2011 LVMS IZOD IndyCar Series

Well, what started as an ordinary race day didn't end that way. As usual, I'd agreed to meet Owen at the bottom of Tower 1 of the Excalibur hotel in order to head to the race track and allow us some time to stop for a healthy breakfast. Yesterday was Denny's and today was the turn of McDonalds. Nothing unusual so far, it was a Sausage and Egg McMuffin day - I had one and Owen had the rest. Thinking back, anomalies had started back here. Owen's Sausage and Egg McMuffins were somewhat lacking in the Egg department. They were indeed sans eggs.

We continued to the race track and were discussing how we thought the race would go. Yesterday's truck race had been a good race, but I was skeptical that today would be as entertaining, quoting the only IndyCar race I'd been to before at Sonoma where there were no on track overataking maneuvers and only two yellow flags (if memory serves). Now, I'm not looking for wrecks, although I will admit, they tend to make things interesting, I'm looking for action on the track. The challenge I have with open wheel racing is that the cars are very fragile and it's difficult to overtake, although I do like the “push to pass” in Indy and the “drag reduction system” in Forumla One. Closed wheel racing, on the other hand, does allow the drivers to be a bit more physical without shattering the car to bits.

We got to the stands early enough, so, as usual, decided to grab a couple of beers on the Mezzanine level in the shade and have a quick chat about more irrelevant things. About the only thing of interest is that we took a bet - Owen had Franchitti and I had Power, the winner being the one who had the best finish in the race. As the driver introductions finished, we grabbed a few more beers and headed up to the seats.

What happened next is pretty well documented everywhere. The race ran for 11 laps under green until there was the fatal accident of Dan Wheldon, followed by one lap of caution until the race was stopped under the red flag. During the 11 laps of racing, we'd been looking at how the cars were bottoming out in turn 1 as you can see in pictures 8351 and 8356 below. Picture 8361 gives you an idea of how close they were running to each other. What you can't tell from the picture is the speeds - they were averaging 220-230 mph round the track. We were commenting on how visibly faster the race was than the NASCAR races we normally see.

On lap 11 it seemed like there was contact in turn one and a car (possibly Cunningham) ended up sideways and then there was contact. After that, it seemed like nobody managed to slow down and the wrecks kept happening including Will Power and Dan Wheldon going airborne. 8367 shows Dan Wheldon hitting the bunch of cars on the bottom of the track. He then goes airborne and flips into the fencing on the side of the track and comes down in a fireball maybe 200-300 yards away - photo 8368 which, according to the shutter speed of the camera is 1/3 of a second after the previous photo. This speed carries most of the wreckage through turn two and onto the Nellis straightaway. Paul Tracy appears to have been very lucky given the damage on his car, but what remained of Wheldon's 77 is not a lot in 8372a.

Now, if you'd asked me beforehand to sit in the Vegas sun for 2 hours doing nothing, I'd have told you no way, but that's effectively what happened. At first, the announcer had said that everyone was OK, so we were hoping for the best. We were joking about the fact that Will Power was out, so Owen had won the bet as Franchitti was still running. Owen went and got some more beers and food and we were hopeful the race was going to start, but time kept ticking on. We were told that Dan was in a serious condition and had to be airlifted to the hospital. I guess I'd now started to fear the worst as I sent Karen a text at 1.24 “Not good. Dan Wheldon is very serious. One of the worst incidents in Indy history.” There was still some hope, but Dario Franchitti was interviewed and indicated that he didn't think the race should continue. After we heard Dario, we were pretty sure the race was not going to be run or at least Dario himself would only run another lap and pull the car behind the wall (after all, he'd won the championship again at this point - although I'm sure not how he'd want to).

The person I felt sorry for was the announcer on the PA system. Initially after the red flag, people were only partially listening. After about an hour, however, every time he came on, a deathly silence fell across the crowd as everyone waited to hear news about Dan and the race. There was a lot of discussion about a meeting that was taking place between the race officials, the owners and the drivers. There was a leaked report that Danica had broken down and it was that which convinced me the injuries to Dan were very serious. You could make an assumption that a woman may have been more emotional, but I figured it was because they had more information than we did as to the status of Wheldon. The next news we had was that the owners had been asked to leave the room and only the drivers and race officials remained. After that, the announcement that Dan Wheldon had passed away. Shock ran through the crowd, but I suspect most people were already fearing the worst. Any comments about female emotions would have been misplaced as the finality of the news made me weep.

The drivers agreed to do a three wide, five laps of honor in memory of Dan Wheldon. The three wide being symbolic of the start of the Indy 500 of which Dan was well known with two wins including that race of this season. The songs played were Danny Boy (probably wouldn't have been my choice of a song for an Englishman) and Auld Lang Syne. I can't imagine what it was like for the drivers to get back into the cars and do the five lap tribute, but I'm glad they did. The sentiment that was expressed was that if there would be anyone to tell them to get back in their cars, it would have been Dan.

Dan Wheldon R.I.P.

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