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Still it could happen in any other series too. All it takes is bad luck and the worst possible impact angle. In the end it doesn matter if it's 160mph and 250G or 80mph and 100G.

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

Webber's accident at Valencia last year could have turned out differently, yes it would have required a perfect storm of circumstances, but Dan's crash proved that can happen.

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"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

I hark back to Nigel Mansell's comments when asked if he thought drivers of the day were paid too much:
"Not at all. A racing driver should get as much as he can as there is no amount of money equal to the risks involved driving the worlds fastest racing cars. Any crash over 30mph in one of these machines is potentially fatal..."

When you read the details of the report into the Vegas crash, it is clear that Dan never stood a chance and that Will Power was VERY fortunate to have got away without serious injuries.

Let's just hope valuable lessons are learned from it...

Interesting read to understand the dynamics of the event. Let's hope we can close this chapter after this and look forward to 2012 and beyond to learn from the past, but not dwell on it. Use the information to make racing safer yes but perfect storms do happen. That said, racing's never going to be perfectly safe, and it shouldn't be. I'll quote myself here: "If it ain't dangerous it ain't fun."

..and the words of late Greg Moore "That's why we get the big bucks!"

Godspeed Dan.

You could put it like Dario's Vegas helmet quoted "You're here for a good time, not for long time." but then again, I think most of the drivers in the grid that day didn't believe that modern auto racing could still claim a life from one of them. It was a harsh reality check for everyone.

From yesterdays press conference, the word "perfect storm" really stopped me to think. The only injury that poor Dan Wheldon had was the blunt head trauma, nothing else. That made me think that it really was just a matter of inches that it took. Sure the G-forces alone could have caused the same result but it's not unheard-of that a IndyCar driver could survive from forces higher than 200G. Tony Kanaan literally walked away from a 230G crash at 2010 Indy. That makes me wonder, what a difference of just few inches could have made.

But the case is closed now, may you rest in peace, Dan Wheldon. Godspeed.

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

No more a "perfect storm" than any other of the countless open-cockpit wrecks through motorsports history where intrusion into the cockpit has caused serious injury or death (Massa, Surtees, Pryce, etc). They could fix the catch fences, but the same danger still exists from anything else that could penetrate - debris, another car, the edge of a wall at a road course. The issue more than anything else is the open cockpit.

Nobody seems to take a change in that area seriously, but either start taking it seriously or accept the fact that the biggest risk of death in open cockpit racing will remain unchanged. Wailing about the tragedy, fretting over the future of the sport and launching major investigations, all the while ignoring the complete lack of protection to the drivers head, to me is just stupid.

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I wonder if another factor in that could have been a soft brake pedal, considering she likely wouldn't have been using it much (if any) during the opening laps at that track. I know that's sometimes an issue for stock cars at the plate tracks. Would that also be a potential issue for an Indycar? I don't really know much about their braking package.

she clipped the car in front of her and damaged her l/f suspension before she hit the 8, not sure if that's in the report but you can see it from the helicopter angle, maybe that played a part too.