RIP Dan Wheldon
 

RIP. Dan Wheldon died a little while ago from injuries resulting from a 15 car crash on lap 13 of the Indy Car race at Las Vegas.

What a sad day. I still can't believe it.

most horrible crash i have seen in a VERY long time. tragic

very sad

It is very tragic. :( I got to see him race in Baltimore.

Reminded me of the Greg Moore accident... both are very tragic.

Pretty horrific. I was watching the race. WOW!

Very sad, very sad.

RIP Dan. He was a great driver and an even greater person. My condolences to his family and friends... the racing community lost a great person today. :(

Very sad :( A reminder that despite significant progress, there is still a lot to be done in terms of safety of the drivers.

Unfortunately the IRL has been quite negligent when it comes to driver safety this year as far as their officiating is concerned (think back to New Hampshire where they restarted the race in the rain.) Many of the drivers warned of the dangers of the race following the first test, but they went ahead with it anyways. You just can't run these cars in NASCAR restrictor-plate style packs on smaller, tighter tracks at 220+ mph. Not when you've got so many inexperienced oval drivers and fully exposed wheels... it's a recipe for disaster.

That said, there IS a new car coming next year for the IRL with much more emphasis on driver safety. Looks a little funky, but after what happened today I couldn't care less what it looks like as it should really help to keep the drivers safer...

What's ironic is that Dan Wheldon was the guy doing almost all of the testing for the new car. :/

Here's Dan at Mid-Ohio earlier this year with the new road course chassis:

http://www.raceweekillustrated.com/w...heldon-8-9.jpg

And here's the new oval chassis which should really help with preventing that front-to-rear wheel contact that sends the current cars flying:

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog....dallara-15.jpg

Again, I just can't stress enough how much of a genuine good guy Dan was. He will be sorely missed!

I feel sick with sadness.

Here's one of the best replay clips I've found. View discretion advised, obviously.

It's unbelievable. I barely slept last night. Yes, Dan was a great driver- but he was one hell of a person.

I talked to Dan just a couple weeks ago at the kart track, and I've known him for about 5 years from karting (if he wasn't in an IndyCar, or ALMS, he was in a kart). I could tell story after story about watching him talk to the kids at the kart track- he always took the time to talk to the kids, take photos - whatever it took to make their day.


A pair of his signed racing shoes sits on my mantle - it's tough to walk by them.

Last Sunday, I was talking to Scott Goodyear and we were talking about Vegas. He told me it was a recipe for a crashfest - too many cars on a track where they can go 3 wide. He was right...

I'm not a fan of IRL so i really don't watch it much. But seeing the clips of the accident, I'm amazed at how badly those cars disintegrate upon impact. You don't see that in F1. Maybe the greater speeds play a role, but F1 cars are built around a superstrong carbon fibre tub and encloses and protects the driver in an accident. Do they have the same in IRL?

It's the same in the IRL. The difference in F1 is that the impacts are almost always significantly slower and they tend to hit soft barriers and 99% of the time any hard impacts are almost always single-car incidents. F1 just doesn't have the same wheel-to-wheel style competition as IRL or NASCAR, so you don't have as many significant incidents.

Another consideration is that a number of these cars hit the catch fencing, which is going to rip a car apart regardless of its construction. Especially at 200+ mph. If an F1 car or even a stock car would hit the fencing at that speed it would be a similar result.

Take a look at Robert Kubica's crash in Montreal back in 2007. The car hit an exposed wall and disintigrated, much like the indy cars. The only difference being that he just hit a wall and not the fence, which would have ripped his car to shreds.

:iagree: The chain link fencing is the big difference here.

las vegas is not a restrictor plate track, they can go almost full throttle the whole time because they have the banking.

the indycar is also an older chassis, i think from 2003 or 2004 off the top of my head

exposed wheel at 220 is not fun

with all that said, anyone know what part of the impact actually killed him? will power flew in the air too and i believe he is okay

From what I understand, it was from when his car impacted the wall/fence. But I could be wrong.

Head injury. Word is something either penetrated the helmet or just hit hard enough to kill him. He hit the fence head first.

FWIW, I was comparing the style of racing there to the restrictor plate racing at Daytona and Talladega in NASCAR. But at least they are on longer/wider tracks and have fenders so they can make casual contact without all hell breaking loose.

That sucks. Did he die on impact or at the hospital? The details are a little murky, I guess that's what happens when you are in a third tier sport :(

I hope they stop going to a lot of these banked ovals, let them go back on the road courses and design safer cars

God speed, Dan. We forget how risky racing really is because it is much safer than it used to be.

From what I've heard he was still alive when they got him to the medical center but he was 100% unresponsive and dying. I just hope it was painless for him.

They have the safer car design coming next year (see my earlier post on the first page). I think the oval racing is good, they just need to get the cars so they aren't running in those huge packs at those speeds. There are ways to change the cars to do that.

There are plenty of great ovals out there for them to race on, that the series has been leaving recently... New Hampshire, Phoenix, Milwaukee, Iowa... all really challenging ovals for those cars. Not just foot to the floor and pray like Las Vegas.

so sad. :(

And in reality, the current cars are very safe already. Look at the wrecks we've seen over the last 10 years with the current car and how few serious injuries there have been. As Scott said on the broadcast: " I'd rather hit a wall at 225 mph in an IndyCar than 65 mph in a passenger car."

The new rear tire protectors will be interesting. A few years ago, most of karting went to full width bumpers. It's increased the bumping and on track contact tremendously. Granted, we're talking about 75 mph vs. 225 mph, but covering the rear wheel takes a lot of the risk out of the guy behind getting into you-there's no penalty for him bumping you vs. if he was hitting an open tire. Hopefully they thought about this in the design and made them so they'll (a) keep someone off your rear wheel, yet (b) make them delicate enough so as not to invite contact.

Definitely. This was just one of those deals where Dan hit the wall/fence at just the right angle that nothing would have saved him.

If we roll back safety advancements in racing 15 years or so we probably would have lost a handful of drivers this weekend. Not only at Vegas in the Indy Car race, but Jimmie Johnson's impact at Charlotte could very well have been fatal pre-HANS device.

We just take all of the safety advancements for granted until something like this happens.

I started watching Indycars back in 1990 when it was still the PPG Indycar world series. The old Turbo V8's. They were so fast then and I never recall an accident like this even at speeds in the 230's and 240's. It seemed like back then more got hurt in NASCAR than in Indycars. There also weren't nearly as many drivers. Costs went up for the teams and the IRL was born, speeds went back up, and then they were limited again. I don't know what happened at this track, and I don't recall pole speed at indy this year, but I don't think even there it was 225.

I remember thinking that day the speed is just unacceptable for a track of that size.
If anyone recalls... years ago when the Indycars were still Turbo V8's they had to cancel a race at Texas because they were running laps of 236 or 238 mph AVERAGE! 22 second laps and 18 of those 22 seconds they were under G load ... 5 G's at the highest point. Drivers were complaining of "grey outs" and obviously it was deemed unsafe.

The catchfence has caused more injuries... I don't know what really can be done about them, but the cars just STOP and they just can't do that... they have to be able to hit things and come apart, not hit a fence that tangles the car up.. it's to much for the body to take.

Dan died of "blunt head trauma", but whether his helmet hit the wall or something came through the helment obviously no one knows.

This is one of many times that Indycar has f***ed things up and put lives at stake and this time it claimed one.

I read the article that Bernard? I belive that is his name, was put in charge to try to get more tv ratings for indycars. Of course for people who love this kind of racing we don't want to see it get lost, but i'd rather see these guys go to another type of racing and be alive and safer than making it more dangerous trying to excite fans.

I just don't know what to say about this death however... it doesn't matter I suppose because it's all over now. I was hoping and praying when I saw it that he would be ok... sadly he was not. I hope that his wife and children can get through this as easily as could be expected. I won't say RIP because there is life on the other side, so Dan, your family will see you there.

If anyone didn't know there is a website set up for donations to his wife and children.

It wasn't the speed, the car, the drivers, the track that killed Dan- it was just bad luck. Had anything happened just a little bit differently - a second later even - or if he had rolled 1/4 less of a roll, he would have walked away like all the others. The only thing that might have saved him is if the catch fence was suspended away from the poles - which I think you'll see happen at some tracks. If you look at the few deaths that have occurred in IndyCar in the last decade, all but one has involved a head injury (Renna) - but all have been different - Whelden hit the post, Moore hit the wall, Dana hit another car (but nothing with his head), Krosnoff hit a light pole outside the fence. A closed canopy would not have withstood the impacts by Wheldon or Moore - maybe Knosnoff since it was a glancing blow - and wouldn't have mattered in Dana's crash.

There is no way to protect against every eventuality. We're so used to seeing a car hit the wall at 225 and the driver jump out unhurt that when something like this happens, everyone goes looking for answers. Crashing is a part of racing - you're on the limit- and sometimes you go over. It's part of the thrill for drivers - as well as fans. Sometimes the outcome just sucks. Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes you're unlucky.

Yesterday morning, we went to the Dan Wheldon Memorial Cup kart race. It was a tough day not to have him there. The race was won by current Indy Lights champion Josef Newgarden (who was doing the radio broadcast during the wreck) and Mark Dismore, Sr. - which is who Dan stayed with when he first came to the US. Kind of fitting that those two won.

Go-kart drivers race in memory of Wheldon - 13 WTHR


After that we went to the memorial in Indy. It was very nice.

I was out there as well and thought it was a nice tribute to a great driver. I was hoping that all of Conseco would be filled, but it was still a great turnout and shows the impact he had on so many lives. It's going to be hard to be out at the races next year.

Here's a pic I snagged of him a few years ago...

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6214/...df6423db_z.jpg

Going to miss him.

Nice pic...

Here's one of my favorites. The radiator hose had come off in qualifying and Dan wasn't watching his temp. Got it to about 350* before he stuck it (normal is 140*). Dismore Jr. is explaining to him how bad he f'd the engine. The gaskets were just goo-it was hilarious.
For the race the next day I engraved a little sign we stuck on his kart that said 'Dan-check your temp!'

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/a...09242_tn-1.jpg

Very cool that you guys knew Dan personally. :tup:

Y'know how when someone passes you always hear what a great person they were? And they sound so wonderful you almost can't believe it? Dan really was that way.

Like at lunch at the track. He'd go get his lunch at the counter (just like everyone else) and then he'd go find the biggest group of kids he could to sit and have lunch with. He'd talk to them, ask them how their race that day went, etc. I think it made his day to know that he made theirs. I know hundreds of kids over the years went back to school on Monday and got to tell their friends that they had lunch with the Indy 500 winner.

I have been thinking about all of this since it happened. I am just so sorry that they didn't have the safer chassis that Dan had been testing when this happened. The only thing I can hope is that his efforts with the new car testing before his death will save a lot of lives.

that and don't forget this... go to 2:38 ... could have easily been 2 drivers VERY seriously hurt or worse.

Nascar Sprint Cup 2011 at Watkins Glen, GWC & Big crash - YouTube

Yep, that was a wild wreck! There have been a number of impacts over the last 5-6 years or so in NASCAR that could have been fatal or resulted in serious injury had it not been for safety innovations.

The SAFER barriers are incredible. I've read that they can absorb anywhere from 30-50% of the impact vs. hitting the old bare concrete walls.

If you're interested in safety, there's a good book called 'Rapid Response' by Steve Olvey (former director of the CART safety team).

And the SAFER barrier is interesting. It was developed at IMS, and Tony George could have made a fortune by licensing it or selling the components. But, he paid for all of the development and testing and then let anyone who wanted to to copy and use it without any payment or royalties.

a lot to be said for that... even if the guy is rich already since a lot of the rich are the most greedy it seems.

Yeah, a shame that not all of the barriers at WG are SAFER... they really need to take a look at that track. I've never seen such an impact I don't really. Maybe Jimmy Johnson's crash there when he was in the Nationwide series.... just a dead stop.

I recall watching a show years and years ago about the black box Indy Cars use... this was of course during the time that Emerson Fitapaldi, Mears, Unser Jr., etc were all still racing. Emerson got together with someone and the data car back at 100+ G's on impact. Scientists never thought a man could live much past 50. I swear it just seems that those cars then were safer than they are now. They aren't faster that they were before either, so that's not it. I guess it's all of these 1.5 mile ovals where guys are out of control much more than before.

The good thing is those walls were not concrete, so if you watch closely you can see the guardrails give and absorb energy during the impact.

But I do think they are going to make some changes to the track there and probably move the walls out away from the track. They have some really odd angles there.

RIP Dan