All-purpose open-wheel (F1, IRL) racing thread

Great but sad point. Any racing series is quick to report status when a driver is OK, or injuries are nonfatal.

 

They may also call the race and say the track can't be repaired. Happened at Charlotte in the third IRL race there, when three fans were killed by shrapnel from an accident. That was also before the halfway point. You can't even find the race in the record book.

 

This is a longer red flag than the 1964 Indianapolis 500. We lost two drivers, Eddie Sachs and Dave Macdonald, that day.

 

I've seen YouTube of the 1964 crash. Thank god they've figured out how to keep cars from becoming fireballs as often as they used to. And older clips show cars going through wire fences and into trees outside the track...what were folks back then thinking?

 

The side pods....were fuel tanks. Pretty much explains everything you need to know about '64....

 

He's gone. RIP Dan Wheldon.

 

Fuck

 

If it's not a storyline for the moment, it is for tomorrow. Consider:
1. The IRL rule book mandates a maximum of 28 cars, except at Indianapolis, where it's 33 (the old AAA formula of one car per 400 feet). But 34 were allowed today, albeit all of them driven by Indy car veterans, with Wheldon, a two-time 500-Mile Race winner, the "extra" car.
2. For all the concern about pack racing at this speed (the fastest speed on the last green flag lap was Will Power's 225.059), next year's Dallara was projected to be faster, but there was no sign that the cars would be differentiated enough with one aero package to allow the speeds, and the field, to separate. And as dramatic as pack racing is when all goes well -- I covered several races at Chicagoland where my heart was in my mouth for the final 30 laps -- eventually, a mammoth accident was bound to happen. Wheels touched even before that. With six extra cars, that's six extra chances for trouble. Yes, the accident began in the middle of the pack, but another half-dozen cars could get collected. And one of them was Wheldon.
3. As has been noted, the drivers voiced concern about the size of the field, speed of the field, and configuration of the track -- nowhere to escape -- beforehand. Could the cars have been detuned before the race? CART called off a race at Texas because of driver near-blackouts at high G forces once upon a time.
4. Chief steward Brian Barnhart has taken much justifiable criticism of his conduct of races, especially the restart in the rain at New Hampshire. I would have expected him to be fired or reassigned after the season, but now this happens, and it so happens the driver killed is the driver in the field to go for the $5 million bonus. And that idea was the idea of Barnhart's boss, Randy Bernard. He has to be beside himself tonight. Do they both get fired by the Hulman and Co. board?
5. Originally, the idea was to have someone new to IndyCar -- Kasey Kahne's name was prominent for a time, given his NASCAR star and USAC background -- run for the $5 million. In retrospect, given what happens, how could that have been a good idea?
All that pales, of course, in comparison to this: A good man is dead. Raise a glass to Dan Wheldon tonight. And make it milk.

 

From IndyCar: Power has been released from the hospital; Mann and Hildebrand will be kept overnight for observation.