What a freaking joke.

Rare is the time that merits a Saturday night near-midnight blog post, but this has to be said. I have no other words to describe the complete ineptitude of the "Holmatro Safety Team" in response to Simona de Silvestro during the night's IZOD IndyCar Series race at Texas Motor Speedway other than the title of this post.

De Silvestro crashed from turn 2 and was in a fireball from where she hit the wall and came to rest on the inside of turn 4 on the oval.

The first truck rolled up and the guys looked like the three stooges, trying to roll out a fire hose (fire extinguishers, anybody?) and then just standing around asking themselves what to do.

All this while Simona is trying to get out and is in the middle of a burning crapwagon. Yes, I said it (full disclosure, since I don't cover the series full-time, I'm just saying it. PT might agree.) It was more than 30 seconds from when the car rested to get her out and nearly a minute from the time of the accident. In racing terms, that's an ETERNITY.

Thank goodness for the one guy who went in to help extract her from the car, but even that was more chaotic than it needed to be since he didn't get the fire out but instead pulled her out sideways.

Her grace and class in the face of a horribly bungled rescue attempt by a patchwork crew who have given themselves the same name as the completely different and actually legitimate crew that existed in Champ Car is a testament to her character and her resolve. If it's me, or likely anyone else in that situation, we're holding back f-bombs, and rightfully so because we're wondering why you screwed up so bad.

Not only that, but the usually on-the-ball Versus telecast neglected to show replays of the accident or talk to crewmembers in the immediate aftermath of the accident. Her excellent engineer Michael Cannon was visibly frustrated.

I realize I'm less than three weeks from turning 21 so can be considered "young," but I've watched IndyCar racing for 15 years and covered it for five. And that has to be the weakest exhibition I've EVER seen by a safety team. If that batch of characters was the crew on site for Alex Zanardi's near death accident in Germany in 2001, he would not have survived. Alex Tagliani might not have either.

This is not the same group that made their mark as the most renowned crew on the CART/Champ Car side with Drs. Steve Olvey and Terry Trammell. Randy Bernard's been open to many suggestions so far and one this renegade young scribe will suggest is pink slips to all bar the one member of this team who epically failed in this situation.

Thank God for Simona's sake (or anyone else who might have been in such an unfortunate position) it wasn't worse.

***

The race itself had more passing and genuine interest with Danica and Marco threatening the leaders and for another week running, the best car and driver won with Ryan Briscoe keeping the "Big Two" firmly entrenched in P1. The only addendum I'll add is that Danica should have received a black flag for an egregious blocking maneuver on her teammate Tony Kanaan. TK was rightly frustrated and if "what goes around, comes around," then by all means do so.

Another sad story for Andretti Autosport is that this is probably Ryan Hunter-Reay's last race for that team, and that's the epitome of unjust. He's currently sixth in points (first in the non-Penske/Ganassi class) with a win and several top fives - not to mention IZOD's poster boy. It's criminal he, Graham Rahal and so many others are on the sidelines. Hopefully there's something that sees his season continue but it would be an 11th-hour deal at this point, I think.

Out for now, and off to bed. Cheers.