren Racing purchased a 75% majority stake a year ago are still in the process of finalizing the structure of AMSP’s management team. Kiel informed Brown the week of the Sept. 11 Laguna Seca season-finale of his plans to leave the team after 15 years.
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Kiel was hired in 2007 when the team was known as Sam Schmidt Motorsports and started sweeping floors for the then-Indy Lights-focused team. In the span of 11 years, he grew to become the IndyCar team’s managing director in 2018 and was again promoted in early 2021 to his latest role as team president.
Before he dove back into the team side of the sport, Barnhart held a variety of managerial roles both within the IndyCar sanctioning body as well as at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. After stints working with Patrick Racing, Galles Racing and Team Penske — where he won Indy 500s with Al Unser Jr. in 1992 and ’94 — Barnhart was hired as the director of race operations at the Racing Capital of the World, a role he held from 1994-97. He would then shift to a series role and wore a variety of hats over his 20-year run. From 1997-2011, Barnhart served as race director and chief steward of IndyCar/IRL — a stint where he also served as the series president from 2005-07.
After a tumultuous year on-track in 2011 — where he decided to restart a race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in the rain and received the infamous “double-birds” from a crashed, incensed Will Power — Barnhart lost his role as IndyCar race director was repurposed as the series’ president of operations and strategy for the start of the 2012 season. In May of 2013, he was named IndyCar’s vice president of competition, and after his own race director replacement, Beaux Barfield, left the series at the end of the 2014 season, Barnhart reassumed the role from 2015 until the end of 2017. It was then he was approached by Mike Harding to take the day-to-day reins of Harding Racing, which in 2017 had run just three races with Gabby Chaves but was preparing to take the leap to full-time status.
Under Barnhart, the team struggled in its full-season debut where it ran four separate drivers but, in the season-finale, provided the series-debuts for then-Indy Lights rivals Pato O’Ward and Colton Herta. Having picked up a technical alliance from Andretti Autosport while morphing into Harding Steinbrenner Racing for the start of 2019, Herta made his full-season debut and in the second race of the year — with Barnhart on his radio calling strategy — the 18-year-old Herta became IndyCar’s youngest race-winner. The young American driver would take three poles during that rookie season and also won the finale at Laguna Seca.
For 2020, HSR would be absorbed into the greater Andretti Autosport fold, with Barnhart continuing to serve as Herta’s strategist as the driver won from pole at Mid-Ohio, notched seven top-5 finishes and took 3rd-place in the championship. As a contractor, Barnhart then called strategy for James Hinchcliffe’s final full IndyCar season on the No. 29 Andretti Autosport car in 2021, and this past season, he did the same for Alexander Rossi’s No. 27 and helped lead that program back to Victory Lane for the first time in three years. As one person who worked closely with Barnhart over the years told IndyStar this week, the new AMSP employee has been good of late in his various team-centric roles of keeping up team spirit — something that will be key as Barnhart shifts to an IndyCar team that was embroiled in chaos and uncertainty for much of this year.
