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.