I agree about open wheel oval racing. It's so stupid. I counted so many times where I thought Helio was going to wipe out with Wheldon. Formula one is at least a lot slower where there is opportunity to make contact. That, and if there it contact, there is usually a lot of room for slowdown before you smack into a wall at 200mph as with Indy. There should also be penalties if people don't slow down during yellows. That's ridiculous that someone had a huge wreck and people are still doing 200. It should work like pit-lane speed limits; where the cars MUST slow down.
1. I can count how many times that NASCAR gets close to taking each other out with more cars then just Wheldon and Helio at nearly 190mph, a mere 30mph less then what the IRL was running today. Does this mean the IRL is suicidal and/or stupid? No.
2. Formula 1 is on a road course. Completely different style of racing. Don't even think of comparing apples and orange. Also don't assume for a second that they are somehow safer. I could read you the list of recent F1 drivers from the past decade who have sustained injures that forced them to sit out races.
3. All IRL and Champ Car oval courses use SAFER barriers on all inside and outside walls to help reduce the impact from a crash. It is considered one of the best safety innovations of the past decade alongside the HANS Device. In fact, it was invented by the IRL, and is even making it's way to road courses (a similar SAFER barrier was recently put in place at the Paul Ricard HTTT). Yes, ovals don't have run-off. So what? More dangerous? Yes. Unsafe? No. Drivers walk away from their cars after head-on impacts at 200mph. You tell me how that's wrong.
4. Paul Dana had 8 seconds from the time the yellow came out to the time he hit Ed Carpenter. He hit the car at anything from 170mph to 190mph, after running approximately 220mph. Therefore he had to be stopping sometime during those 8 seconds. This means he had, give or take, 6 seconds of reaction time. Now, I'm sure you only saw the video that CNN has plastered up, but other videos show he was in the process of passing another car on the bottom groove at the time of Ed Carpenter's accident. To simply slam on the brakes while alongside another car is not smart. However, did Dana react too slow? Yes. Was it grossly too slow for any driver to be doing? No. Is it something that demands a penalty? No, simply because this is a rare occurance
Drivers ARE required to slow down for a caution. They aren't required to slow down within certain parameters however, only to slow down as safely as possible. The fact that Dana didn't slow down in time is not the fault of the IRL, it's rules, or of the driver ignoring the yellow, just that he made a mistake.
Open Wheel racing on ovals is hardly suicide, but improper car design and construction coupled with woefully untested and inexperienced drivers IS.
What's needed, in all reality, is a return to one of the current dirty words in car building - Ground Effects. The safest period in Indy history was a period dominated by ground effect cars that sucked to the track and didn't suddenly lose grip because of dirty air on the bodywork or spoilers.
Ground Effects also allowed for larger, more robust sidepods and encouraged bulkier nosework. When you compare the Indycars of the 80's and early 90's to the spindly flat-bottom cars of today, you see why spins, flips, and ultimately injuries are up, while speeds are not.
Unfortunately, Ground Effects were removed in the interest of "cost control" and "slowing the cars down for safety". This cocktail of misinformation has created a generation of cars that are unstable at 200+ mph and unsuitable for traditional (and traditionally safe) Indy racing.
And if the field was comprised of Gordon Johncock, Al Unser Sr., Johnny Rutherford, Swede Savage, Mike Hiss, Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney, and A.J. Foyt, as it was in the last period of overpowered, bodywork downforce dependent cars (the 1970's USAC period), then we'd also have no worries. USAC had incredibly strict protocols for driver entrance into Indy races. You needed a prior racing record, a year in the "Big Cars" (then called Champ Cars, but since have been called Silver Crown), had to compete in specific big track races in the Big Cars (Trenton or Milwaukee for instance), and then needed to have the PERMISSION of already sanctioned drivers (like Andretti or Johncock) just to take the rookie test.
Lots of hoops to jump through, but it produced consistently competent drivers, as opposed to the current "Buy a Ride" climate.
1) Today's accident had nothing to do with aerodynamics, speed, or a mistake in car design. It was a rookie mistake. Therefore the whole arguement on ground affects is pointless.
2) Today's cars are not getting faster because the governing bodies are working hard to make them slower. This is why the record speeds for qualifying at the Indy 500 were set in 1996, and noone has gotten close to even matching them since then. The flat bottom cars DID get faster, but then they got too fast, and thus they were restricted. Bigger wings that are designed to generate drag are the reason why speeds are not up, it is not because of a design flaw. Injuries and deaths however are not up (only 3 people have died in the IRL's existance, none have been during an actual race, and two of those were single car incidents). To claim that today's IRL cars are less stable at speed only disproves your arguement that the people driving them are unskilled, added with the fact that injuries are not up.
3) To attempt to compare 1970s USAC cars to 2000s IRL cars is nuts. To even attempt to think that those drivers would instantly perform well in IRL cars is equally nuts, as is it to think that the entire field of USAC drivers in the 1970s were on the same skill level as those drivers. And, to add to that, to think that the USAC cars were in any way comparable in speed to modern IRL cars is laughable. As you said yourself, they considered a circuit like Milwaukee big...
4) Paul Dana had a full year in the Infiniti Pro Series (including 1 win) and a half a season of starts in the IRL in 2005 prior to his back injury that forced him to sit out the other half. He was officially a rookie, but he more then passed to drive these cars.
my deepest condonlences go to his family and friends.
