A couple of weeks ago, Las Vegas held an Indy car race and there was a tragedy- popular driver, Dan Wheldon died in an accident in a 15 car pile up. It was a tragic accident and I was there to witness the accident. Since then, there have been calls for the Indy cars not to race in Las Vegas again and I cannot disagree more.
The accident was a freak thing and in my opinion, a combination of many factors.
First, there was bad luck. Wheldon's car hit the catch fence at the wrong angle. If he had hit lower and on the Safer barrier, he probably would have walked away with few injuries. He also suffered a head injury, about the only area of the car that is not protected by the car. If he hit the wall at a different angle that allowed the car to protect the driver, again, he may have injured but not seriously.
Some things could have been done to avoid the crash. I still believe the heat of the day was a factor in the crash. The day of the race, it was in the 90's and on the track, it was over 100 degrees easily. The day before the race, the NASCAR trucks were here and they were sliding all over the place and had 12 caution flags, mostly for accidents. I am sure the heat made the track slippery for the Indy cars as well. Perhaps they should hold the race on a Saturday night.
They also had 34 cars in the race, which is one more car than in the Indy 500. You had a mix of experienced and inexperienced drivers in the race and that didn't help matters much. The drivers were not scared of the speeds as Danica Patrick said before the race because she that the speeds and accidents would be spectatuclar. If the drivers had any concerns, they obviously didn't make their concerns known before the race.
Mario Andretti says this about the race and accident:
Suffice it to say Mario Andretti never has pulled a punch when he thought there were shortcomings in safety measures.
So he of all experts was credible when he said on Tuesday that this time, Sunday, "The safety aspect worked tremendously, it worked very well, except for one guy. You look at the replays over and over, and there were hard impacts, cars flying all over the place, and Dan was the only real unlucky one, to be flying closer to the wall, and he got into the catch-fencing.
"If he would have got into the SAFER barrier [just below the fence], he would have been brushing himself off and have a cup of coffee later. Look at how hard some of those [other] guys hit, and the worst thing you had was like a broken finger."
Andretti does have a procedural criticism. INDYCAR rules strictly dictate uniform technology in the cars, for parity."All along I was somewhat concerned about the fact that the cars are so equally matched by a spec series, and so when they're running on these ovals they can't get away from one another.
"They're inches apart for a couple of hours at tremendous speeds, and the slightest miscalculation can spell disaster.
"Vegas is a beautiful facility, it's perfect in many ways. That makes it too easy for these cars, which have great potential cornering speed, to be three abreast or even four abreast through the corners. As you know, the slightest miscue is what caused it all, and it becomes a chain reaction because they're all together."
INDYCAR has drawn wide criticism for starting 34 cars Sunday, more cars on a 1.5-mile track than the 33 in the Indy 500 at 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
"Obviously, the more cars, the more of a chance for something like this to happen," Andretti said. "At the same time, you want a spectacle. What makes NASCAR a spectacle on the ovals? You've got 43 cars. Maybe it would be nice for us to have that many cars, but then you've got three times the danger aspect.
"Here, if you'd had 26 cars [a more common field for IndyCar], would that have made a difference? I don't know ... the other part is, to fill a field like that [34], you don't have all experienced drivers. But we've all been inexperienced. How do you gain experience? You gotta be doing it the first time sometime."
No matter the science applied to safety, "I don't think we'll ever be 100 percent safe. Like you're not 100 percent safe when you drive to work. Or, unfortunately, when you're flying.
"But the sport has come a long way."
So this really was a matter of bad luck more than anything left undone by the organization?
"Yeah. I feel very strongly about that. Because if you look at this thing realistically, you examine exactly what happened, that [luck] is what it is. He was dealt a bad card on that round. But for a couple of inches he probably would have been all right."
Open-cockpit cars invite what biomechanical engineers call injuries of intrusion -- that is, foreign objects can get into the car with the driver. Wheldon likely would have survived with some sort of roof over his head.
But to do that, "They might as well have a stock car," Andretti said. "This is the purest form of the sport. This is the way it was born, and it's been running like this for over 100 years. But I think, quite honestly, the cockpit protection is adequate."I think what really caused this was the cars being launched. The cars becoming airborne. And if you look at the design of the 2012 car, that very aspect was dealt with."a href="http://espn.go.com/racing/indycar/story/_/id/7122629/mario-andretti-grieving-yet-again">http://espn.go.com/racing/indycar/story/_/id/7122629/mario-andretti-grieving-yet-again
When Dale Earnhardt died at Daytona, you had calls about the safety of NASCAR cars and Daytona and some people thought they shouldn't race there again. Instead of listening to the crybabies, NASCAR made things safer.
There have been numerous deaths at the Indianapolis Speedway where the Indy 500 is held, including spectator deaths. I am sure after each death, there have have calls for no more racing at Indy, but they still do race there at speeds close to that at Las Vegas. They didn't cave into the crybabies but instead made the race safer and still exciting.
Indy cars also race at ovals at high speeds and very close to each other. It makes for exciting races
So, there has been a death at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway and there are people clamoring to cancel the race. Most of those people don't follow Indy car racing or do not have knowledge about racing and that includes the racing writers from the Las Vegas Sun and LVRJ.
The Indy car racing series and the LVMS will come up with a way to make the track and cars safer. In fact, next year, the Indy cars will be safer by placing wheel covers over the rear wheels to help prevent the launching of the cars in to the air.
The bottom line is that the Indy series needs Las Vegas and Vegas needs the Indy cars. If Dan Wheldon had not had the bad luck he had a couple of weeks ago, we wouldn't be having this conversation. We would have talking about a great race with spectacular speeds and accidents, as Danica Patrick said before the race.
So, please, Indy cars, come back to Las Vegas. Make your changes and provide us with the exciting Indy car racing you are give to us during the summer.
