Hinchcliffe now on the long road to recovery
“I think you’d be hard-pressed for (Hinchcliffe) not to be involved if he’s able to be here.” CHARLIE JOHNSTONE HONDA INDY TORONTO PRESIDENT
INDIANAPOLIS— So many things have happened since Oakville’s James Hinchcliffe rode his car into the third-turn wall of Indianapolis Motor Speedway last Monday that a review is in order.
But first the good news — he’s on his way to a full recovery from grievous injuries suffered in the crash.
On the other hand, he won’t be driving a racing car again any time soon. He will miss Sunday’s Indianapolis 500, the Honda Indy Toronto in three weeks and most or all of the remaining IndyCar season while he gets better. To recap: Hinchcliffe, 28, a four-year veteran of the Verizon IndyCar Series wars, was practising at more than 220 m.p.h. Monday afternoon in preparation for Sunday’s 99th Indianapolis 500 when his car’s front suspension collapsed and he crashed. Sensors in his helmet showed the force of the crash to be 125 Gs, an extremely high deceleration.
A part of the suspension knifed through the carbon fiber tub and into his left thigh and pelvis, causing severe gastro-intestinal injuries. He lost a massive amount of blood and only quick work by the series’ safety team and doctors at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis saved his life.
He was initially in critical condition but was well enough to be moved out of the intensive care unit on Wednesday afternoon and doctors have since said they expect him to make a full recovery. Fellow drivers who have visited him since report that his recovery in the short term is amazing; he’s sitting up and talking and worried about missing Sunday’s classic. And not only has he been sitting up, he posted a picture of himself to Instagram late today that showed him standing up, albeit hooked up to an IV.
Said Ganassi Racing driver Charlie Kimball: “He’s a typical race car driver . . . he wants to overachieve and exceed expectations.”
Shortly after Hinchcliffe was moved out of the ICU, the team announced Ryan Briscoe had been hired to take his place on Sunday.
Briscoe, a veteran of IndyCar and sports car races, will start 31st (of 33 starters) in the car half-owned by Canadian Ric Peterson, a Calgary businessman. Peterson is partners in the team with Sam Schmidt, an American racing driver who was left a paraplegic after crashing backwards into a wall at Walt Disney World Speedway in 2000. Hinchcliffe raced for Schmidt’s Indy Lights team on his way up to the big league.
Almost immediately after the announcement that nine-time 500 starter Briscoe would replace Hinchcliffe, IndyCar competition director Derrick Walker announced that all teams in the series had been encouraged to switch to a newer suspension connecting component called a rocker.
Walker identified the rocker as the part that had failed and said the one on Hinchcliffe’s car had been in use longer than ones on some of the other cars in the series.
While Walker said there “wasn’t an actual mileage (limit)” on the rockers, he said he expects the series to establish new guidelines as a result of the crash.
Meantime, Charlie Johnstone, president of the Honda Indy Toronto, said the advertising campaign built around Hinchcliffe for the June 12-14 event at Exhibition Place would remain intact and in place.
And Dr. Hugh Scully of Toronto, a pioneer in motorsports medicine who is medical director for the Honda Indy and chairman of the event’s safety committee, said Hinchcliffe owes his life to the IndyCar safety team, which — according to Scully — is the best in the world.
“(Series rescue director) Mike Yates and the rescue medical team did a remarkable job,” Scully said in an interview. “They recognized the situation and made an on-site triage determination to take him directly to Methodist (hospital) rather than the track medical station and to arrange for emergency surgery upon arrival there. “Humans have 51⁄ litres of blood
2 in them, normally. Because of arterial bleeding caused by damage to the gastro-intestinal tract, he would have lost — now, I don’t know, so we’re talking generally — between two and three litres of blood be- tween the time of the accident and the time they actually got him to the emergency room. His critical circulating volume would have been down to half normal.”
Scully said although Hinchcliffe’s fans are hoping for a speedy return, it’s unlikely to happen.
“After a major surgery of that kind, it normally takes six to eight weeks for the healing to take place, never mind the reconditioning and the retraining. As the doctors have said, there’s every reason to expect he’ll make a full recovery.
“But it (resolution and recovery) will likely take the rest of the year.”
Which is just fine with Honda Indy’s Johnstone.
“Our thoughts, first and foremost, are with James and his health,” he said. “The reports out of Indy (that he’s recovering) are all that matter. The recovery is first and foremost in importance.”
But he went on to say the event doesn’t see any reason to back away from the promotional campaign revolving around Hinchcliffe.
“As our hometown hero, we want to support James both on and off the track,” he said. “So the idea of promoting him as a personality, of promoting him as one of the stars of the IndyCar Series, promoting him as a fan favourite in Toronto, we expect to stay consistent with that.”
Johnstone said if Hinchcliffe is feeling better, he wouldn’t be surprised to see the driver in Toronto.
“If James is able to be here, my guess is that it’s going to be hard to keep him away,” he said. “He’s such a good spokesman for the series, for Honda, for the Honda Indy, for the Make-a-Wish Foundation, for all those things.
“And I think you’d be hard-pressed for him not to be involved if he’s able to be here.”