Dan Wheldon dead

stevanford1

stevanford1

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America's Oval lunacy has claimed another victim. Greg Moore, Paul Dana, Dan Wheldon. How many more until they stop racing openwheelers at 200+ mph around a way too highly banked noodle pot.

R.I.P. Dan :cry:
 
When I started karting at 12, he was one of the big names in the UK, so I've been aware of him since then.
That video is fairly terrifying; I don't watch open wheel racing on ovals so I have no idea about safety records, but it does seem like a recipe for that kind of thing; at least on (non-oval) tracks the car is only reaching very high speeds in one or two places, and at most you have two or three cars within contact distance, not 30...
 
If I recall my stats correctly, open wheel superspeedway racing is actually safer than European road circuits in terms of persons killed per miles driven (albeit not by much). However, I don't think that this thread is really the proper place to discuss the merits of various different types - that discussion is for another time and another place.
 
Quite agree. All motorsports are dangerous, but those who compete do it for the passion and the reward.

This is not the place for a Health and Safety debate.

The "Tiddlywinks with Safety Goggles and Rigger Gloves" Thread is thataway........
 
RIP Dan Wheldon
 
Sadly only now will most British people discover one of our most talented and underrated racing drivers. RIP Dan Wheldon
 
RIP Dan.
 
RIP Dan Wheldon.

The 5 Lap Tribute to Dan.

Having seen some pictures of the car, the airbox was torn off by the catch fencing. Not to sound macabre or a dick or anything but I wonder what the cause of his death was? Head injury seems the most likely.
 
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RIP Dan, and Loz I am sure the cause of death was some sort of head trauma
 
Loz said:
Having seen some pictures of the car, the airbox was torn off by the catch fencing. Not to sound macabre or a dick or anything but I wonder what the cause of his death was? Head injury seems the most likely.
Click to expand...

The consensus seems to be that it was head and/or neck/spinal trauma caused by hitting the vertical support of the catch fence. Someone managed to catch a pic a few seconds after the fence impact; spoilered out of respect and for the reason that some people may not wish to see this, though there is no blood or gore.
vQ6hoyzL19639.jpg

I suspect that there is going to be a bunch of engineers looking at this (especially at UNL, where they developed the SAFER barrier wall system) to see if the catch fence can be redesigned to prevent this from happening again.

One thought circulating is that this might contribute to the end open-cockpit single-seater racing in the US, if not around the world. The open cockpit is the one real vulnerability of the modern Indy and F1 car. After seeing this... I'm not so certain that enclosing the cockpit is a bad idea any more.
 
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RIP Dan.......such a horrible crash.
 
lukenwolf said:
America's Oval lunacy has claimed another victim. Greg Moore, Paul Dana, Dan Wheldon. How many more until they stop racing openwheelers at 200+ mph around a way too highly banked noodle pot.

R.I.P. Dan :cry:
Click to expand...

it was pretty horrific:(. i liked Wheldon, an awesome driver and a "peoples" race car champ. i had watched it and hoped he would be alright. going to be a tough Indy 500 next year. theres been a lot of drivers killed in the last decade and not just in IRL.

Champ Cars (think... US F1 cars) were quite a bit faster and didnt race on the bigger circuits because of the MASSIVE g's they would sustain in the long corners. F1 cars had that problem at Indianapolis when a bunch of teams ran a single lap then retired because of concern over safety. they were going so fast for so long, they were blistering the tires.

the one thing Wheldon got to do was to go out doing what he loved. i hope i could do the same.

RIP Dan
 
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