IndyCar drivers accept sport’s danger
Drivers say sport is as safe as it can be at this stage
Every morning, Rick Mears I NDIANAPOLIS wakes up in pain, his feet aching from a devastating crash in 1984.
Every morning in May, he walks to the Team Penske garage at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, buoyantly greeting fellow racers, eager to start another day at the racetrack.
“It’s what I love doing,” Mears told USA TODAY Sports. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world. My feet can hurt all they want. They’re still there. And if they weren’t there, I’d be saying, ‘Well, I was doing what I love doing.’ End of story. It’s what I chose to do, and it’s what I enjoyed doing. I never dreamed of making a living at it. The rewards outweighed the risks by far.” Sam Schmidt, a quadriplegic since a crash in 2000, shouted, smiled and celebrated Sunday when one of his team’s drivers, James Greats discuss
Hinchcliffe, won the pole pofavorite 500
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apolis 500. Hinchcliffe’s story also involves a catastrophic injury; he nearly bled to death last year when his car crashed and a piece of suspension pierced his body during an Indy 500 practice session.
They are just three examples of the link between racing and peril. The sport’s inherent
danger confronts racers daily — deeply affects their lives, even — yet still they return to it with enthusiasm and devotion.
“It’s something we accept because of our passion for the sport,” Hinchcliffe told USA TODAY Sports. “A surfer gets bit by a shark. Guess what? They get back in the water.
“It really comes down to how much you enjoy what you’re doing in terms of how much risk you’re willing to accept in order to do it.”
Bottom line: Drivers think racing is as safe as it can be in its present time and space. While they constantly try to improve safety, they trust their equipment to minimize the consequences of crashing at more than 200 mph.
Likely the same as Ray Harroun thought his equipment — minus a seat belt, roll hoop or adequate head and fire protection — was as safe as possible in 1911, when he won the first installment of “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”
“It’s the same way that people react now, thinking we’re crazy for getting into these things,” Hinchcliffe said. “They’re so safe. We’re doing what they used to do, but it’s safer. It’s the same thing the guys in the ’70s would’ve said about the guys in the ’30s. The evolution of the technology in the cars and the racetracks is something we are presented with and think about every single day.”
Schmidt, who used head movements to drive a specially equipped Chevrolet Corvette in a ceremonial four-lap qualifying run before Hinchcliffe won the pole position, praised his driver for returning to the racetrack and the car.
“He’s come back,” Schmidt said afterward. “He committed to it, and you just never know, right? You can ask and you can do all the work and you absolutely never know until you’ve got to mash the gas, and he did it today. He did what nobody else could do today, so I think that is a huge story.” AIRBORNE NO MORE Compared with last year, practice and qualifying this May have been relatively calm. Four cars hit the wall in the eight days of practice and qualifying leading up to Sunday’s race. Last year, crashes were the story, including three airborne incidents involving Chevrolets that spun backward and Hinchcliffe’s post-qualifying crash, which was blamed on a highly used suspension piece in his Honda.
Domed skids, newly introduced bulges in the floor that affect air pressure as a car begins to spin, are credited by Verizon IndyCar Series officials for keeping cars on the ground.
“When the cars would spin last year, there was a chance that the cars would get turned around backward and blow over,” Bill Pappas, IndyCar’s vice president of competition and engineering, told USA TODAY Sports. “The idea of the domed skid is, as the car begins to spin, more downforce is exerted on the car when it’s at a 90-degree yaw versus where it was last year. That slows the spin down, which also puts pressure on the tires, which slows the car down a little bit more.”
Teams are continuing to improve and upgrade the latest generation of the DW12 chassis, named after two-time Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon, who was killed in a crash in October 2011 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. This is the second year aero kits have been added to chassis, and Pappas says teams are continuing their understanding of the added parts and pieces.
“The teams are trying to figure out how to use the aero kits and where the issues begin,” Pappas said. “Basically (last year’s crashing) was because it was the first year of this package. In the second year, guys have gone in and done more aero mapping and studying the sensitivity of this package in the different configurations.”
When it came time for Hinchcliffe to get into his No. 5 Schmidt Peterson Motorsports ride, he didn’t hesitate. He thoroughly trusts the machine and its safety, just as other drivers did decades before.
“We walk around the IMS museum all the time and look at cars that used to be considered cutting edge of safety and technology,” Hinchcliffe said. “There’s no amount of money that any of these guys would take to drive one of those things at over 200 mph around the speedway. It’s just crazy to think about. But at the time, they knew no better. It was easy for them to get in the car.” TRAGEDIES LEAD TO CHANGES Seventy-three people have been killed at the speedway since it opened in 1909. Four IndyCar drivers — Gordon Smiley, Jovy Marcelo, Scott Brayton and Tony Renna — have been killed since 1973. Renna was the last, in 2003, during a closed tire test.
Underlying the safety argument, and often included in the same breath with racers’ defense of racing, are the advancements in automotive safety credited to the Indianapolis 500, such as the rearview mirror and seat belts.
Many changes, such as tethering systems, are borne after tragedy strikes.
After an incident in 1999 at Charlotte Motor Speedway in which a tire and suspension parts flew into the grandstand and killed three fans, wheels were attached to cars by tethers. The system was later added to wings and other parts to keep them from flying off during crashes.
This season, IndyCar mandated that the nose cone also be tethered after Justin Wilson was killed after being struck by that piece when driving through a debris field at Pocono Raceway in August.
And so they race on, aware of the danger but accepting the risk.
Mears, who shares the Indy 500 record of four victories with A.J. Foyt and Al Unser Sr., usually is seen at the speedway wearing black sandals, the only footwear he finds comfortable. Both feet were broken in a crash at Sanair Super Speedway in Saint-Pie, Quebec, in 1984, and a crash at Indy in 1992 broke his left foot again.
When he awakened after the first round of surgeries in a Montreal hospital in 1984, Mears thought only of racing again. Now, 32 years after the crash, surgeries and skin grafts, he remains an advocate for reducing downforce to slow cornering speeds and lessen the force of impacts at superspeedways. But he doesn’t regret anything.
“That’s what allows you to put away the danger aspect of it: the fact that you love doing it,” Mears said. “As soon as I looked down and saw both feet were there, I knew I was going to get back in the car, mainly because I knew what caused it. I did. ... What caused the injury to happen to begin with was my doing.”