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Pruett collects more Silly Season thoughts post-season; https://racer.com/2021/10/07/indycar-si ... october-7/

tl;dr
-Sato is a lock for the #51, and should be confirmed soon.
-Vasser and Sullivan may find themselves squeezed out as partners in the #18, to be replaced by HMD, with HM's son David Malukas in the seat. There is perhaps some interest from F2 drivers as well.
-If Vasser and Sullivan do need to find a new partner, the right home may be at Carlin, who have reportedly sold their Lights cars and are open to offers on their Indycar equipment as well. Chilton's future is very much in flux.
-No further progress at Foyt.
-Lundgaard is top of the pile for the #45, as he brings along a cheque from Alpine as well as the committed HyVee money.
-Daly could stay at ECR, or he could to Carlin full-time, or he may be out entirely. RHR is still considering his options, and Hinch is bound for sportscars.
-DeFrancesco is assured as Hinch's replacement, but Andretti does not want to lose Kirkwood and is weighing up the possibility of even a full-time campaign to keep him around.
-Stefan Wilson made a fan out of his co-boss Don Cusick last May, and the two of them are trying to put together a program, either as a partnership with an existing team or as a stand-alone. But the number of full-timers has a hard cap of 27 (15 Honda, 12 Chevy), and so a part-time entry may have to suffice.

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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.

How many do Toyota want to supply?

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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

https://racer.com/2021/10/11/rll-confir ... -campaign/

Harvey in the HyVee #45, which presumably leaves Lundgaard to slot into the #30.

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Of course, if Andretti were to confirm his purchase of the Sauber F1 team at Austin and if Colton Herta is migrated across to be Bottas' teammate, then there is a very convenient Kirkwood-sized hole in Andretti's Indycar lineup...

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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.

So it's 10 years since we lost Dan Wheldon . I remember being at work and seeing posts appearing about a bad crash at Vegas, I'm pretty sure I hoped on this forum to follow updates, and it was you guys who basically broke the news to me. I think it hit a bit harder given he'd won the 500 earlier and had been part of the TV coverage that year, so he'd been very present on screens.... I balled my eyes out later that evening after work when I saw the Indycar field do their lap of honor.... I think it was seeing Dario in tears that triggered me, for him to be racing for a championship to loosing a best mate within minutes , it was just so utterly devastating

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


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

It was the second most emotional moment I shared with folks on this forum(s) (Daytona 500 2007 was the first one) while sitting in the LVMS race thread. The pain was inmeasurable to keep it inside oneself and I can still hear those sad bagpipes playing.

I can't believe it's been ten years already.

I think 2011 was my first year watching Indy again thanks to Beseeet streams. Earlier I had only chance to watch Indy/ChampCar back in Eurosport days in 2005/2006. That crash was horrible. Also, my stream was a little bit behind so first I saw all the comments on his stream saying "oh f**" and others like that and then that crash.

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ALPINE SKIING CRASHES SPREADSHEET

I feel like I've asked this before, sorry if I have, but is the race thread for that race still on the forum? I've both searched for it and scanned through two different sub forums and been unable to find it. Felt like revisiting it on this day, like watching CBS news from November 22nd on that anniversary, etc.

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Thread is here; viewtopic.php?f=32&t=7133

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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.

Thank you, I don't know how I didn't find it, IndyCar and Vegas in the search box returned nothing. I must have jumped over it twice scanning the pages of threads manually.

Edit: it was bumped into 2016, that's why I missed it I think.

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The search engine here doesn't work for any posts between 2010 and 2017 or so.

Pruett is also doing a deep dive with a number of protaganists (in the same vein as his Texas 2001 article from earlier in the year). Part 1 was put up yesterday; https://racer.com/2021/10/15/insight-da ... on-part-1/

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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.

I remember waking up for breakfast that morning before work (race was early hours of a Monday morning here in Australia) and seeing the cars roll out for the 5 lap tribute having no idea what was going on until Marty Reid's sign off......

Couple of documentaries that I found pop up on YouTube today about the Vegas weekend. First one features a lot of build up to the race, the 5 million dollar challenge and other events during the Vegas week as well as the accident and aftermath, second one is more focused on the race itself and what it was like in an active chat room before, during and after the fateful moment.
I'll put it in spoiler tags as both videos do include the accident and replays.
*WARNING* Videos contain footage of fatal accident and aftermath *WARNING*

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I remember well, it was quite an anticipated moment, that it wasn't meant for me to watch and I grabbed a stream here and went to see. When that massive crash happened looked like a war scene, never saw a big one in indycar before live. Dan also remains the only fatality I watched live and is quite sad, so much talent being relegated to part time rides while he deserved to be in a top team

is been 10 year and he's still one of the best in my opinion, RIP

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

“People always ask why I sign off with ‘until we meet again’. Because ‘goodbye’ is always so final. Goodbye, Dan Weldon.”

Gosh, that was quite interesting going back and flicking through that thread, in some ways it's quite a preservation of history, as you're literally getting live updates as events unfolded

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


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

That's exactly why I wanted to read through it again. On one hand, yes it's painful and tragic, but I am fascinated with as it's happening news broadcasts and reports, and as you said our thread here is very much like that itself. Brock Beard on YouTube shared a video today where he shared a chatroom he was in as it was happening and it very much reminded me of our shared experience.

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I also found those this morning, as I mentioned above, Brock's personal video, Until Lap 11 really reminded me of here. And Nascar history's doc, which Brock is actually the narrator for, is top notch and in depth as always. Learned alot about the lead up I missed at the time. Also, I thought they were negative towards Randy from the moment it happened, but they were defending him at least until the next year

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This is a hard post to write and It covers the most serious kind of speculation but after having suffered through something similar at my race track I feel like I know where Townsend Bell is coming from in this matter when it comes to PTSD and living with THAT moment for a good long while in your life

Spoilered for Townsend's accident scene recollection:



Ok I'm sorry I had to write that, still going through my own stuff in that regard but yeah, every time you read something new about that terrible day it just gets worse and worse and while I quietly dread the big racing fatality anniversarrys as it always stirs up people's memories and more details of tragic situations comes to light as people think enough time has passed

*Sigh*

RIP Dan, all that matters is you were a great person and our world is diminished for not having you in it, the rest can be ignored

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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

Remember Tracy also said during the post race interview that Dan faces a long recovery. I've watched that interview in the videos posted above for the first time since it happened, and it still makes me wonder if Tracy was just under shock or if he was trying to mend his words.

Brock Beard put this up today, it's basically a recap of the race and the chat room he frequented at the time. Striking how similar it is to how our thread here progressed, shock, bad jokes, bad rumours, anger and all. For me it even legitemises how we experienced this event here; I found the comparison to transcripts of operators transcribing word of JFK's assassination pretty interesting. Well worth a watch.

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