Death in Racing

by Tammy

I was doubly shocked to hear of the death of Allan Simonsen at the start of the 24 Hours of Le Mans this weekend.

First, because of the death itself. So early in the race, no contact with other cars, not even on the fastest part of the track. On the other hand, Le Mans is not a track with lots of safety improvements ... mostly because it' snot really a track. It's modified country roads.

But second, I was shocked because on Friday night in Pasadena, CA, I had dinner with one of my editors and talked through ideas for the book I'm currently working on—about another 24 hour race, the one in Daytona. As we brainstormed about death toll means and motives for murder (it's what we do), she asked if someone could be killed in a car on the track, murdered to ramp up the tension. To make the situation gut-wrenching for Kate.

So I sat in my hotel room that night (I attended the California Crime Writers Conference over the weekend) and envisioned a scene in Kate's first stint in the car (in the race's third hour, most likely) where she's the first one past a terrible accident. One in which the driver dies soon after being removed from the car. Because that would give me the opportunity to explore how Kate will react. How she'll go on. How the race and the teams will go on.

And then, Saturday morning (my time), Allan Simonsen had a terrible impact with the guardrail at Le Mans. A different race. A different track. Reality versus fiction, again. And I was shocked.

I have no real conclusion, just a lot of jumbled emotions. I'm saddened by the loss of Simonsen, as I am by the recent losses of Jason Leffler, Dan Wheldon, and others. I'm reminded once again that I am unlikely to make up anything that hasn't happened in real-life racing—or maybe I'm reassured that even the "wild" ideas I have will be believable. (At least my racing scenarios. Perhaps not my murder plots). It's said that truth is stranger than fiction. Maybe it's simply as likely as fiction.

And sadly, ultimately, I'm reminded of something I said last week: physics will always win. Rest in peace, racers.

Safety in Racing

by Tammy

Racecar driver Jason Leffler died last Wednesday in a sprint car accident on a dirt track. There's speculation that something broke on the car, which is what propelled him into the wall, and we know that he hit the wall hard twice. He died from blunt force trauma to the neck (that's basically hitting something, not simply damage from deceleration forces), and I saw one suggestion that the first impact damaged the integrity of the car's cage, which allowed Leffler to be hurt in the second impact, or in both.

What I'm finding interesting, however, is the more subdued response to his death compared to Dan Wheldon's, for instance. After Wheldon's—which was in a much more public forum and happened to (let's be honest) a much more famous driver—there were tribute laps and weeks of discussion about how to make cars and tracks more safe. The response to Leffler's death seems to be less dramatic.

I suppose there are more reasons for that, specifically that dirt track racing is what it is, and will never be as regulated as the big-money series like IndyCar or NASCAR. I'm not saying no one cares, far from it. But the general consensus is that racecar drivers simply can't escape physics. Which is true enough.

Drivers, series, and tracks do their best to minimize the forces transferred to the driver's body in the event of a crash. The HANS (head and neck system, shown above), SAFER (steel and foam energy reduction, shown below) barriers, and the Car of Tomorrow were all mandated or instituted after Dale Earnhardt's death in 2001, in which he impacted the wall at -68 to -48 Gs. The CoT and SAFER barriers do a lot to absorb some of that force—as do tire barriers—but they can't do everything. (The HANS helps keep your neck where it should be and transfers force to the rest of your body.)

Leffler was wearing a HANS. So was Wheldon. But they weren't driving a CoT (those are in NASCAR). SAFER barriers didn't do Wheldon any good, because he flew above them (the ability to launch has been greatly reduced with the new IndyCar chassis, ugly though it may be). Leffler's local dirt track didn't have SAFER barriers, nor is it likely to put them in. Because that's not what dirt track racing is about.

Again, there's only so much you can do to outwit physics. Racing's history is littered with lives lost, famous and not-so-famous ones. I suppose it's only in the modern day that we have the luxury of being shocked when one of our current stars dies, because it's become so rare. Lucky us.

But every once in a while, we're reminded that there's really nothing about racing that's safe.

How to Fix IndyCar ... or Not

TAMMY: The only topic in the world of racing this week has been the passing of Dan Wheldon. The wind has been taken out of the sails of most in that world, and it's hard to contemplate another race (though there are still races to be run, including a typically fun one in Aussie V8 Supercars). That's not what this blog is about, however.

The conversation among drivers, industry insiders, fans, friends, and media has primarily centered on is How To Fix It. How to make sure it never happens again. How to feel like you're doing something to mitigate the grief. Every reaction and comment has been magnified and transmitted far beyond the norm, because of the increased attention of the media and therefore the world. Statements have been made by people who know what they're talking about and people who don't.

Suggestions have ranged from plexiglass catch "fencing" that would presumably bounce a car back onto the track but not tear it up, to closed-cockpit IndyCars that would offer more protection to the driver, to never allowing IndyCars to race 225 m.p.h., to ensuring they can't run in packs. I've stated many times before that I have a sportscar and road course bias, and I can't help thinking that IndyCar drivers would be a lot safer with a lid.

But I know Simon and others will argue for open-cockpit cars as being plenty safe. Simon, how would you "fix things," or would you change them at all?

SIMON: It’s a tough call. I think a lot of crap has been talked this week from various quarters that kind of feels like a mix between arse covering and thinly disguised attempts to say NASCAR is safer and better. At the end of the day, racing involves speed and crashes are inevitable and fatalities are a possibility and trying to pretend they aren’t is ridiculous.

I will say open-cockpit cars are safe. The driver is pretty well cocooned in there now. The driver’s head is supported from the sides and back. The driver sits very low now and their head doesn’t ride too high out of the cockpit like it did even ten years ago. Closed cockpit isn’t the answer. It’s been talked about before in F1 and it didn’t go far then and I think it has even less reason now. The issue comes down to escape routes. You enclose the cockpit and a driver will struggle to escape. The interesting thing that will come out of this crash will be the survival cell. Did anything fail and can it be improved. I’d be interested what comes out of the crash analysis.

I would like to see the design of Vegas Motorsport and for another oval, say Michigan or Indy, because the wall looked a little low on TV, so whether any design issues can be improved there.

For me, the big question is ovals themselves. The issue I have with ovals is that there's nowhere to go in a crash. There’s the wall. With a road course, there are gravel traps, tire walls and run off. A spins off on a road course, a car has somewhere to go. There’s room for the car to decelerate before hitting something. There isn’t with an oval. You hit an immovable object in the form of a wall. It’s a high speed impact combined with massive deceleration (or negative G). Physics takes over and there’s not a lot car design can do to change that. The interesting thing will be if anyone can calculate a survivable speed. It might not have made a difference if Dan had crashed at 200mph or 100mph. I would like to know whether there’s anything oval designers can do to soften the wall. Anything that can diffuse the energy would be a massive help. That would be my big fix.

That said, I think Sunday’s pileup was a perfect storm of elements that created something that is the exception and not the rule when it comes to crashes. Any attempts to un-write what happened with kneejerk solutions to help soothe the pain a lot of people are feeling will only create more problems.

TAMMY: Well, I agree on a few points. It was a perfect storm of bad stuff, any one of which hardly ever happens, but when taken together: disaster. I also agree that the situation requires slow study rather than knee-jerk response. I'm not so sure about the argument that closed-cockpit cars being hard to get out of. Look at sportscar racing. They get out of cars just fine. And the collar that IndyCar drivers have holding them in place seems awfully difficult for the drivers to manage. But perhaps it's the closed-cockpit of the IndyCar configuration that would be hard.

What do the rest of you think? Is there a way to fix things? What's the best approach?

Fiction Won't Break Your Heart

by Tammy

I write fiction. Murder mysteries set in the racing world. Which means that I cheerfully plot how and why someone dies. Sometimes it's someone who deserved to die. Sometimes it's not. Typically, the bad guy who did it is caught, and always in mysteries, readers have the satisfaction of knowing why it happened.

We say truth is stranger than fiction. The racing world today knows it's significantly more heatbreaking than fiction, too. A very good racecar driver died Sunday in the opening minutes of the last IndyCar race of the season. He won this year's Indy 500 (his second win). He'd tested the new 2012 IndyCar chassis, and one tweet I saw said he was excited about its safety measures. He was 33 and leaves behind a wife and two children.

Racing's an extremely dangerous sport and business. And sometimes there are no reasons why, bad things just happen. One such happened Sunday.

Rest in peace, Dan Wheldon.