Indy driver who defied death twice deserves a lucky break
After surviving a horror crash and an armed robbery, life can surely only get better for race ace, says Jim White
Scott Dixon’s wife is a queen of understatement. After watching her husband spin across the track at the Indianapolis circuit in a crash that redefined the term “alarming”, Emma Davies-dixon displayed astonishing stiffness of the upper lip.
“It obviously wasn’t our week,” she deadpanned to waiting reporters.
You can say that again. In the build-up to the Indy 500, Dixon – who won the race in 2008 – was held up at gunpoint in a drive-through restaurant. Far from demonstrating any ill effects, the New Zealander proceeded to come out first in practice and enter America’s favourite motor race in pole position.
Then, on the 53rd lap, approaching full throttle on the home straight, he clipped the back of Briton Jay Howard’s car. Such was his speed that, as it span from the collision, Dixon’s car flew 20 feet into the air, struck the top of the trackside fencing and burst into flames before plummeting back to the Tarmac. There it rolled several times, shedding wheels, engine parts and body panels before finally grinding to a mangled, mashed, smashed-up halt in the middle of the track, facing backwards.
If you watch footage of the crash, it is impossible to work out how he emerges from the wreckage alive. But, in an astonishing testament to the safety features of modern race cars, he
If you watch footage of the crash, it is impossible to work out how he emerges from it alive
does so, with nothing more than a sore ankle.
However, if it is true that bad luck strikes in threes, you fear what lies ahead for Dixon. Could this week from hell be about to get worse? Will he be recruited to the Ferrari team, and find himself leading in the Monaco Grand Prix only to be obliged to take an unscheduled pit stop to enable his more favoured team-mate to overtake? Will he have spent the bank holiday afternoon listening to BBC Five Live’s coverage of the Championship play-off wondering why it is that a full three seconds have passed since the last time someone mentioned the value of the prize at stake? Or worse, could he be about to sign for Sunderland?
Not that Dixon will worry. Whatever the future holds, as a racing driver, risk is not something to which he is averse. This is what the job entails. Unless you are Jenson Button making your comeback from a life of leisure in Monte Carlo, obviously, in which case it entails driving very slowly at the back of the pack, looking lost and confused before retiring after shunting another car.
Facing down an armed psychopath in the takeaway queue is not a tricky thing to negotiate for a sportsman used to the adrenalin surge that comes from approaching a corner at 215mph. Top drivers are adrenalin junkies, for them the joyous high of competitive racing eclipses all fear. As Damon Hill admitted after retirement, it is not the prospect of crashing that most alarms a seasoned racing driver, it is the mundanity of a life without speed.
Now he has walked away from a wreck that would send most of us into a tailspin of alarm, Dixon will have no fear of what lies ahead. Like all his driving colleagues, he is clearly a man bereft of nerves. Though if the third prong of his bad luck were to entail a contract at the Stadium of Light, he might be wise to seek counselling.