INDIANAPOLIS — You didn’t make it to the Indy 500 this year, and neither did I. The small matter of a global pandemic saw to that.
Gordon Barrett couldn’t be there, either. He died in July at his home in Indianapolis and with him went a piece of the 500’s past.
It was unlikely that Gordon would have shown up, anyway. He got away from Indy car racing when Indy car racing got away from him and others like him, the behind-the-scenes heroes who built, rather than bought, the cars that once filled the wooden garages at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Blessed with good hands and keen eyes and cursed with the artist’s blend of genius and madness, they spent their winter nights weaving what they hoped would be some lucky driver’s magic carpet. Springtime would come too fast and April was never long enough, yet come the first of May the last rivets were in place.
This creativity sprung from Dan Gurney’s All-American Racers complex in California, from the McLaren digs in England and from dozens of spots in between. Five miles west of the speedway, in the neighboring shops of A.J. Watson and Grant King, toiled a Murderers Row of fabricators, machinists and welders: Don Koda, Wally Meskowski, Jerry Weeks, Don Brown, Chalkie Fullalove, Dave Flick, Ted Hall, Carl Cindric, Dale Burton, Jackie Howerton and more.
Barrett, a New Jersey native, arrived during the rollicking ’70s, armed with a mechanical engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon University and a résumé that included co-ownership in a Can-Am team. Convinced he ought to be in Indianapolis, Barrett showed up with the intention of knocking on doors until he found work.
“The first place I stopped was Grant King’s,” said Barrett, “and Grant hired me.”
He spent “a few years” constructing cars for King, then moved next door to Watson’s, whose roadster-era tenure as Indy’s premier builder had long since passed. He was turning out the occasional rear-engine car for Wisconsin team owner Ralph Wilke.
“The good part about working with Watson was that I basically made every part in the car,” Barrett recalled. “I made the tub, the pedals, the front and rear suspension pieces, the wings.”
The bad part was that Watson’s methods were hardly scientific. If a rival car seemed fast, his marching orders to Barrett might be, “Build something like that.”
For 1977, Watson asked Barrett for a simpler version of the Lightning cars run by Lindsey Hopkins. “He said, ‘And if you can use anything we already have, do it.’ That meant wheels, hubs, brakes, gearbox, leftovers from his previous car.”
It was big-time racing on the cheap.
“Tom Bigelow drove that car and he did a good job,” Barrett said. “We just managed to get it done for the first day of practice and come the end of the 500 we’d finished sixth.”
Other years were not as rosy. In 1979, patriotic Wilke decided to counter the crashing wave of British Cosworth engines with a new Drake Engineering V-8.
“The car I built for ’79 was designed around the Drake,” said Barrett. “Well, that engine was terrible. George Snider was the assigned driver for the new car at Indianapolis. As soon as he left the pits, we had a major engine calamity. Watson discovered that the bore centers on the cylinder heads did not match up to the bore centers in the block, so the pistons hit the valves and made a mess of things. Ralph Wilke said, ‘Park it,’ and my new car never did run the 500 that year.
“You spend all that time and do all that work to build a car and it ends up getting parked without ever having a chance to go fast.”
Barrett left Watson but remained in motorsports through the mid-’80s, working on projects such as Rick Hendrick’s IMSA Corvette. On the side, he put together trick components for his pal Junior Kurtz, owner of the storied Plastic Express USAC Silver Crown car.
He maintained a shop in Indianapolis, and until recently you could find him there. But by any modern measure, he was off the grid.
“I don’t know how to work Facebook,” he told me once. His friend Robin Miller, the writer and broadcaster, said Barrett “had a cellphone he never turned on, took 25 years to get a computer and didn’t own a television.”
He did have a degree of low-key fame in the genteel world of classic cars. He knew enough about Alfa Romeo, his favorite marque, that auction houses would seek his counsel.
In 1991, he purchased a weathered 1932 Alfa 8C 2300 and spent the next 12 years restoring it. In 2005, the car floored judges at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. Not content with awarding the car a perfect 100 points, they added an extra half-point “for elegance.”
His racing acquaintances were always stunned to learn that the Alfa’s appraised value was well north of $5 million.
He wasn’t the only good guy we’ve lost in 2020 and more will shuffle off before this lousy year ends.
But for now, here’s a toast to Gordon Barrett. He breezed into the Indianapolis 500 when it belonged to men like him and left when it no longer did. His was a splendid life.