Flipping Franchitti!

[wedge]

Thank the Lord!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrsRFUCc6Rs

[gm99]

Pretty scary stuff - good to hear no-one was injured in that.
Also great that Dario didn't lose his humour, his first comment having been "I got to thank Scott [Dixon] for the soft landing" :D

And it's nice to see Sam Hornish Jr. giving a hand in the rescue :thumbsup:

[luvracin]

Really amazing that he walked away. Was definitely holding my breath until I saw him throw the steering wheel out.

[cobre]

thank you Lord for keeping all involved safe;Prayers were answered: praise God!

[Anubis]

thank you Lord for keeping all involved safe;Prayers were answered: praise God!

Makes me wonder what said Lord was doing to allow the crash to happen in the first place, but that's probably another discussion for another time. Glad everyone escaped injury.

[ChampUSfan]

Really amazing that he walked away. Was definitely holding my breath until I saw him throw the steering wheel out.

I was like you...and I was shaking too...

[EagleEye]

Thank the Lord!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrsRFUCc6Rs

We had that bad gut wrenching feeling like we had at Fontana years ago....

We certainly were happy to hear that he was moving about inside the cockpit when the emergency crew got there, and finally took our first breath when we saw him step out of the car.

There were a handful of us who met up with him after he left the infield care center, and gave him a heartfelt slap on the back.

Thank God indeed.

[MAX_THRUST]

Flipping IRL cars are still scaring the hell out of me...........why are they still taking off, new cars are needed soonest!!!!!!1

[Komahawk]

Flipping IRL cars are still scaring the hell out of me...........why are they still taking off, new cars are needed soonest!!!!!!1

To me it looked like Dario ran over Wheldon's wheel when Wheldon pulled into him. New cars or not, when you run over a wheel you go up. There already was an endless discussion about it after the Briscoe crash.

Dario IMO was never really in trouble. Similar to Rice three years ago he floated through the air and touched down easily. The really lucky guys were Dixon and Foyt. When there is debris falling down upon you, let alone an entire car, there is no way to protect yourself against it. In order to be safe in such situations you'd need a roof. Anyway, Dario's wheel hit Dixon's dashboard, and Foyt had traces of rubber on his helmet, resulting from a 'contact' with another wheel of Dario.

Best comment came from Danica about Wheldon. Tell it like it is!

[jimbo111]

The whole group was lucky. Foyt had tire marks on his helmet.

It does show how close the racing was. The whole lead pack was involved.

I'll tell you, as it happened I had a sudden rush of worry. It wasn't until the announcer said everybody seemed to be all right that I released some of that worry.

I thought Sam Hornish Jr. lending a hand showed a lot of class and concern.

-=-

[wedge]

The car landed upside down twice. The rollover bar would've done its job during the first impact but not so on the second impact or maybe because it was a lower speed?

I'm surprised Dario walked away with no neck/spinal injuries.

[NoFender]

To me it looked like Dario ran over Wheldon's wheel when Wheldon pulled into him. New cars or not, when you run over a wheel you go up. There already was an endless discussion about it after the Briscoe crash.

Dario IMO was never really in trouble. Similar to Rice three years ago he floated through the air and touched down easily. The really lucky guys were Dixon and Foyt. When there is debris falling down upon you, let alone an entire car, there is no way to protect yourself against it. In order to be safe in such situations you'd need a roof. Anyway, Dario's wheel hit Dixon's dashboard, and Foyt had traces of rubber on his helmet, resulting from a 'contact' with another wheel of Dario.



Agreed, no matter the car design, once you touch wheels like that, one or the other is going up.

I was more concerned for Dixon. Looked scary.

[Chris R]

I am glad people are not coming out of the woodwork condemning the "flying IRL cars" after this one..... As several of you have said - this was an open wheel racing accident - when a wheel goes over another wheel, somebody is going to fly...

I thought the scary part of the accident was when Dixon hit Dario upside down - it was hard to tell where or how they hit from the TV - I was actually worried that either one of thier roll bars might have hit the other driver in the helmet as they passed - that would have been bad.....

I agree about the comments about Sam Hornish - good for him for offering a hand in a useful but unobtrusive way..... classy move....

[Komahawk]

Yea, Hornish is a class act.

It's only hypothetical, but what would've been far more dangerous is if the accidents of Herb, Fisher or Manning had occured directly ahead of the lead pack. A car drifting sideways across the track and a packed group of 6 or 7 hard battling cars suddenly having to dodge it, that's no good.

[Komahawk]

And BTW, I keep picking Penske and they keep getting collected. Damn!

[milly]

I am glad people are not coming out of the woodwork condemning the "flying IRL cars" after this one..... As several of you have said - this was an open wheel racing accident - when a wheel goes over another wheel, somebody is going to fly...

I thought the scary part of the accident was when Dixon hit Dario upside down - it was hard to tell where or how they hit from the TV - I was actually worried that either one of thier roll bars might have hit the other driver in the helmet as they passed - that would have been bad.....

I agree about the comments about Sam Hornish - good for him for offering a hand in a useful but unobtrusive way..... classy move....


Open wheel cars racing at this sort of speed is a recipe for danger. It takes one, miniscule error and there are massive consequences.

Both Franchitti and Scheckter were genuinely frightened by what had happened to them.

Look at the wheel-to-wheel incidents - Brack, Briscoe, now Franchitti. IRL has got to get sensible and not run these crazy, high-speed death races. Any open wheel car doing these speeds, which touches tires with another car, is going to fly.

Worse still, pretty soon one of these crashes will end up in the crowd. Look at the Castroneves/Meira shunt - right in front of the main grandstand; Meira's car nearly launching skywards.

It's time for IRL to understand that this cannot go on....how many warnings do they need?

[Komahawk]

Here we go again...


When a car runs over a wheel it takes off. Not only at 220+ mph, but also at 50 mph. By that logic all (openwheel) racing on all kind of tracks should be banned at once. However racing is getting safer every season, especially in the IRL. And just BTW, the catch fences at the ovals are alot stronger than those at Monte Carlo or Long Beach.

However the oval catch fences are a threat mainly to the drivers. But the IRL has already started research on a flexible fencing, following the Perez/Guthrie incident in Miami this year. I hope and expect it to be equally successful as the SAFER barrier.

[Sandfly]

Flying is a relative term. The IRL cars have shown themselves to be prone to taking a flight whenever they get air under the sidepods. They fly much higher than from wheel contact alone and it is a problem that is known and repeated. Dario is lucky that he landed upside down so that he didn't break his back.

[Komahawk]

Oh? I wonder why 60 year old Mario Andretti didn't break his back when he took off and did NOT land upside down.

[Andrewmcm]

Cars flying through the air isn't that dangerous in and of itself - having Franchitti's car that high in the air travelling along underside-first acts as a pretty good air-brake for when the car finally touches ground again. As the crash showed, he was only really in any danger when he came into close proximity with other cars after he landed.

The real danger of cars getting airborne is when they hit something farily solid and stationary, such as a concrete wall or catch fencing. We've seen enough incidents over the years in most forms of open-wheel racing to know that flying cars hitting immovable objects do not usually have particularly favourable outcomes for the drivers, and I'm glad that research is underway to try to replace catch fencing with something that is more flexible and acts less like a shredder to a flying car.

Open-wheel car take off due to touching wheels is inevitable, and its effect is only magnified by the speeds found on ovals. You can't change the mechanics of the situation when two cars have their wheels interlocked. Reducing the probability of the car and driver being destroyed by improving the safety features of the tracks is a far more relevant discussion than being sidelined by bun-fights about the relative dangers of open-wheel cars on ovals.

[Mark in Oshawa]

I think the reason this kind of incident resonates with many is because it is a byproduct of the close pack racing that has evolved in IRL races of the last few years. Like the Superspeedway packages in NASCAR, no one seems to get away from the rest easily now, and it causes more issues because OW cars shouldn't make contact in any sense EVER at 220mph. It however happens, so we have one or two incidents a year like this, and it just is plain scary to think of how lucky some of these guys have to be.

Do I think the car is at fault? No, it is a byproduct of the rules and the nature of everyone running the same package. I do think though the IRL should start to think about the price the drivers have to pay for this "close" racing.

It was scary, but I knew Dario was going to be ok. What scared me was the guys who hit him as he came down. AJ Foyt the third had the tire mark on his head, and it always makes me wonder if a car came down on the right angle, would it impale a driver down below? It makes you wonder......