RIP Dan Wheldon

[Zaggeron]

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.

[SPOHN]

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

[MC]

[edub370]

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

[Red__Zed]

very sad

[shadoquad]

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

[GaleForce]

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

[6MT]

Pretty horrific. I was watching the race. WOW!

Very sad, very sad.

[m4a1mustang]

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.

[Pharmacist]

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

[m4a1mustang]

Originally Posted by Pharmacist

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:



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:



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

[semtex]

I feel sick with sadness.

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

[scottIN]

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...

[Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by m4a1mustang

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:



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:



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

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?

[m4a1mustang]

Originally Posted by Pharmacist

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.