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I said some sh*t yesterday about Vettel in another part of this forum, but all that things doesn't care right now.. I'm just shaked about Wheldon's death. Horrible news... Awful crash..

RIP Dan.

After Pablo Perez' accident, Tony George wanted them to start research into something to replace catchfencing like they did with the SAFER barrier.

Perhaps something like the big plastic lexan boards they have for ice hockey would be a good idea. Obviously it'd need a lot of work and research, but something smooth would be much much better than these fences. The fences are almost designed to rip the cars apart. Anyone who has been to one of these ovals will tell you, this isn't normal chicken wire stuff, this is real heavy duty cabling. The cars don't stand a chance against woven steal cables.

They could ask N2K3 if they can borrow that invisible barrier that it seems every track has once you get through the fence. (just trying to lighten the mood a bit).


Its a sad day in motorsport. Dan was a great driver and from what it seems, an even better family man and friend. May he rest in peace.

this has no sense at all. Changing circumstances would have changed everything. Him starting 1st or 33rd instead of 34th could have lead for example to a pileup with 10 driver killed instead of only him alone, then, in that case, you would have found someone else to blame, and would have said "what if" "what if". This is what happened, this is what we have to deal with. "what if" is no sense at all.

one thing is taking a hit from a 80 kg man going at 20 km/h one thing is taking a hit from a 700kg car going at 300 km/h. probably exist some extreme bulletproof glass capable of that but i dont know if it could be tecnically used for that, i guess it's weight ( it must be extremely thick and so extremely heavy ), it's cost, or some other issue cant work for that purpose.

the thing i cant totally understand is if in this type of crash the most dangerous thing is the fence itself, acting like ( i apologize for this analogy but i dont know how to say it in english ) a grater or the structure, the poles, holding up the fence and hitting the driver. If it's the fence itself, well, they must find something else, if it's the structure they may try to redesing that part and keep the metallic web.

I don't follow the lines of blaming the cars, the drivers, the racing or the format of the race (Wheldon starting 34th)

The cars have been effectively the same since 2003, the racing has been the same for longer, this wasn't the first 'cookie cutter' track Indycars have raced on. This accident has threatened to have happened on many occasions over the last 9 years, and yes they teetered on the edge of disaster for one race too long, but all the leading drivers have raced under these conditions and, while some were outspoken about the dangers, all still saddled up year after year. It is these qualities that make drivers like Dan Wheldon heroes to us all.

This particular accident was, in the whole scheme of things, a (horrific) racing accident.

plastic lexan boards could also smash ( unless you build them very tick and very heavy ) and a driver can be killed by a fragment of the board itself. Dont forget Senna has been killed by a fragment of his own suspension, not by the crash itself. Another thing to deal with would be junction between a panel and another. If a crash open a gap between them a panel could also act like a guillottine

Possibly. It honestly depends on how Indycar plots its future, I think. Racing is a dangerous sport, and was even more so in the old days; fatalities strike us harder now simply because they don't occur very often these days, thanks to tremendous safety improvements.

The pack racing though, which I consider an IRL holdover, is the one thing that always seemed unnecessarily dangerous. It was exciting, but in an artificial way, and with cars *that* close together (due to formula restrictions in many ways), you had a much greater chance for a multi-car accident with flyovers like we saw. I far preferred the Hanford style artificial racing CART had, or even *gasp* racing without artificial limiters.

Catch fence safety improvements are another aspect that could be looked at, as is the airborne behavior of the current cars.

You may be right for some drivers, though. After all, there was a rumor that part of the reason Franchitti looked hard at NASCAR in 2008 was safety reasons. These days, it's going to be harder to attract drivers to a series perceived as dangerous, so if Indycar does nothing to address safety, it'll yet again add another nail in the Indycar coffin. (Indycar, who is hardly recovered from the split politics, and coming off a year of asinine officiating, is not in the best position to absorb this sort of crash.)

god, watching the pictures from this article

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... Vegas.html

i still cant believe how high in the sky Power's car was launched in the crash. we are all sad for Dan and that's natural but in a strange way we should really feel a sense of relief that only a driver has been killed in this crash. I mean, this crash is the scariest i've ever seen, and im watching motorracing since 1989 and im part of this forum from years: this was so insane, so carnage, so random that anything could have happened, we really could have lost 3 or 4 drivers in it and it's almost a miracle that this isn't happened. im still shocked everytime i watch that.

Was at work today for 8 Hours but I only could think of what happened yesterday.

Couldnt get some sleep either.....

I still cant believe it

That 5 Lap Tribute was one of the saddest Moments I ever saw since I started watching Motorsport 15 Years ago

The only way we could get some good news out of that Disaster is that we not have more passed away drivers.

What a horrible crash that was

was "offline" until some hours ago and so just read about this now.

that's really shocking and very, very sad. prayers for his family and friends.

RIP dan wheldon.

Same. Quite a few people at work were asking me about it, and none of them watch Indycar. Guess it's all over the news... I understand a racing death making the headlines but I'm really upset with some of the reports and articles I've seen. That Daily Mail one is the worst. I shouldn't bite, but I had to respond to some of the ignorant comments there.

Still can't really believe it.

Must admit I purposely shut myself down a bit at work today, just got on with my job so I could get on. This sort of thing put's our lives little problems sharply into focus really. I ignored the Daily Fascist's article to be fair but the photo's are horrible in showing exactly what went on in that mess. I think Indy needs to count uitself lucky there wasn't any more fatalities as it very very easily could've been more in that.

SirVanhan said earlier in this topic that it's good to have this community so we don't have to deal this thing alone. I couldn't agree more, this means a world to me also.

I had a terrible night, virtually no sleep at all and when ever I woke up, I started sobbing. It was difficult to drag myself to work but thankfully the place I work has one great person, who's actually a racer himself. I talked about this with him and it helped to get through the day. He had fellow racer dying into his arms few years back, there was nothing he could have done to save him, the injuries were unsurvivable, just like it was for poor Wheldon.

I don't want to go down pointing at anyone or anything really, I'm just sad, depressed, shaken and bit angry at the moment. What angers me is the ignorance. How many warnings did the Indycar and Dallara got? How many drivers kept racing after flipping his car in a freak accident that they barely survived? When Conway had his crash in Indy last year, I was furious. I asked on the race topic that how can anyone justify this anymore? Shouldn't there be some kind of actions to take when we were so close to lose Conway, Hunter-Reay and Castroneves and spectators in one freak accident that could have been avoided with these "unaesthetic" rear fenders that the 2012 car is going to have?

For me the drivers, Dallara and organization turned their back on the flipping problem and just kept things going. Sure there's the 2012 car, which was introduced last year, finally had these fenders, but now it's all too little, too late.

Also you could question anyone accepting Las Vegas oval to host the event. Not just because of it was bat shit crazy fast for these cars but the flipping issue was still there, no matter how many cars were in the grid. And what really angers me is those catch fences. Those damn catch fences almost killed Kenny Bräck when he became the first driver to flip this car in 2003. Back in the day the organization decided that for Indycar races, the catch fencing should be different than for the stock car racing. Why did the Vegas oval had stock car catch fencing? Conway didn't get killed in Indy mainly because of proper catch fencing for Indycars, when Wheldon hit one of those huge metal poles. Just like Kenny Bräck did eight f*cking years ago on a stock car oval with speeds over 220mph!

There's too many smoking guns in here to point out the single reason that killed a great sportsman yesterday. So my pointing goes to everyone's ignorance on safety issues that were always there. Drivers could have moaned about it and the organization should have done their job better! But in the end it doesn't matter at all. Nothing will ever change of what happened yesterday.

If there's anything that should be done, it's that Indycar takes the actions that Formula One did back in the 1994. You could argue that it's not the same and this will end Indycar racing. F1 didn't end in May 1994, it changed forever, because of the very similar events than what we had today. The same ignorance was there in 1994 at F1 paddock. We had so many warnings, yet no one reacted to them. The drivers prior the Imola GP had the same gut feeling what Indycars drivers did yesterday and in Texas 2003. They knew they were on the danger zone, but yet they kept ignoring it and put their helmets on. Ignorance, just plain ignorance, that we all deal in our everyday lives. It is only the tragedy, that changes things. F1 learned their lesson in a hard way, as did NASCAR back in 2001 (again, too many warnings that didn't cause any reactions) and now it's Indycars turn. They, like everyone else on this planet, did the same old mistake and ignored the facts that were right there in front of their eyes.

I feel so empty about all of this. We had to live to see this day again. We had to push our luck and leaving it all on pure faith, that was vaporized in a blink of an eye. We lost a great man yesterday and I mourn for Dan Wheldon, his family, friends, team and the whole motorsports community.

Rest In Peace Dan Wheldon.

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

It doesn't matter now, but don't think the rear fenders would have really helped. Most of those airborne moments were cars going straight over the back of the car in front. Not wheel to wheel contact.

Yeah seemed that way to me too, if you hit a single seater rear on at 200mph plus regardless your going over the top of it. This is how I'll remember Dan, as the milkman.

I watched it live yesterday and I still can't believe it. The live image was so surreal, so graphic. RIP Dan Wheldon. That is so sad

I also think rear fenders wouldn't have helped. It's not a matter of not getting cars airborne, cars WILL get airborne (or else all open-wheel racing should be forbidden?) but it's a matter of minimizing the chances of it happening. How many IndyCars have we seen in the fence compared to old CART cars in the 80s or 90s?

We can either transform IndyCar into ALMS and use wheel-covered cars, or transform IndyCar into F1 and race at Turkey where there's miles of run-off. But is it what we want?

I still think open-wheel cars can race safely at ovals, road courses, airports and street tracks. But the powers-that-be need to know which tracks are suitable for this kind of racing.

Also a lot of things went terribly wrong in that crash, it was IMO still a highly unfortunate outcome. I mean in order to have Wheldon skitting along the catchfence a lot of things happened in a chain of unfortunate events, such as Pippa Man rocketing through the air and hitting Wheldon at excactly the right place in order to launch his car into the fence etc.