The risks involved in auto racing are on many minds this week following the death of two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dan Wheldon in a gruesome 15-car wreck during the IndyCar season finale at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday.
For NASCAR and its fans, the discussion comes on the same week that the Sprint Cup circuit races at Talladega Superspeedway, the track known for having multi-car crashes at numerous events.
In the past couple of races at Daytona and Talladega, the two tracks where restrictor plates are used to slow the cars, the racing has been a bit different. Drivers have begun pairing, with the trailing driver pushing the car in front.
Doing so means the two travel much faster than a single car by itself. The problems with tandem racing arise because of the lack of visibility by the pushing driver, and now there are new rules in place that likely will force drivers to swap positions more often and therefore take chances on wrecking.
But most NASCAR drivers who have been interviewed this week say the kind of pack racing they do at places such as Talladega is different than what IndyCar drivers were doing at Las Vegas.
Jimmie Johnson, the defending Cup champion and a five-time champ, has had the strongest comments, saying the Indy cars have no business running on high-speed, high-banked superspeedways.
He said he once thought of competing in the Indianapolis 500, but that’s off his list now.
“My attorney and wife and I agreed that once we had children, I needed to look the other way,” he told reporters at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Monday. “The racer in me wants to, but I know how dangerous those cars are.
“[Sunday’s crash] was proof to the danger of those cars on ovals. They run so fast and get off the ground quite a lot.”
Johnson’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon, a guest on this week’s NASCAR teleconference, agreed that drastic changes are needed on the IndyCar side of the sport.
“Obviously under the current conditions, I wouldn’t say that the cars are safe enough to race on those types of high-banked, one-and-a-half-mile race tracks,” he said. “We’ve seen some really tragic crashes happen on those types of race tracks.
“Obviously, this one, losing Dan Wheldon, is one that you’ll hopefully make safety something that they look at in a different way. I think between the owners, the drivers in that series, you’ll see some big changes coming.”
Kurt Busch, whose car owner Roger Penske fields cars in both NASCAR and IndyCar, was asked the IndyCar-on-ovals question during Tuesday’s NASCAR teleconference, but his comments weren’t as strong as Johnson’s and Gordon’s.
“It’s tough to say IndyCars shouldn’t race on ovals,” he said. “They have so much downforce. They reach speeds that are much greater than what stock cars can. The problem is they just don’t have the roll cage, they don’t have the safety design that a stock car has.”
He also said he expects IndyCar to react strongly to the death of one of its top stars.
“There are changes that are going to come about,” he said. “I look to the leaders of [Indy Racing League] to be proactive in this, to understand what they can do to make their sport safer.”
And he said he felt safe in his Cup car, even at Talladega.
“Right now NASCAR is a place that has learned [about] what to do for safety over the last 10 years,” he said. “I feel very safe driving in the cars that we have.”
Gordon said that even with the drawbacks of the two-car tandem racing, he feels safer doing it than using some of the Talladega tactics used in the past. But he said putting himself in potentially dangerous spots is a big part of what he does for a living.
“We’re race-car drivers,” he said. “We’re probably going to take a lot more risk than the everyday average person because of what we do, and we recognize that.”
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