Racer Killed in Accident
- Thread starter Basedow
- Start date
Ace Bandage
The one and only.
Could not agree more. When you have two of the most respected drivers in your series in TK and Dario telling people that it isn't a good idea to put 34 cars on a track at 220 mph and that it's a recipe for disaster, you'd think somebody might heed that. But no. They need ratings and they need to put asses in the seats to make money. So safety be damned.
It just pisses me off that the people who make these fucking decisions to race at these high banked ovals aren't the ones who are going to be putting their lives on the line. You can't go to a 1.5 mile track like Las Vegas, put that many cars on the track, and not expect something to happen. One accident is going to lead to a huge one because there just isn't room to maneuver. And why drivers were darting and racing hard twelve laps into the race is completely inexplicable. Nobody ever wins the race in the first twenty laps, but you can damn sure lose it.
Was it worth it? Was the Vegas race worth the publicity? Was it worth the ratings? If you're compromising driver safety for the promotion of the event, then you seriously have your fucking priorities out of line. This entire pileup was very preventable. That's what makes his death all the more tragic. It didn't have to be this way.
alexpnz
Lord Dipstick
Wow!
Just heard about this now....makes you appreciate the advances NASCAR has made in driver safety!
Lot of drivers had previously complained about the closing rates and the speed of this particular track.
RIP DW :hatsoff:
http://sports.yahoo.com/sportsminute
Just heard about this now....makes you appreciate the advances NASCAR has made in driver safety!
Lot of drivers had previously complained about the closing rates and the speed of this particular track.
RIP DW :hatsoff:
http://sports.yahoo.com/sportsminute
Rip
GodsEmbryo
Closed Account
RIP Dan.
My thoughts go to his family.
My thoughts go to his family.
Racers race. The love of the speed the thrill of the competition. The danger is always there but you must race it is the same as breathing. R.I.P. Dan Weldon my very best to your family and friends. We all meet our end I just hope I am doing something I love on that day. You will be missed.
Jagger69
Three lullabies in an ancient tongue
No. It's Wheldon's car #77 going airborne before turning sideways toward the right and exposing the cockpit before smashing into the fence. These photos and videos are tough to view. :crying: The more I see and hear about this tragedy, the more upsetting it becomes. So sad for his family....his widow and children.
The IRL needs to make some changes before another disaster like this occurs. Don't let Wheldon's death be in vain.
Ace Bandage
The one and only.
The first photo is Wheldon's car shooting over the top of E.J. Viso's car. The second photo is Will Power up against the wall with Wheldon's car on fire in front of it.
If you watch the video, J.R. Hildebrand is the first car to go airborne. Wheldon is the second one, and you can see his car turn in the air and slam into the catch fence. Will Power is the last one. His car goes into the air near the apron and flies all the way to the wall.
In the new car being used next year, the back tires are covered rather than exposed like they are now. This change will prevent the cars from driving over the back tires and shooting into the air. It's a small change, but it probably would have saved Dan's life yesterday.
Petra
Cult Mother and Simpering Cunt
If an F1 car flips and hits a safety barrier at that speed like the indy car did, we'd have a dead racer as well. He got over the barrier and that fence took the top of his helmet off.
Open car racing is tons more dangerous than the closed car because a driver's head is exposed. Even helmets can't protect in certain instances...heck, look back a few races ago when Michael Shumacker's wheel came off and almost came from behind him to brain him. Or look at the near death experience Massa had a few years ago.
So I wouldn't really say one class of racing is safer than the other. You get the right circumstances at the right time and someone dies...Massa almost was the person that had died since Senna.
It will be looked into, changes will be made, safety will be improved. The new car for next year has a great deal of new innovations. Dan Weldon was one of the leading contributors to the new cars safety improvements. Deaths in auto racing are never in vain.
Rey C.
Racing is life... anything else is just waiting.
Safety should be the main focus of any racing series. And although the IRL will be introducing a new chassis design for 2012, the chassis design that was on the track Sunday has been around for almost ten years. It began life as the IR-03 (for the 2003 season) and became the IR-05 (in 2005) only because of an aero update - the chassis was the same. I'm not saying this to take a cheap shot at the IRL. But I know of no professional racing series which even allows chassis that old to be raced. Understand that there are chassis that have been built since 2003, but the design has been unchanged. And some of the chassis on track (mainly those used by the smaller teams with little money) are down right ancient. From what I understand, Simona de Silvestro has been racing a chassis that's a few years old, and has been patched together so many times that it's at least 100 pounds over its original weight. The chassis is called "Pork Chop" (because it's a pig). A racing chassis should not be patched together to the point that it severely affects the weight or balance. And it should not be so old that it has excessive flex - that's DANGEROUS! Aluminum fatigues and the fibers in carbon fiber eventually break down/fray.
I haven't read that anything related to chassis integrity influenced Wheldon's fatal crash. As Petra said, he went helmet first into the fence, from what I've read. But the fact that the IRL has been dicking around with introducing a new chassis for at least three years did (IMO) make a difference. While other professional racing series will update at least every couple of years, they went ten years. In the CART days, we typically saw new cars/designs every year, much like in Formula One. But in the IRL, with the influx of less experienced drivers, less talented ride buyers, an old chassis design and pack racing on 1.5 mile cookie cutter tracks designed for NASCAR, you have a recipe for disaster. And if not for the foot dragging of the IRL, the 2012 car should have been the 2011 car and Wheldon would likely be very much alive right now. At the very least, his car would not have become airborne in the fashion that it did, since there couldn't have been wheel-to-wheel contact with the new design.
And for the sake of safety (nothing to do with this incident), I would fire the guy who re-started an oval race this year in the RAIN! Brian Barnhart is known throughout North American racing circles as a joke. He should have never been given the job that he has (by Tony George). But give him enough time and he'll be linked to some future accident (hopefully not fatal)... because he is totally incompetent.
I haven't read that anything related to chassis integrity influenced Wheldon's fatal crash. As Petra said, he went helmet first into the fence, from what I've read. But the fact that the IRL has been dicking around with introducing a new chassis for at least three years did (IMO) make a difference. While other professional racing series will update at least every couple of years, they went ten years. In the CART days, we typically saw new cars/designs every year, much like in Formula One. But in the IRL, with the influx of less experienced drivers, less talented ride buyers, an old chassis design and pack racing on 1.5 mile cookie cutter tracks designed for NASCAR, you have a recipe for disaster. And if not for the foot dragging of the IRL, the 2012 car should have been the 2011 car and Wheldon would likely be very much alive right now. At the very least, his car would not have become airborne in the fashion that it did, since there couldn't have been wheel-to-wheel contact with the new design.
And for the sake of safety (nothing to do with this incident), I would fire the guy who re-started an oval race this year in the RAIN! Brian Barnhart is known throughout North American racing circles as a joke. He should have never been given the job that he has (by Tony George). But give him enough time and he'll be linked to some future accident (hopefully not fatal)... because he is totally incompetent.
Facetious
Moderated
I'd rather watch an ARCA stock car race or an old rerun of General Hospital before I'd bother to watch a circuit created by tony gorge, the prick that he is for shutting out some of the most prominent racers, teams and owners in the history of racing.
:ak47:
Facetious
Moderated
Rey C.
Racing is life... anything else is just waiting.
Because of what that coke-head and his ugly, mutant family did to this sport, what was once a form of motorsport that was held in high regard in the U.S. and throughout the world, is now a joke. I don't blame the ancient Dallara chassis (used because they could no longer afford to buy new cars every year, like they used to when CART was around) as much as I blame the lack of truly world class drivers who know how to race in close proximity to other cars at high speeds. The nine year old IR-03/05 chassis did its job as well as any other chassis would have AFTER the crash (IMO).
See, there was a time when the "names" in CART IndyCar were Emerson Fittipaldi, Rick Mears, Mario Andretti, Al and Bobby Unser, Bobby Rahal, Danny Sullivan, Nigel Mansell, A.J. Foyt, et al. These were guys who were either competent F1 drivers or could have been. They were the shit! They were world class! Now the only recognizable name in the IRL IndyCar series is a flat-chested bikini model who has only won a single pro race in her entire life! Even calls herself "The Brand".
I don't want to spoil this thread about Dan Wheldon (who actually was a competent driver) and make it ugly. But those of us who have followed this sport, and once loved it, well before it became a sad playground for talent challenged ride buyers (seems that you've been around for awhile too, Face) remember the days when not everybody who tried to get a license to race could get one. CART yanked Shiggy Hattori's license because an aged Mario Andretti was faster in a two-seat demo car than Shiggy "The Human Wrecking Ball" was in an actual race car! Ya know where he went the next season? To the IRL! Shiggy's now gone but the IRL will still let any mope with a big enough check race. And when you allow people who are unsafe at any speed onto a NASCAR banked oval with 30+ cars going 220, it doesn't take a frickin' genius to predict disaster! It royally pisses me off because it didn't need to happen... it shouldn't have happened! The IRL put Wheldon at the back of the pack and had him race through a gauntlet of crash-prone morons, many of whom wouldn't be allowed to race if CART was still around. So here's something that I haven't said in quite a few years: FTG = Fuck Tony George!
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