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TK apologizes for the incident


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Ed Carpenter's save apparently made SportsCenter

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Robin Miller's race recap video

What a race! What a racee! Maan, I'm so glad that I don't go to sleep. Shame about numbers of crashes, it was a demoltion derby. But still, with few cars we had amazing battle to the end. Maybe race ended under sc, but I'm happy with it anyway. Amazing show by Vautier, I was so dissapointed when Penske was 1-2 because of that Penske train :|

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ALPINE SKIING CRASHES SPREADSHEET

And if tonight taught us only one thing, it's their plans to remove the rear guards and have to reposition those flaps to another less effective part of the car, is a really bad idea.

Actually its the wheel guard area and underneath that causes the most lift so if they remove them and shift more towards ground effect, they will return to the CART era of oval racing when these cars didn't lift off the ground.

Fell asleep after the first crash, at that point I was certain that it was only early race tyre life that was allowing the side by side racing and the tyres going off later on would cause it to be less crazy
Surprised that didn't happen in the end.

Not surprised to see Tony causing incidents either, on ovals that guy is becoming a bit of a liability, he takes blocking far too far for an oval, what he does MIGHT be ok on a road course (but still deserving of a penalty) but on an oval, it's lethal.
You'd think someone of his experience would've learnt that by now, but for some reason he continues to be the worst at it.

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

Kanaan has been dangerous on ovals for a while now, surprised it took until now to cause some crashes. Does he even have a spotter or is he deaf on purpose? Good race though

"I don't race like that"

Yeah that's bollocks TK. 2 x Coyne cars, 2 x Andretti cars, 2 x Schmidt-Peterson cars, 2 x Carpenter cars, 1 x Foyt car across 2 x three-wide accidents where you moved up a lane into the car in the middle causing multi-million dollars of damage suggest otherwise, as do the results of last night's race, Hinch, Dale Coyne and many others. Despite what some Twitter followers say, you are not "a class act".

Also I was quite surprised to see last night that 12 months on from this accident, these raised parts still exist on the SAFER barriers:

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BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

The first half of that race was pretty awesome. Felt like Fontana 2015 with the cars grouped together, but you could still make moves. Then as the track cooled down and rubbered in, it turned into a stupid IRL-era pack race where the cars would get stuck side by side and you couldn't complete a pass. Disappointing. That style of racing is dangerous AND frustrating since nobody can ever actually complete a pass.

Those are foam addons, I'd think if you managed to hit your head on one, that's the least of your worries.

@

codename_47 next years car is this years car with new bodywork on, the 'improvements' to under body aero amount to the removal of the dome skid blocks (introduced after those Indy flights), other notable stupid changes include the removal of the guards and repositioning of the flaps to the top of the diffuser where they are going to be both smaller and less effective.

My point being that it's as if the officials have thought 'hey we havn't had a car blowover for a while so we don't need these addon parts anymore because sexy cars is more important than safe ones'. The new car will be no more like an old Champcar than they are now.

Just throwing in my 2 cents on this one, bit of a rant, so bear with me.

I will never be fine with this kind of racing. They are stuck together because of truckloads of downforce, no tyre degradation and small horsepower. People say that the hanford device was creating artificial racing, and I don't want to start another discussion on this, but youtube some old Fontana and Michigan races and you will see a big difference. Yes they were swapping positions lap after lap, but they were spread out, unlike yesterday when they were bunched up with nowhere to go. 2-3 wide, it didn't matter because you couldn't pass. It might look good on TV, but call me a pussy, I don't want to see something like the last 17 laps until the Sato/Dixie shunt ever again. Watch those laps again and try to count how many bullets were dodged. And the mess TK triggered, I'm sorry could have been a Vegas moment.

Racing fans seem to have a really short memory, because if this is the trend, it's only a matter of time until we have another Vegas, here at Texas, especially since they are removing the wheel guards next year. I'm not an engineer, so I might be wrong, but it's only so much you can do to a chassis that was built from the ground up with them in mind. Kudos to Dallara, as safe as that tub is, it's still the DW12, not the old Reynard from an aerodynamic point of view, so I'm with @

Ian-S on this one.

PS. Impressed by Vautier, gutted for Coyne, and very disappointed by TK's shenanigans the whole race.

In the big one you saw two or three cars make front wheel to rear guard contact and not get launched, as much as I hate those things it can't be denied they have, along with the beam flaps, been the two best safety features added since 2011, it beggers belief they are scrapping them.

I hope it's not because people moan about them. Sure on road/street they're not that useful but ovals they're essential.

they need to keep the rear guards & the flaps on the rear for superspeedways. They also need to re-design the rear guards as well to keep them tethered to the cars. They already had 1 fly into the spectator areas at St. Pete in 2015?

The only downside to the guards is that the drivers have raced with no respect with them, especially since the monster truck sized ones with the OEM kits.

Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of exciting racing, but I don't want to see what we saw last night (especially when the track cooled down). I rather have the Hanford device style slingshots instead of IRL/NASCAR pack racing.

That's exactly my point. Remember at Vegas you had I think, 3 cars (Dan, Power, Pippa) airborne. Speed differential aside (Dario in Houston) I believe these things have proven to be useful.

I hate them, but aesthetics aside, without a major rethink in terms horsepower, downforce, tyres, scrapping them, as you mention just to make the cars sexier is just asking for trouble. I hope I'm just a pessimist and honestly want to be proven wrong, because I love this series, but IndyCar is an expert at shooting itself in the foot.

Jesus, this is 1994 levels of over reacting here. The very first race with the rear pods, marco caught air over the back of a car. Last month dixon caught air (and flew LITERALLY FURTHER THAN DAN'S CAR DID) after hitting the back of a car. We can sit here and play the "what if" game all day if you really want to. Every track, every speed difference at impact, every angle of impact is going to be different every single time. Obviously they need to have rules and regulations for safety but if fans want a "safe" sport to watch, go check out Curling. If the drivers dont want to drive at texas then give me ur helmet, cuz i'll save most of these teams money and strap in for free. I'm sorry if that sounds cruel, but this isnt war and no one involved was conscripted into the series. None of this is a "necessity" to anyone involved, its a sport, its entertainment. Shit, i was injured more while commuting to work on my bicycle this last May than Dixon was flying nearly 400ft into a concrete/chain link wall at 225mph. Anyone wanna guess how many people took to the internet forums to demand changes to asphalt roads so that my impact would be less painful next time??

It's called unnecessary risk, and believe me the irony of me, of all people, bringing that up is not lost on me in the slightest.

Edit: Marco wasn't launched off the guard, he hit the wheel, I believe afterwards they made the guards slightly wider to properly cover the wheels (might have been the next year) and the closing speed with Dixon at Indy was so huge that nothing was going to stop his car being launched, that impact was way outside the operating window of the guards, so try again on why they don't work and should be scrapped.

There is a point that they have to break off in an accident. It worries me how people seem to believe they should stay on no matter what and breaking off in a hard hit means they're a failure.

If you want the CART cars back, then you don't want to race at Texas. More horsepower and less downforce would put the speeds too high to race there.

I want more horsepower and less downforce. We're going to get one of those next year with the new aero kits. Whether that has the effect we want remains to be seen. Firestone now has more data to build a better tire to fall off.

The only problem Saturday night was the inability to make a pass once you got a run (though some guys were indeed able to do so) and TK's inability to drive.

I thought the race was pretty nuts. Not as bad as it used to be, but pretty nuts. The last 20 laps were crazy but that's was just as much a product of the snap competition caution call as it was anything else.

I still believe that 1.5 mile ovals are more for stock cars rather than open wheelers

open wheelers should be running on shorter tracks with less downforce to put more of a challenge, I liked Nazareth, too bad that one is for history

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

This! Michigan 1997 (I think), was pure motorsport. Much, much better than nowadays. About risk or danger or whatever, I think it's all ok, security level today it's acceptable.

It is not easy to find a good balance between the two situations / times. 20, 30 years it's a lot of time.

Just race Texas at noon, with road course turbo pressure.