TBK-Light.com

Imagine if a spring, weighting just 200 grams was able to cause life threatening injuries at 230km/h hour crash. Helio was doing probably faster and that radiator weights twice as much. And it just missed Helio by inches. Very lucky, as was Conway and Hunter-Reay who was facing a whole damn car at those speeds.

This kind of accidents actually makes you wonder few things - will IndyCar Series run out of luck someday? We've seen crashes like this so many times during the last 7 years. The second question is that how big impact those cars can take? Kanaan walked away last year with over 200G crash, Conway is miraculously alive as is Briscoe and Bräck after their accidents. So are Franchitti, Mario, Marco, Hornish and Buddy Rice. Tony Renna wasn't so fortunate, but there were speculations that hitting a bird had him killed before the big hit on the fencing. Paul Dana's crash wasn't involving airborne, but was very unfortunate never the less. I think the safety of those cars have improved within the past few years a lot, but there's also a huge amount of luck involved everytime. Yesterday it could all have ended in big tears with three drivers barely escaping the serious injuries. The final big question is what will happen if the worst case scenario will come true during a race? There was no footage of Renna's crash at all, thankfully and only few badly focused views of Dana's crash. Dana's crash was widely considered as unfortunate rookie mistake, but if this kind of incident would happen to a proven driver like it happened in the past for Moore or Senna, it could set this sports in to a turmoil. It has been said many times before, but I hope the new lead of the series would take a reality check now and do something to the cars before we lose someone again. I don't know the answer but they need to make those cars to stick to the ground and fast.

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"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."

The spring which Massa hit was "just over 1lb", which was around 500g.

The crash yesterday could of happened anytime since the 70's, and it has before. It's not because of the times. Not really necessary to stop everything for a reality check.

Oh, well then, that makes probably the radiator's weight less significant.

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"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."

Well it was still a potentially fatal accident, your points definitely right. Just saying the spring was a little heavier.

This would've been nice to know during the race, some of the calls for blocking seemed a bit of a stretch.
BTW, there are higher def pics here:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topi ... w-bad.html

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Vorsprung durch Technik.

i was sitting in turn 3 and saw the whole thing happen. it happened so fast it was unbelievable. it scared the shit of me. I didn't think he was going to get of the car at all after an impact like that. but overall it was a good race. too many cautions and wayyy too hot.

Im sorry but that idea of a minimum amount of fuel at the end of the race is dumb. They already have a minimum weight requirement. These accidents have happend before in the middle of a fuel run, its just part of it.

I feel that whetever the whys and the wherefores.. yesterday we could have had a triple fatality at Indy, and we should be greatful that we didnt... along with the Lambo and AUDI crashes last weekend we have been very luck not to add to the death toll this year!

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I think you should do what you want.

It's your forum and I paid the bills this year..

and if people don't like it they shouldComplain here

...which is already long enough...

My thought's exactly. We've seen lot of hard crashes lately and it's really down to luck that those haven't been fatal.

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"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."

If you think further about this possible tripple fatality... and it WAS passible... the wreck could have killed several spectators, too. At that point we would talk about an accident you could easyly mention in one sentence with le mans 55... and all its consequences.
This would have possibly been the end of indycar racing, at least as we know it. I could even imagine several countris ban oval racing or motorracing entirely.

You can flame and argue, that his would have never happended. But after watching that several times and think about what would have been wen Conway flipped different, when RHR catched the gearbox and helio the water tank... I think this could have been the case. We were pretty close to a fatality for our whole sport.

well cars are more and more safe these days.

But you have a point. I remember very well the Imola weekend back in 1994. Rubens got a very hard crash just the day before, if you look at the pictures that one could have ended much much worse as well. I have newspapers from saturday (about the friday) how safe etc etc racing has become, there had been bad crashes but in most cases drivers walked away. It was a brutal awakening a few days later...

Compound fracture to the lower back for Conway. Not entirely unexpected. One of the most violent impacts we've ever seen.

Yeah, exactly. Everyone was so damn lucky yesterday that it is almost impossible to believe. I can't remember any other accident that would have been so close to total disaster that would have happened lately. Well, Talladega 2009 where Keselowski hit the fence by ton, but even then there wasn't really big threat to so many drivers as in yesterday.

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"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."

Anyone have a g number for Conway's impact?

It's got to rival Brack, surely.

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Dan Wheldon ¦ 1978-2011
Marco Simoncelli ¦ 1987-2011
Jules Bianchi ¦ 1989-2015
Justin Wilson ¦ 1978-2015

Yeah, I know he's mad and I don't care. I do not care. I did not care then. I do not care now. I'm here to race him.

Compression fracture [/pedantic]

If he'd had a compound fracture of his back, he'd be in a hell of a mess

He also had 5 hours of surgery on his leg. That's quite a lot, isn't it? Must've been a mess as the descriptions in the earlier articles said. He hasn't got out of this particularly lightly

3 months out...I think that's optimistic, given that it's his left leg that's broken. When Webber came back after braking his right leg last year, he was still in pain, and that's the non-braking leg. I doubt Mike will do 3 more races this year


I think the way he hit the fence took a lot of the force out of it. IIRC Brack hit an actual catch fence post head on, and was at a different angle. This was more like Briscoe's crash

I just copied off of Pippa Manns Tweet, which she now has deleted and put up a new tweet. :rolleyes lots:

Considering that a compound fracture is when the parts of the bone in question go in two different directions, it's not entirely impossible that one fragment pierced the skin. As there were many torn ligaments and tendons as well, it suggests that the bones would have relocated quite significantly within the flesh of the leg.

_________________
Dan Wheldon ¦ 1978-2011
Marco Simoncelli ¦ 1987-2011
Jules Bianchi ¦ 1989-2015
Justin Wilson ¦ 1978-2015

Yeah, I know he's mad and I don't care. I do not care. I did not care then. I do not care now. I'm here to race him.

Sry, but what is a compound fracture in german? I can't find a satisfying translation.