Horrific Indycar shunt for Wickens
As Autosport went to press, Robert Wickens was undergoing surgery for the spinal injuries he incurred in a huge shunt in last Sunday’s Indycar race at Pocono. Details from both the series and his Schmidt Peterson Motorsports team have been vague in the aftermath of the accident, but what has been revealed is that he has broken both legs, his right arm and suffered bruised lungs.
But it is the damage to his back that has inevitably worried fans the most, and a statement from Indycar and SPM on Monday afternoon from Lehigh Valley Hospital–cedar Crest revealed only that “an MRI was instrumental in revealing the most appropriate surgical course and Wickens is undergoing surgery Monday evening for a spinal injury. Further updates will be provided when available.”
Wickens has been one of the most impressive rookies in Indycar racing history, regularly threatening the primary title contenders, taking pole on his series debut at St Petersburg and scoring four podium finishes. Despite the Pocono shunt,
Wickens still lies sixth in the standings.
Although he never raced on ovals during his impressive junior formula years in North America and Europe, before his six years in DTM, Wickens had already shown he was capable of adapting to left-turn-only tracks, finishing second at Phoenix and only missing out on podium finishes at Texas Motor Speedway and Iowa Speedway due to a rival’s error and a tactical miscue respectively.
The crash at Pocono came on the first green-flag lap, lap six, following a startline fracas near the back of the grid. At the restart, Wickens had moved up to fourth and came off Turn 1 fast enough to move to the inside of Ryan Hunter-reay’s Andretti Autosport car as they headed to the Turn 2 kink on the tri-oval. But Hunter-reay was in the slipstream of Will Power, allowing him to tow back ahead of Wickens, albeit not fully clear of the rookie. A slight rub between Wickens’s right-front wing and the left-rear wheel of Hunter-reay was enough to pitch the Andretti car into a broadside spin, and for Wickens to launch off its nose.
Wickens briefly rode along the SAFER barrier, and the moment it made contact with the catch fencing it started to shed large pieces of bodywork and wheels, while pitching the tub into a series of vicious gyrations that thankfully ended with the car landing right-side up on the track.
Hunter-reay was unharmed in the wreck, while James Hinchcliffe and Pietro Fittipaldi were treated for bruises, cuts and swellings having been caught up in the aftermath.