Two-time Indianapolis 500 winner and 2005 IndyCar series champion Dan Wheldon lost his life yesterday following a horrific lap-11 crash at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Years ago I had lunch with George Plimpton, the late and ultimate first-person journalist who made a career out of participating in difficult and often dangerous activities and then writing about them. Plimpton’s career high point came, of course, with the book “Paper Lion,” in which he attempted, with little success, to quarterback for the Detroit Lions. He also tried, and wrote about, being a high-wire circus performer, a pro golfer, a pro tennis player, a National League baseball pitcher, a pro boxer, and a hockey player.
I asked Plimpton about the most exciting sport. “Auto racing,” he replied immediately. “Once you have done that, I can’t imagine man not being bored by anything else.”
The objective of not being bored was what sent 33-year-old IndyCar driver Dan Wheldon into the steel catch fence at Las Vegas Motor Speedway Sunday, and nothing else. Certainly there were contributing factors—some degree of incompetence among the swollen 34-driver field, a too-fast track, the artificial lure of a $5 million prize should the 2005 and 2011 Indianapolis 500 champion manage to win the race from the last row—but those were all secondary: Back home in England, Dan Wheldon got a taste of racing at an early age, and he wasn’t ready to let it go. Because he would be bored by anything else.
The crash that occurred Sunday was downright epic, virtually unparalleled by any that has occurred in many of our adult lives, similar only to tragically legendary disasters we’ve seen on grainy black-and-white documentary footage or still photos. Any of the 15 drivers involved could have replaced Wheldon in the obituary column, especially as his path from the near-bottom of the race track up into the catch fence seemed less likely under frame-by-frame scrutiny than the trajectory of the cars of Will Power or Townsend Bell. IndyCar cannot be criticized for calling the race after a sober five-lap tribute to Wheldon—not just because of his death, but because of the unprecedented magnitude of the crash.
Has there been a more wrenching, emotional moment in racing than watching champion Dario Franchitti put on a brave face for his friends, family, and crew, then bawl like a baby once he was strapped into his car for the final tribute laps?
Going forward, there are some critical questions that IndyCar must address.
• The premise of the Las Vegas race for most of the year: In an idea incubated and hatched by series leader Randy Bernard, $5 million was offered to any non-IndyCar driver who could win the series’ finale. The initial target was Travis Pastrana, the X Games star. Fortunately for Bernard, no driver took the challenge (and no team offered up a car) to participate on one of the fastest, most treacherous tracks on the IndyCar calendar, especially since the race would also decide the championship. This was perhaps the stupidest idea any major racing sanctioning body head has ever dreamed up. (Also in the running: Offering, as a Hail Mary effort to salvage television ratings, the $5M prize to Wheldon alone.) It should never be repeated.
• Bernard, in several interviews, said that if the Las Vegas race performed below expectations, he would resign. Will he? Should he?
• With IndyCar moving to an entirely new chassis and engine next year—a package for which Wheldon had been the lead test driver—should they go back to the drawing board and review the new car for any possible additional safety features, such as an enclosed cockpit? Audi’s Le Mans drivers complained about their new enclosed-cockpit cars at the 24 Hours of Le Mans this year, right up until the two lead Audis were destroyed in separate but equally devastating crashes that may well have killed the drivers had the cars’ cockpits been exposed.
• So far, aside from the Indy 500, the IndyCar series has confirmed just one date for the 2012 calendar: the season finale in Las Vegas. Do you suppose track owner Bruton Smith is reconsidering that? And should IndyCar even return to the too-fast, high-banked half-mile ovals like Vegas and Texas at all?
I interviewed Wheldon over lunch the week before he won the 2011 Indy 500. He admitted that he had invested well for his wife and two small children, and he didn’t need money, and this was before he added $2.5 million to his bank account with this Indy win. The lure of a $5 million prize—to be split between Wheldon and a fan—didn’t put him on the grid at Las Vegas, the love for racing did. And the overarching desire to not be bored.
RIP, Dan. Maybe we will learn from your death. And maybe we will not.
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