Well, I tried my damndest.
Sincerely,
Chopped Liver
Uh, no. The saddest part of all is that the guy is DEAD.
Well, yeah. It’s damn tragic that he finally got the ride he’d been hustling for, showed a lot of promise as a former series champion and 2-time Indy winner, AND that he’s DEAD.
This is so bad. I’m a huge fan of Indy Car, and as the minutes ticked by on Sunday and no news was received, and the faces on the pit crews got longer and longer…it was terrible. Wheldon was a wonderful guy, and his death is a huge loss for the league.
I’m still upset, and now I’m a little angry. There were too many cars on the track, and a lot of newer guys (Wheldon included?) were racing too hard for the 12th lap. I saw Graham Rahal during the coverage, and he looked guilty and upset. I doubt he was to blame at all, but he’s been known for hard driving the past couple of races, and I would not be surprised if he’s feeling some heavy guilt, along with Viso and Hinchcliffe and Cunningham.
To me, the biggest issue this highlights is that the Indy Car program IS NOT NASCAR!! It is not NASCAR, it will not be NASCAR, and should not be fitted into a NASCAR mold in the hopes of gaining fans and ratings shares. These cars had no business on such a banked oval track, without some kind of back wing modification to prevent the packed racing at full speed. The design of this track let these guys race way too fast and too close together - because it’s designed for NASCAR, where the cars are very different, in both speed and design.
The biggest problem is that so many cars went airborne. It very easily could have been Mann or Power dead, as they went airborne, or terribly, all three of them. He died because his head hit the fence, and his head hit the fence because he was twirling in the air. My hopes are that the new car design, with the rear “bumper” and the non-flat bottom prevents cars flying around. I also saw a great design idea, where the driver sits kind of back into a thicker roll bar area behind his head. It’s not a protective dome, does not interfere with the visibility for either the driver or the crowd, and is more substantial. I hope they look at a retro-mod for something like this either with the new car, or as part of the Aero-kits coming in 2013.
I would love to see Indy Car racing become the biggest in the land. I know they are having trouble adding ovals to the race schedule because ovals are now basically for NASCAR. But, that’s fine with me. If I wanted NASCAR, I would watch NASCAR. It would be wonderful for TGBB to work with small track owners over the next few years to develop new, non-banked, 1.5+ mile tracks for the Indy guys to run, much like he did with Baltimore to develop their street race this season. I personally don’t care for their NASCAR-style ovals - very dull to me, and anyone who knows anything about Indy cars knows this was just an accident waiting to happen. Under no circumstances should drivers be racing that close, at 220+ mph, with no need to brake or even lift off the gas. Will Power himself called it “brainless racing” prior to this race in an interview, and he’s right. Spectators don’t enjoy it either, and now it’s proven to be fatal.
I will really miss Dan Wheldon. He was just fantastic and fun and enthusiastic, and was a star of the circuit, even though he may have been a part-timer this year. His commentary on Versus this year was excellent, and made me love him. I remember fondly him talking to Franchitti on a “pit run” before a race, and Wheldon made some pithy comment about his own future in broadcasting. Franchitti looked at him and said something like “come on, you’ll be back here soon where you belong” and the look of regard and affection was unmistakable.
Just heartbreaking…
I don’t think anyone can debate that F1 is the pinnacle of the sport, but that’s not to say that other forms of open wheel don’t have equally skilled drivers. You’re attributing results to skill, which in F1 is a smaller part of the equation.
Rick Mears jumped into the same car as current world champ Nelson Piquet and turned faster laps out of the gate. Ecclestone offered Mears a car immediately, if Mears was willing to pay for the seat, to which he promptly laughed and went back to CART.
Senna rated Andretti quite highly and realized Andretti wasn’t getting much team support and needed more time (that he didn’t get) to adjust.
Villeneuve looked great in a superior car and worse than Montoya in a mediocre to bad ride.
Montaya finished 3rd in pts two successive seasons with rides inferior to Ferrari and roughly equal to McLaren-Mercedes.
Wheldon won more kart titles in Britain than guys like Hamilton, Button, and Coulthard. Politics and a lack of available slots on competitive teams to him picking US open wheel over a non-competitive F1 ride.
Since the safety reforms post-Senna, 95% of F1 results are dictated by team resources and how those resources are divided among teammates.
Well said, Sateryn76. I too, am a big fan of IndyCar (at least since TG left; before that, I was a fan of ChampCar/CART).
I’m not sure blame can be laid, certainly not at any one place or any one person’s feet. It’d be easy to blame RB or TGBB for what happened, but at the same time, it seems too callous, glib, and just plain wrong to say, “It’s one of those things that happens in racing.”
I agree with you about ovals; I prefer road and street courses. One problem with those as I understand it is a lot of the road courses aren’t wide enough for the current cars (I’m thinking of Mid-Ohio specifically). And many street courses are roundly criticized for being nothing but parades.
So what are the powers to do? Have parades on the streets and road courses, or give fans exciting side-by-side racing on ovals? IndyCar historically has given us both–part of the appeal has been the variety of tracks.
This is one of my all-time favorite commercials, but it also indicates one of the problems we’re talking about: faster.