Dan Wheldon

[Tom Booth]

I'm amazed there's not a topic about this already..

Dan Wheldon, at the minute the UK's best race driver died following an accident at the indy300 race yesterday. Tragic loss of a brilliant driver. Not exactly old either at 33.

I watched him drive at goodwood this year an he seemed to be enjoying putting on a show with burn outs an huge dohnuts, even spoke to me about his car which was fantastic. Seemed a good sport an all round nice chap.

Rip Dan an condolences to all affected through this tragedy.

[Andeee]

Rest in peace dude.

My thoughts go to his family and close friends

x

[Matthew_Gibson]

I seen the race before! was a awful accident! Such a talant gone!

RIP

[Pete.M]

It really is tragic, I thought safety would've come further in Indy car racing.

It's 2011, no one should be getting killed in motorsport.

Condolences to his family and friends.

[Skoze]

Saw this on the news this morning, looked pretty horrendous.

Rip that man.

[Simpson]

It really is tragic, I thought safety would've come further in Indy car racing.

It's 2011, no one should be getting killed in motorsport.

Condolences to his family and friends.

When the front gets lifted the aerodynamics make the car take off like a plane as air travels under the car and the rear wing trys to keep downforce theres nothing much you can do about it, its been seen in F1 with webber, le mans and many other times, with the speed and close proximity of Nascar its not surprising. At the end of the day these guys were hitting 220 when the crash occurred and no matter how much run off zone / safe barriering there can be sometimes people will unfortunatly sometimes be unlucky. Not watching Nascar much the main concern I had when I saw the crash initially was how easily the fuel tanks seemed to go leaving fire across the whole of the track.

Tragic loss to the sport, great driver RIP Dan, condolences to friends and family.

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

snip

The lack of runoff/give in the crash barriers is one thing but the crash structures in the cars seem to be fairly shite too- in the crash I lost count of the number of cars which had just turned into darts with no side impact structure left. Combined with the apparent crap fuel cells there really are issues there.

You mention the F1 and Lemans accidents where the cars have taken off- in none of those have there been a fatality or even a serious injury (in recent years anyway). Sure Dan was unlucky but it does seem like the Indy series (not Nascar ) is unnecessarily dodgy.

[Simpson]

Yea apparently there were concerns before the race that the track was unsutible. Yea I'm sure your right Dave you know far more about this stuff than I could ever dream about, I guess all I was commenting on was "Pete.M's" statement that "no one should be getting killed in motorsport" anymore, all drivers know the risks every time they take to the track, I remember when Lewis Hamilton tryed to retract his statement, "If I'm going to die, I want to die racing", he said something like "of course I don't want to die racing no-one does but it can happen".

Both the F1 and Lemans cars didn't land upside down, I don't know how much protection there is for that sort of impact even those classes? The nature of Indy (all American shite racing ) is un-nessicarly dangerous, its like trying to fit a parking lot of cars 5 a breast through a 200+ MPH banked corner... it always looks sketchy as f**k.

Anyway I don't want this to sound like I'm trying to take away from Dans death hopefully the series can look forward and adapt like other racing series to ensure that this doesn't happen to any driver in the future.