The 'Big One' at Las Vegas and Dan Wheldon's crash (2011)

NB: Wrote this in late 2011 after watching Dan Wheldon's fatal crash in the last race of the IndyCar season at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.



The finale of the 2011 Indycar series should have been a exciting event. A 34 car shootout at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with a championship title to decide and a prize jackpot of $5 million on offer to the winner of the Indy 500, Dan Wheldon, if he could win this race too. After ten laps it was all over. Fifteen cars had crashed out in a horrifying shunt and Wheldon was dead; killed instantly when his car flew into the catchfence and his head hit one of the fence posts. With so many cars destroyed, the race track damaged and one of the series most successful recent drivers gone for ever, the race was abandoned. The year was over in the most tragic of circumstances. What had gone so wrong for Indycar, and Dan Wheldon?

Most racing drivers are aware that one tiny error could have potentially disastrous consequences, but Dan Wheldon made no mistake, he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Running 24th on lap ten when chaos erupted in front of him; at 220 mph there was no time to react before running over the back of the car in front. The television replay showed that almost exactly the same thing had also happened to Will Power, JR Hildebrand and Pippa Mann. Power's on board camera showed how the Aussie ran into the back of another car, was launched and flew almost the entire width of the track before landing, unlike the terribly unlucky Wheldon, on his wheels. Altogether fifteen cars were involved in the calamity. This was 'The Big One' - a term familiar from NASCAR races at Talladega and Daytona, where cars run around in large packs and multiple pileups are frequently caused by minor touches between cars. If such a thing is frightening enough to watch with big stock cars, where the drivers are cocooned by sheet metal and roll cages, it was terrifying with open wheel cars. It was also a long time in coming.

For the past decade Indycar oval track events have seen many similar races to the Vegas race; large packs of cars circulating within inches of each other at over 200 mph - an accident waiting to happen. The problem is a simple one; compared to the very heavy and relatively low-grip cars used in NASCAR, Indycars, with lower weight and large wings, can easily drive around most large oval tracks in the US flat out. Compounding the problem is the effect of the 'draft' - the aerodynamic effect of the leading cars parting the air and pulling the trailing cars along in their wake - that prevents faster cars from pulling away from slower cars, and the cars in the series all being identical. The margin of difference between the top teams and the backmarkers is very slight and much smaller than on road and street courses. Gaps do eventually open up in the packs due to pitstops and the changes in car handling during the races, but at Las Vegas the race had not yet reached the window for the first pit stops. Had it done so then then the large pack of cars could perhaps have been fragmented and the chances of such a devastating multi-car car crash could have been reduced. The Las Vegas race was 'the perfect storm' in every sense, but it wasn't just a random stroke of bad luck, it was a crash that had it's seeds sown in the turbulent political history of American open-wheel racing.

The Las Vegas race was the final race for a Dallara chassis introduced at the beginning of 2003, when Indy car racing was still a house divided between the Indy Racing League and the Champ Car series, formerly the CART Indycar series. CART had been the established Indy Car series throughtout the 1980s and early 90's, with a schedule divided between road, street and oval tracks and many non-US drivers. The IRL had been created in 1996 by Indianapolis Motor Speedway boss Tony George, as an all-oval track series. The divide wasn't just a political one, but a technical one too; IRL had used old CART cars for it's first year in 1996 and then introduced it's own car formula in the second year of the series in 1997. IRL's new cars differed from the CART machiery in many ways but the most important was having normally aspirated engines with less horsepower than CART's turbo units. They were also built by different manufacturers; IRL did not solict designs from the-then established CART Indy car constructors Lola and Reynard but comissioned cars from Italian company Dallara and a small English outfit called G-Force. Therefore for all their outward similarity, from 1997 onwards both series had completely incompatible formulas and separate chassis suppliers.

Right from it's debut in 1997 the IRL's car formula attracted derision from fans and the CART competitors. It looked like an overgrown Formula 3000 car, with a very long nose, a large ungainly gearbox protruding from it's tail, large wings and precious little in the way of aerodynamic detailling. Compared to the sleek CART cars they looked painfully unsophisticated and, more importantly, they certainly did not stir the soul or satisfy the eye. Indy cars are often, with some good reason, portrayed as Formula One cars heavier and cruder cousins, but historically they were always exciting and good looking cars. Certainly they have often had more horsepower than Formula One. In the early 1970s, thanks to unlimited turbo boost pressures, some were pushing 1000hp when the Cosworth DFVs in F1 were generating around 400hp. In the late 1990s CART too was pushing the magic 1000 mark in qualifying sessions, when F1 cars put out 800hp. Drivers who had driven in both F1 and CART had plenty of admiring words for the CART machinery.

The IRL cars were not 'dumbed down' entirely without reason. The raison d'etre behind Tony George's formation of the series in 1996 was to be much more affordable for American teams and drivers priced out of CART in the mid-1990s. The large normally aspirated engines were an attempt to woo American car manufacturers (IRL stalwart John Menard had run stock-based Buick V6 engines in CART before the IRL's creation). The relative lack of horsepower was dictated by the series all-oval mandate. In order to have a respectable roster of oval track races George's series had to race at high-banked tracks designed for the big, heavy 'Taxi Cabs' of NASCAR. With CART levels of horsepower these tracks would have been off-limits to the IRL, indeed when CART did try to race at the high-banked Texas Motor Speedway in 2001 the cars ran so fast and generated such high vertical and lateral g-forces that the drivers complained of dizziness, vertigo, and coming close to blacking out. The race was cancelled for medical reasons with much embarrassment for CART. The lower power, high downforce setup on IRL cars also helped put on entertaining shows on the shorter lower speed 'bullrings' as drivers could run multiple lines in corners. With escalating power outputs CART had removed downforce on short ovals to keep speed under control and ended up with some very processional single file racing.

Still the one place where the IRL cars were a vast step backwards was at the big one; the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. When Juan Montoya won the Indy 500 in 2000 while competing full time in CART he had to do so in the IRL's car rather than his regular CART machine - when asked for a comparison between the two he was less than complimentary about the IRL car, and the level of skill required to drive it. Where once Indianapolis cars had flown down the straightaways, pushed by outrageous power outputs and then been slowed and wrestled round the Indy's four turns on a knife edge now they ran at pretty much a steady speed all the way around. The high downforce increased speed in the corners but the lack of power stunted speed on the straight. As a result the racing at the Indy 500 increasingly became less about bravery and skill and more about timing, maintaining momentum and not lifting off the gas. More like a NASCAR race at Daytona than what the Indy 500 had tradionally been about.

CART was undoubtedly expensive and increasingly unsuitable for ovals but where Tony George and co. should have been looking was not at CART but NASCAR. At the start of the 1990s NASCAR was still largely a Southern state phenomenon, and the only car manufacturers who raced in it were the ones selling passenger cars to the heartland; Ford, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick. For non-US manufacturers, NASCAR was a mystery, if they raced in America it was in CART or IMSA sportscars. Mercedes, Porsche, Honda, and Toyota all supplied engines to CART during the 1990s. When the IRL went for a relatively crude normally aspirated engine they did attract short term interest from General Motors. But GM bailed out of the series to concentrate solely on NASCAR as soon as Honda and Toyota defected over from the sinking CART series in 2002 and started to win everything. A few years later Toyota did something that would have been unthinkable in the 1990s - they left open wheel racing to run in NASCAR. IRL was left with Honda as sole engine supplier, and a tenuous one at that without their arch rivals Toyota to beat. By this time Mercedes was long gone from CART, which was being propped up with Ford-badged Cosworth engines.

With hindsight perhaps the IRL's mistake was to not be bold enough with the car formula. Creating an all-new formula excluded and antagonised many of the traditional Indy car teams who raced in CART. Many opted to skip the Indy 500 and other IRL events for many years rather than buy IRL cars. IRL cars may have been cheaper than CART, but they were still out of reach of most of the young American drivers that had once been hoped would drive them. Neither were they American built cars. American interest did briefly appear with a car built by Riley and Scott but it was a project with a very brief life. Had IRL adopted a more radical and adaptable formula maybe they could have attracted interest from further afield. As it was when CART foundered and IRL was invaded by CART's big teams - Penske, Ganassi, Andretti Green - IRL effectively became CART mark 2.

So why were cars from 2003 still being used in the Las Vegas finale in 2011? IRL merged with the former CART series (then known as ChampCar) in 2008, but the merger was more like an incorporation of some of Champ car's prized assets into the IRL. So in came the Long Beach event, top-tier driving talent like Justin Wilson, Graham Rahal, and Will Power and a few good sponsors. But the cars stayed as they always had. Former Champ car teams had to mothball the nearly new Panoz DP01 chassis - introduced as a new chassis in Champ car in 2007 - and buy IRL Dallara Hondas. Although by this time the 'IRL' name and Tony George would soon be history. George was ousted by his sisters from his position as chief of IRL and Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The new boss installed by the Hulman-George family, Randy Bernard, realised that 'IndyCar' was a much more marketable moniker than 'IRL'. So, fifteen years after 'The Split', IRL was gone, CART was gone and 'IndyCar' was a single series again, albeit saddled with the old IRL cars.

A new Indycar chassis to replace the old car was being tested in late 2011, coincidentally by one of the free-agent drivers in 2011; Dan Wheldon. It was the product of recession hit times. A Dallara-built 'tub' - the driver's cockpit, fuel cell and undertray, with the potential for bodywork built by anybody who cared to do so, although the first year would be only Dallara's own bodywork. The engine rules reverted back to old CART rules; turbocharged V6 engines. With far more emphasis being placed on fuel economy in the automotive industry than in the late 1990s turbos were considered to have more relevance to car manufacturers than naturally aspirated V8s. But the really big issue with regards to the new car was safety.

Prior to Wheldon's fatal crash there had been two fatalities in IRL-spec cars. Paul Dana was killed in 2006 in a collision with the stationary car of Ed Carpenter. This was a crash that could've occurred at any time in the history of high speed oval racing. For an unknown reason the inexperienced Dana did not respond to a caution flag and plowed into the side of Carpenter's car at high speed. In 2003 Tony Renna was killed in a crash at Indianapolis in a testing session. This was a much more troubling crash; Renna apparently spun in turn three, hit the grass on the apron and somehow his car had lifted off the ground and flown into the catchfence with devastating consequences. In response the series added a longitudinal wicker down the length of the nose to reduce the chances that a spinning car could take off on it's own. This crash came weeks after Kenny Brack had been badly hurt at Texas in a collision with Tomas Scheckter that sent his car into the catchfencing where it had been shredded to pieces apart from the driver's cockpit. In 2005 Ryan Briscoe also escaped with his life from a similar crash at Chicagoland speedway; dramatic photos of his car exploding in a fireball appeared all over the next day's newspapers. In all cases the car performed as well as could have been expected. Since the mid-1990s the cockpits and pedal boxes had been strengthened enormously, and the revolutionary head and neck support (HANS) attached on the back on the driver's helmet and shoulders vastly reduced the chances of neck and head injuries in sudden impacts.

But these safer cars were still being involved in some terrifying crashes. Dario Franchitti went flying down the back stretch at Michigan in 2007, fortunately without hitting anything. Mike Conway collided with a slowing Ryan Hunter-Reay on the last lap of the 2010 Indy 500 and flew into the same Turn 3 catchfence that Tony Renna hit, fortunately Conway hit with the bottom of his car taking the impact and he survived with only orthopedic injuries. Indy car racing had dodged many bullets. When Conway crashed Tv commentator Eddie Cheever observed how fortunate he had been not to hit his head on the fencing. When Wheldon's car hit with it's roll hoop into the fence pole Cheever and co-commentator Scott Goodyear sounded very concerned. They knew exactly what had just happened and the probable consequences of such an impact. Flying debris, fire and spinning cars may be frightening, but it's the sudden, violent impacts that cause most damage.

In the aftermath the media circus began. Motorsports are rarely the top priority for most newspapers around the world but the sudden, televised death of a double Indy 500 winner was certainly sensational enough to make Indycars the centre of most of the world's attention for one day. It was also a long time since anything similar had happened. For historical perspective the last time the year's Indianapolis 500 winner had been killed racing later the same year was 1946, and the last double winner to die on the track was Bill Vukovich in 1955. Back then racing was much more of an outlaw activity for grizzled daredevils than a televised sports entertainment package and death was an almost an occupational hazard, just as it was when people climbed Everest. People were shocked, but not surprised.

In 2011 the mainstream media began speculating and pointing fingers immediately. Some claims stood up to scrutiny better than others. Certainly thirty-four cars was too many for a 1.5 mile track and Indycar top brass should have reconsidered their position on the number of starters when top drivers voiced concerns at the speeds being achieved during practice sessions. However, the claim that there were too many inexperienced drivers is highly subjective. All drivers were officially licensed to the required standard, all with previous oval track experience. The closeness of the cars to each other in the wild pack that was witnessed at Las Vegas for those fateful ten laps makes the point almost moot - it was more chance that two cars touched than lack of skill. The most misguised accusion was that Wheldon had been motivated by the $5 million payday to drive an unneccessarily aggressive race. This missed the point that Wheldon would've probably been just as motivated to win with a five cent payday - top racing drivers are competitive to their fingernails, plus the two-time Indy 500 winner hardly needed to worry too much about money ever again. The fact was that Wheldon was twenty fourth when disaster struck - picking off ten backmarkers in ten laps on a oval track is hardly an sign of unusual aggression.

The wisest words of wisdom to be heard in the media frenzy came from the old guard - Mario Andretti, AJ Foyt and the Unsers. All old hands at the racing game who had seen many fellow drivers killed in their time. And all knew what the problem was. As Andretti had been saying for years before Vegas; "Too much downforce, not enough power". Driver skill is taken away from the equation if the throttle pedal is flat the whole way. The driver's job is to hang on and hope that their car's setup is better than the other guys. Whomever held the lead held the advantage - all they had to do was block the inside line down the straight and the opposition were powerless to act. Indycar races frequently looked like horse races; drivers darted to the inside 'rail' of the back stretch of a track as the leader furiously blocked the pursuirs jockeying behind. It was in these circumstances that Brack and Scheckter tangled so disastrously at Texas in 2003, and Franchitti took flight in 2007.

It wasn't always so. In the heydays of CART Indy car racing in the late 1980s the most feared track was the giant D-shaped bowl of Michigan Speedway. It was feared because it was so fast - the shape allowed very high speeds to maintained  - and because the unforgiving concrete wall awaited feet away (these days the wall is behind the energy-absorbing SAFER barrier, another important advance). Yet cars would only traverse the Michigan speedway flat out in qualifying sessions. Aerodynamics and tyre performance were not at the level they are now, and there were many different chassis and engine combinations. During the race the performance differentials between cars could be large and there were very few packs. Passes were usually clean and quick, car-to-car contact was a rarity and flying cars even rarer. Most crashes were either due to mechanical failures or drivers 'getting into the grey', ie; drifting too high off the grippy racing line and slithering wide into a glancing blow with the wall. No drivers died in Indycar competition between 1982 and 1992 despite the cars being far less crash resistent and lacking in safety features compared to the cars of the 2000s. There were some bad injuries, especially to drivers legs and feet when the skinny nosecones crumpled upon impact. It was dangerous racing, but it was still racing, not 200mph Russian Roulette.

Another more sweeping change has occurred since those days. Even in the 1980s there was very little competition on a Sunday afternoon for live and televised sporting events. The past two decades has seen seismic changes brought about by the internet and exponentially increasing computer power. All motor sports have come under increasing pressure to be exciting and spectacular to maintain television ratings and the consequent sponsorship money. Even in the late 1980s Indycar, NASCAR and Formula One races were often won by whole laps, and entire years dominated by one team and driver. In the decade from 2000 to 2010 NASCAR introduced all kinds of changes to spice up 'The Show', from the 'Chase' playoff championship, to the 'free pass' to the first car a lap of the lead, and the 'Green-white'checkered' rule to extend the race length if the caution flag flies in the closing race. Indycar, perhaps to it's credit, has avoided some of these changes. Indy races will still finish under caution if one flies in the closing laps (the length of the Indianapolis 500, unlike NASCAR's Daytona 500 remains sacrosant). The Indycar championship has no playoff, and funnily enough it hasn't needed one to guarantee close championships. One change has been brought over from NASCAR though - the double file restart. These were brought in despite protests from drivers fearing big crashes. In the event they did not cause any major problems but the wider concern remains that Indycar is in danger of compromising itself by putting spectacle before safety.

In the wake of Vegas all eyes are on the new 2012 car. With only four oval tracks on the 2012 schedule (Vegas unsurprisingly will not be returning) there is less pressure on the series than there might have been but still the focus is very much on finding a way to break up the pack racing and give the drivers some more control of their destiny. There will still only be one chassis but there will be engine competion. Chevrolet and Lotus will join Honda in providing powerplants. This will create some performance differences although the pressure of 'The Show' may demand that the differences are smoothed out. NASCAR has long had a history of trying to create parity between manufacturers; again to it's credit Indycar racing has tended to follow the Formula one attitude of "It you can't stand the heat..." but Formula one is bigger than it's sponsors, Indycar is not. After years of every car having the same Honda engine sponsors may not be satisfied by their car suddenly being saddled with an inferior engine and may demand NASCAR-style parity measures.

What will matter is strong leadership, something that Indycar never had in the CART vs. IRL days. Indycar cannot rely on another streak of good fortune before disaster strikes again.