R.I.P Dan Wheldon

[KmH]

I love racing, and I hate racing.

Dan was an Indy car driver. He won this years Indy 500 driving a car for an under funded team that apparently had no chance at all of winning the race. He didn't even have a ride for the entire season.

He was in the final race of this Indy car season at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway oval track this afternoon as a special entrant in line for a $5 million bonus if he could win the race from the last starting position.

Just a few laps into the race an incident that started in front of him he was unable to avoid sent his car airborne, upside down, and into the catch fencing before it slid back down to the inside track apron. Though air lifted to the hospital, he did not survive his injuries.

 

[Derrel]

That's too bad. He was a two-time Indy 500 winner. He went out in a blaze of glory. Several of the drivers said the wreck of 13 cars was the worst they had ever seen. Pretty tragic.

 

[kabory]

Great Racer, Huge loss

 

[KmH]

Dan was 33 years old and is survived by his wife Susie and 2 young children - Sebastian and Oliver.

Open wheeled racing cars and the tracks they race on have gotten so much safer over the years. With the added development and adoption of the HANS device and SAFER barrier, driver injuries are less severe and fatalities have never been lower.

Back in the 70's, when I was an aspiring driver, 1 of every 7 Formula 1 drivers died during a acing season. That was about 3 deaths a year.

F1 has not had a driver fatality since 1994. Indy racing has only had 5 driver fatalities in the same time frame, but 4 of the 5 happened on oval race tracks where the average lap speeds are much higher than they are on road courses.

 

[dots]

R.I.P

 

[Derrel]

WHeldon was frustrated with the car he had to drive. Just yesterday USA Today published the second half of a two-part interview they conducted with him. Qualifying speeds at that wickedly banked Las Vegas track were ranging up to a little over 221 MPH...Wheldon's car was "only" getting around 218 MPH...at least a few drivers in the IndyCar series have stated that that level of speed is dangerous.

Driver blog: Dan Wheldon frustrated with car in Las Vegas

 

[KmH]

At least on a 1.5 mile track with that much banking.

The Las Vegas track was modified in 2006 to make the banking steeper, and more amenable to side-by-side stock car racing. After the re-configuration NASCAR was hitting top average speeds of about 190 mph.

The new configuration made the track less amenable to open wheeled car racing.

Another issue was starting 32 cars on a track of that length. They only start 33 cars at Indy which is 2.5 miles to the lap.

 

[Big Mike]

I heard that it was going to be announced today, that he was going to be taking Danika's spot for next year, as she is moving to NASCAR.
Sad story.

 

[KmH]

While signing with the Andretti team would have provided Dan a full time ride in 2012, the Andretti team doesn't measure up to the Ganassi and Penske teams as far as contending for the championship.

Back in 1999 Greg Moore, a 24 year old Canadian driver, had agreed to sign a contract immediately after the last race to drive for Roger Penske in the 2000 season. Greg was fatally injured in the opening laps of the last race of the season too (Fontana, California).

Just hours after Greg's death was announced Roger signed Helio Castroneves to take his place. They even used the contract Greg Moore was going to sign. They just crossed out Greg's name where ever it appeared in the contract and wrote Helio's name in instead.

Helio was available because he did not have a ride lined up for 2000. Essentially, Helio's career as a CART racing car driver was at it's end.