Dan Wheldon Has Died
Over the weekend, Indy 500 champ, Dan Wheldon died in a car crash at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. He had accepted a challenge to start at the back of all the cars and if he won would have received $5M. He had started well, but whoever decided this track was a good track for Indy was wrong. The track is used primarily for NASCAR and is about 1 mile shorter than Indy tracks and when you combine that with speeds which are almost 100 miles an hour faster than NASCAR, it did not take long for half the cars in the field to be in one big wreck, the wreck that cost Dan his life.
18 comments:
So sad. RIP.
And stupid. Other drivers were saying there were too many cars for the track. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, and it was.
Sad.
Not a race fan by any stretch but this is truly sad.
Extremely sad and I feel for his wife and children. I bet there will be a lawsuit for negligence/wrongful death on this one. 33 years old, what a waste.
According to some reports, drivers had complained about the track racing too fast during practice runs. The track isn't designed for IndyCar, with its very low cars and super-high speeds.
To clarify the $5M prize, half would have gone to Wheldon and the other half to a fan as part of a campaign to promote IndyCar.
The crash is the worst I've ever seen. One driver described it as being in the middle of a scene from a Terminator movie, and he was right. Three cars went airborne, including Wheldon's. He simply didn't have time to stop or swerve.
So sad that a wife has lost her husband and two little boys won't get to know their father. :-(
i will never understand car racing. poor babies.
I feel for the family left behind. Stupid "sport".
If it's true that people were already complaining about the track during the practice rounds you can bet there will be a negligence lawsuit.
I thought they put greater safety restrictions on races after Dale E. died? Or is that different b/c it was NASCAR.
This just breaks my heart. I am an IndyCar girl through and through and have been to this track several times. It is fast, and narrow and not alot of room for mistakes.
It is always scary when you see a Indy or Forumula One crash, (more scary than Nascar, they have a pretty solid cage around the drivers) and even more horrific if you witness it live at the track (vs tv) There really are no words to express how hopeless and scared you feel.
The Vegas track has hosted vairous Indy/Fourmual One races since it opened in the 80's. The thing is, cars and enginering have advanced so much, and in this case, becoming faster than the track can safely allow.
The one quasi comfort is.. he did truly love what he was doing.
Not a race fan at all, but how awful. I imagine his family was there and saw it. Can't begin to imagine how traumatic it must have been for them, and everyone else who witnessed this.
You play a stupidly dangerous sport, don't be surprised when you die a stupid death.
Geez louise, everyone's acting like it's a huge tragedy. What's tragic is when someone dies just driving to work. What even more tragic is grown men/women behaving so idiotically as to do this in the first place. I'm just surprised more don't die.
I'm betting Figgy is the sort of person that drives a Honda Accord in the left lane at exactly the posted speed limit, and wonders why everyone else is honking at her. She probably also wonders why all those contestants in The Amazing Race are in such a rush all the time.
Anyhow, it's a terrible tragedy that happened yesterday, but you can't ask 34 race drivers to back off the throttle during a race, no matter the margin of error. If it didn't happen 16 laps in, it would've happened with three laps to go. They knew the speeds were going to be fast, and with such a smooth track like Las Vegas, there was no reason to lift anywhere.
The bitter irony of all this isn't just the fact that he left his wife and two sons behind, but that this was the last race they were going to be using the old Dallara chassis before switching to new bodywork which would've made crashes like that one much less likely... one that he spent a lot of time testing since he didn't have a ride for most of the year. Also, Wheldon was set to announce that he'd be back full-time with Andretti Autosport next season.
But that shouldn't worry Figgy, who'll barely look up from her needlepoint to see what Judge Mathis' ruling was on TV.
Sad,
This reminds me of Nodar Kumaritashvili's death on the luge track in the last Olympics - everyone knew it was excessively dangerous, but it's too hard to curb the competetive spirit. In this case, I think lawsuits are good, because they force people to make better decisions. It's one thing to face the known dangers of your sport, but in both cases, everyone knew they had gone too far, but no one was willing to say "stop."
@ El .. the track is actually average in terms of length. IRL/IndyCar has raced at or currently races at a few 1.5 miles tracks including Chicagoland, Michigan, Kansas, Kentucky, Texas and California [in Fontana]. So the length really isn't an unknown nor it is a factor in this in my opinion.
@Goggles Pisano .. I think I love you.
@JoElla .. LVMS opened in 1996, only hosted 5 IRL/IndyCar races including Sunday's tragedy, 2 Champ Car - now also IndyCar races and never hosted a Formula One race- ever. As for narrow, have to point out there too you are incorrect. It is actually quite wide .. to the point that prior to the crash they were running four wide.
I got into racing when my Dad left Playboy to move to Esmark in the late 1970 .. 1979 to be exact .. who owned among other things - like Butterball, Swift, Playtex and Danskin - STP sponsor of NASCAR's Richard and Kyle Petty and then named CART's Gordon Johncock and Mario Andretti. I was honored to be at Indy with my Dad in 1982 when Gordon Johncock won Indy by the smallest margin over Rick Mears. It was amazing and a great memory that really solidified my life of motor sports.
I have seen more than a few people die - J.D. McDuffie being the first and in person at Watckins Glen - and with few exceptions they have all been freak accidents when physics just caused horrific freak deaths. I really strongly feel this is what happened with Dan Wheldon.
The banking added to the track to make NASCAR racing better in 2006 made the track unsuitable for Indy cars because they could be maxed out on power and this resulted - as it does in NASCAR with restricter plates - in bunches of cars moving in tandem. One problem on one car results in massive accidents. The track was to blame for his .. not the cars and not necessarily the drivers.
Last, to Figgy - The tragedy here is someone like you is alive to post shit on a blog when a man who spent the last year of his life working to make his sport safer has died leaving family, friends and fans behind to grieve his loss. When someone dies, it might be good measure for you to say nothing if you can't say something nice. Otherwise, you come out looking like a c*nt.
solidified my life - s/b - love
And Watckins Glen - s/b Watkins
It is very late here .. 4 AM and I spell for shit when I am really tired.
Goggles, haha, what I object to is the deification of people who die doing a sport that is designed to court death and faux shock--shock I tell you--when a person does indeed die.
Fwiw, sigh, we live in the remote woods, I drive a Ford 250 pickup and my husband has to remind me that there's a state police station just down the road...tho admittedly, can't say as I ever take it over 70. ;-) I'm a double black diamond skiier and racer, but if I break a leg doing so, I wouldn't expect anyone to be surprised...it's part of the expected risk.
And I'm not nearly coordinated enough to work a needle.
What's really sad is that the races voiced concerns about racing this type of car, and so many of them, on this track, but the organizers weren't willing to back off. $$$. And the racers didn't refuse. Let the insurance olympics begin.
Actually, I do drive in the left lane at the posted speed limit. In a Sunfire, though. And I only do it to piss stressed people off.
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