Dixon sympathetic for Barnhart over New Hampshire race decision

Barnhart has been widely criticised for the decision to attempt to finish the race under green, which resulted in chaos when Danica Patrick lost control and triggered an accident involving several cars.

Title contender Will Power, who was caught on camera gesturing towards race control after becoming one of the casualties, was among those who claimed that they'd told their teams that the conditions were too dangerous to restart.

But Dixon, who finished third, said that the conditions had briefly started to improve before suddenly deteriorating again just before the green flag.

"The last call was kind of confusing," said the Ganassi driver. "It had dried up. It did start raining on the last lap coming to the green. But regardless, whether it should have or not, it still went green. It is a tough call. I wouldn't want to be the one trying to decide.

"But obviously there's going to be a lot of pissed-off people with a bunch of wrecked cars on the last restart where they think they probably shouldn't have gone back to green. It's a bizarre day."

Barnhart also highlighted that changing conditions at the end of the race had made things difficult, but conceded that the restart had ultimately been a mistake.

"When it's not raining and it's not dry, it doesn't take a lot to get them to haze the tyres, get wheelspin, and with the stagger, turn them around," he said.

"You look at how far out of the corner Danica was and going straight ... it shouldn't be in a position, when you put the power down, that you lose control. As soon as you make that call and see the result, you realise that it wasn't a good one."