'But for a few inches and the grace of God that could have been my head'

ELKHART LAKE - A simple spin, that’s all Bryan Herta thought this was.

He’d braked late in Road America’s Turn 5 to avoid hitting his boss, Bobby Rahal, and backed into the runoff area like countless other drivers who’d made similar mistakes.

He flicked up his visor to signal he was OK and he needed his car restarted.

Then Herta saw Alex Barron and quickly became part of one of the crazier crashes in Indy-car racing history.

“I thought, 'Oh, he’s going to hit me,' ” Herta said Friday, recalling a 20-year-old memory in vivid detail.

“When I saw him coming and he was going to hit me, I just kind of instinctively put my hands up because my face was exposed because the visor was up. I saw a bunch of rocks. I didn’t want to get hit in the face with a rock.”

Barron’s car had been pushed off the track to his right, and the impact broke the right front suspension, which sheared off the brake line.

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“The pedal just went to the floor,” said Barron, back at the track as a driver coach in the USF2000 series. “With no steering in the grass, Bryan had already turned around, I knew I was going to hit him.

“I figured I would just run into the front of him and knock us both one way or the other. I never thought it would climb up like that.”

But that’s what happened.

Barron’s Toyota-powered Eagle – with an image of the bird painted on its nose – flew over the front of Herta’s Reynard / Ford, skimmed the back of Herta’s right hand and then stopped directly over his head. The car teetered perilously as startled rescue personnel worked on a solution.

“I saw the safety guy come over, and I saw his torso out the side,” said Herta, now an IndyCar Series team owner. “He didn’t want to look down. He just said, ‘You OK in there?’ ”

Save for a nasty bruise on the back of Herta’s hand, he was fine, more angry with himself for throwing away a good opportunity than actually shaken up.

“I couldn’t see Bryan, but my concern was Bryan because he was just sitting there and unfortunately I had no control,” Barron said. “But shortly after that, the safety worker told me he was OK.”

Because Herta wasn’t actually in peril, workers took their time separating the cars to avoid damaging either one further.

“It wasn’t a big crash. It was just kind of spectacular-looking,” said Herta, a team owner in the IndyCar Series back for Sunday’s Kohler Grand Prix.

 “What got everybody’s attention is but for a few inches and the grace of God that could have been my head.”

IndyCar practice: Reigning champion Josef Newgarden turned the fastest lap in each of two IndyCar practice sessions.

His time of 1 minute 42.6279 seconds in the afternoon was about two-tenths of a second faster that his best on opening day a year ago, so IndyCar’s new universal aero package hasn’t affected overall speed much.

Handling, though, is radically different, Newgarden said, in the way the car tends to slide around under acceleration.

“When you're on the edge of breaking the rear free, you get a lot more warning for that,” he said. “Places like (Turn) 12, even the Carousel or Turn 14, you'll be coming off after max load and you'll be finishing the corner, the rear will start talking to you, saying it's too much, too much.

“You have huge moments now with this car where you're completely crossed up. You would think you're wrecking. You can somehow straighten it back up and continue the lap.”

Although Newgarden posted the fastest lap with Chevrolet power, Hondas had the next two spots with Robert Wickens and Sebastien Bourdais.

Indy Lights: Juncos Racing driver Victor Franzoni won his first pole in the series for the first of the weekend doubleheader at noon Saturday.

Pro Mazda: Chicagoan David Malukas beat BN Racing teammate Toby Sowery by 1.4528 seconds in the first race of the weekend.

MX-5 Cup: Pole-sitter John Dean II pulled away from a battle to win the first of two races.