Whilst browsing the BBC website last night, I heard the story of a British racing driver named Dan Wheldon being seriously injured in a high speed Indy car crash. I was straight onto my social media pages to see how bad the accident was. Already people were displaying messages of RIP and the like, before it was officially confirmed through trustworthy sources.
I have never avidly watched Indy car racing and had only vividly heard of Dan Wheldon, but it always seemed to me that the cars looked like 1980’s styles F1 cars driving at speeds faster than today’s F1 cars and were designed flimsily and looked worryingly easy to break into pieces. This was without mentioning that on most circuits they were driving on oval circuits with walls and short catch fences and about 40 cars bunched together on short tracks. It seems that this was just part of the spectacle of the sport which is followed massively in the USA.
All motorsport is dangerous, that goes without saying, but surely ensuring the safety of the drivers, teams and spectators is paramount at least from an ethical viewpoint, the organisers should do all they can to ensure the race doesn’t result in the loss of anyone’s life. After all, sport is meant to be exciting and fun. For me, as an avid F1 fan, I have always felt this way and although seeing spectacular crashes is exciting and gripping, I do not want to see someone lose their life in front of my eyes on my TV. F1 has moved on from its dark days of regular deaths during the sixties and seventies, there hasn’t been a death in the sport for almost 20 years now. There are less cars, better driver, team and spectator protection and circuits that still punish mistakes but without injuring the driver. Surely this is what we want. Times have changed and technology is one of the factors that have made this possible, as well as increased concern from the majority of people in F1 for better safety. So why has this not followed suit in Indycar racing?
My viewpoint is that, American racing fans want to see close and exciting racing, and racing on ovals is tradional and is what the fans want to see. The fans ultimately have a huge say in what the organisers do and where they race. James Hunt, the F1 world champion in 1976, was once famously quoted as saying during an interview in the seventies that people go to a F1 race in the hope of seeing someone get killed. This was a controversial thing to say of course and such a sweeping comment is unjust to the majority who want to support their favourite team or driver, but there is a philosophy among a lot of racing fans that danger is a part of motor racing and taking that away would remove all elements of fun. To a certain extent I support this view, danger will always be there, but I still hold the firm view that spectators don’t go to see people get hurt in the races and increasing safety is something the overwhelming majority will support.
The organisers in my view should have really done something about this. Before the fateful race, many of the Indycar drivers voiced their concern about the amount of cars and the likeliness that a multi car pile up could happen easily given the walls and the volume of cars. The organisers insisted the race must continue and no doubt the lost revenue that would have resulted would have contributed somewhat to that, by then it was too late.
Dan Wheldon was up for a challenge of $5 million dollars to win from the back of the grid, it was a challenge that was daunting but I am sure most drivers would have loved the thrill of going for. The adrenaline rush of racing like that is something he and all of the Indycar drivers want like a drug, none of them would race if they knew they were going to be killed for sure.
Indycar racing and F1 racing have headed in different directions, maybe now is the time for the Indycar organisers to finally look at the fantastic safety record that F1 has achieved in the past few years and analyse how these principles can be applied to save the necessary loss of more Indy car drivers lives and at least from their perspective, for it not to be on their consciences.
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