Huge Indycar crash

DiCe! · 17 Oct 2011 at 09:52

Very Imola 1994, a sad day

spudbynight · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:03

Woke up to this - horrific crash.

RIP

hurfdurf · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:05

Horrible news, RIP.

MeEsH BaKkA · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:06

Todge said:
Can anyone explain why there were so many flames from so many cars literally just after they took off? Do they not run similar fuel tanks to F1?

Shocking crash

I would rather know why the roll bar failed.

I believe Indy cars run on methanol, which burns invisibly so any flames would be from burning oil.
I'm 99.9% sure they would have safety tanks to stop fuel fires.

Skeeter · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:06

RIP Dan Wheldon

The most fitting tribute that IndyCar can give him is to learn from this and work to improve safety to ensure this never happens again. He should not die in vain, and I am sure he wont.

GingerNinja1989 · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:10

Todge said:
I don't follow Indy at all but apparently this was the last race for that chassis as the new safer one was due to start next season which Wheldon himself had been testing. Some of the features could well have prevented this fatality sadly

RIP.

The ultimate irony, unfortunately. I wonder what Dallara think about the rollover protection failing?

Westyfield2 · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:24

RIP Dan Wheldon.

leaskovski · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:29

At the speed they are doing, I guess the chances of those rollbars failing are greater. I wonder what sort of tests they perform and if they check it to a much greater speed and impact than the cars could achive at Vegas?

Anyway, Wheldon was a cracking driver, it was such a shame to see it have a bad run recently, and then to come back and do a good one at the 500! Such a loss to IndyCar.

NathanE · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:35

leaskovski said:
At the speed they are doing, I guess the chances of those rollbars failing are greater. I wonder what sort of tests they perform and if they check it to a much greater speed and impact than the cars could achive at Vegas?

Anyway, Wheldon was a cracking driver, it was such a shame to see it have a bad run recently, and then to come back and do a good one at the 500! Such a loss to IndyCar.

I think roll bars are designed to take force from the top down. But it seems to me it impacted the catch fence with a lateral load and basically got sheered straight off at 200mph.

el_dazza · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:39

Thought I was waking up from a bad dream when I heard this but I'd left my TV on overnight, I really did think I was imagining it until I saw it. A truly awful accident and a great driver has been lost. RIP Dan, motorsport won't forget you.

Django x2 · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:49

Very sad news. If he'd won, wasn't something like $5m going to be donated to charity?

KMpuggy · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:52

Half to him if he won the race and half to a lucky fan. I can see that going to dans family now, would be a nice touch.

Camalot · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:58

Firestar_3x · 17 Oct 2011 at 11:10

Terrible

R.I.P Dan.

How does Indycar safety compare to F1?

utajoker · 17 Oct 2011 at 11:17

RIP

horrible news.

HummuH1 · 17 Oct 2011 at 11:28

I had only just finished watching the Senna film when this news broke.

RIP

Trojan · 17 Oct 2011 at 11:39

Such sad news, my heart goes out to his young family

Some Formula One driver reactions:

http://news.sky.com/home/article/16090349

fabkat · 17 Oct 2011 at 11:41

Awful news

RIP

Bubo · 17 Oct 2011 at 13:17

KMpuggy said:
Half to him if he won the race and half to a lucky fan. I can see that going to dans family now, would be a nice touch.

There is a video of the press conference where they announced this on youtube, Dan Wheldon said some some tragiclly prophetic stuff during this, things like he hoped top make it a spectacular show etc. Not that it means anything but he did bare more than a passing resemblence to David Beckham I thought, he basically had it all really.

TaKeN · 17 Oct 2011 at 13:23

Rest in Peace