John, my condolences to the two of you as well. I had no actual connection with Justin but I am just an avid race fan. No race fan wants to hear this news. I was watching the race live with my brother and we are both in a sorrow state. Neither of us really know what to say it just hurts. We do know that he is now racing with other legends in the race track above enjoying no guidelines or restrictions. Godspeed. Our thoughts are with the family, friends, and the entire indy car "team". RIP Justin.
Sincere condolences to Justin's family and friends. Always enjoyed his racing and was pleased whenever he finished well. Goodbye champ.
Another tragic loss, a great driver and truly interesting character, saw him race a couple of times, RIP and all the strength in the world to his family... At least he did not suffer, it does not get more instantaneous than that... MS
+1. While never having met Justin Wilson, I always liked him and rooted for him to do well. It was great to learn that he had landed with a top team such as Andretti where he could finally prove his talent and that was hopefully going to continue into 2016. This news is deeply saddening. Not only for the family and fans of Justin Wilson but for racing (and Indy Car in particular) as a whole coming so close after the loss of Jules Bianchi under somewhat similar circumstances. These are the times where hoping for the best but bracing for the worst applies. As for Indy Car, this tragedy punctuates what has proven to be a nightmare season. They head into the last race at Sonoma with a championship fight to promote but who will really care? BHW
How many more incidents have happened since the new bodies vs the same time period with the open wheels? I'm not all that well versed with indy.
They've had many fatalities the last decade or so. I think it has less to do with the chassis design and more to do with high-speed oval racing. Cars are too clustered together (running 7-wide through a curve may be good spectacle, but the margin for error is infinitesimally small) and at those speeds there is very little time to react.
You can thank "spec" racing for it. Its why most racers are against the formula. Fine for the non professional weekend racer, but not for pro's. Turn the rules back and you will see better racing and less of the car clusters on the track.
Truth! IndyCar/CART spent too much time trying to improve the spectacle but at a high cost. Too high....
Whenever this discussion about enclosed cockpits comes up in open wheeled racing, it reminds me of when Renault ran at Le Mans in the late 70's. They came up with a clever way of keeping to the open cockpit concept but adding a (what looked like) a lexan covering on the Alpine in 1978. BHW Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Absolutely has to do with ovals and aero - along with the NASCAR influenced "rubbin' is racin'!!!" Total and utter nonsense - I preferred the oval races where a racer caught the draft and "slingshotted" past the driver ahead of him. This side-by-side stuff is not only boring, it's clearly asking for a death sentence. My rants against IndyCar is exactly against this crap.
Sounds like Wilson donated his organs to 6 recipients - even in death, his influence will be felt. Motorsports community mourns death of Justin Wilson
Justin Wilson's death was a direct cause of "spec" racing. Grouped too close together and whan the accident occured there was little he or anyone else could do. It's a damn shame a man loses his life because of a sanctioning bodies refusal to acknowledge it has made a big mistake in its racing format. Racing drivers understand the risk going in, but this simply did not need to happen.
I agree that Indycar(and F1 and NASCAR for that matter) is spec racing but that is not the cause of his death--it is probably the sheet velocity of Indycars on ovals. Sage Karam hit the wall all on his own and Justin was struck by Karam's nose cone as it returned to earth. Indycar is dangerous because the cars are open-wheel, open cockpit and the cars circulate at very high speeds. Granted the parity of the cars means that drivers cut the margins very closely to make a pass. The seven wide charge down the front straight at Pocono was insane.
His accident wasn't a part of spec racing, it is a part of open wheel racing and an extreme circumstance. Look at when Kvyat was behind Hulkenburg at Hungary when his wing went, you could hear the pieces hitting Kvyats car. RIP Justin, great racer.
No....I disagree. One needs to look at history of Indy Car to understand the cars and speed are NOT the problem. Look at the cars of the 80's. Far more dangerous in design and made of aluminum. Today's carbon fiber missles are far safer as they should be, but in the effort for safety we forget that all this "deformable" design created a new set of problems. Since the parts are designed to absorb energy, they break free and go off on their own. End result we just saw. Lightweight parts fly faster and further than heavier componets. Add to it the "pack racing" mentality and you have a recipe for what you just saw. Tethering parts will help but the real culprit remains when a car has an accident the pack gets collected by the "aftermath" of the accident. Flying parts is not acceptable and putting packs on the track only allows the parts to zero in on a car. When the cars raced in the 80's they were strung out and when an accident did occur, not as many parts left the car. Some parts will, but when a nose cone flys up and hits a car several hundred yards in the rear......you have a problem. If it wasn't JW, then it would have been someone else. The problems remain......pack racing and car design. How many nose cones few in the 80's? How many were killed by flying parts? Most deaths were due to a heavy shunt. 1982 Gordon Smiley.....youtube it and see how bad the crash was. It was qualifying but you will see the same result but a far more horiffic crash. And the car wasn't carbon fiber.
Indy Car should just announce the season closed, end it now, and declare that pudgy F-1 and NASCAR under achiever Montoya champion before another on or off-track debacle befalls the series. The 2015 Indy Car season has been nothing short of a complete shambles going back to the beginning when their season opening event in Brazil was cancelled mere days before it was supposed to happen and now we've lost certainly (another) most popular and talented driver. It is difficult to imagine anything happening in Indy Car currently sits well with the teams and drivers. They're going out there putting their balls on the line for a virtually nonexistent viewing audience (in the grandstands and on TV, despite their protestations that ratings are up, does anyone actually believe this?) all for some paltry prize money. Why don't the team owners put their balls on (finally) and go to the rubes in Indianapolis and tell them "Fix it or we walk"? Dunno guys, I'm incredulous to the whole thing now. There's not one good reason to watch the season finale at Sonoma other than this ludicrous double points gimmick which could propel Rahal to the championship. Such a sad state of affairs as they head into the 100th running of the Indy 500 next year. If the damage this series has brought upon itself hasn't hit its zenith yet, then when? BHW
In the mid to late 1990's CART was the best open wheel series on the planet. How does Indycar get back there?
Start by "firing" the Hulman-George family from running the series. They do a fine job running IMS, they need their hands out of the series. Been posted here ad-nauseum, but let me summarize: Limit the ovals. Focus on permanent road courses and street races (but only the significant ones - e.g., Long Beach). Can't eliminate them all together, but limit it to 2 - Indy and Milwaukee Increased horsepower - 800HP+ Limited aero. Eliminate the underbody tunnels. Cars have to be incredibly hard to drive, where the mechanical grip goes, and the aero grip is not enough to keep the car planted - e.g., they need to be sliding around in the corners. That will bring better drivers and less "cowabunga" pseudo-bravery that today's generation has. Keep steel brakes and I'd prefer a return to the sequential shifters rather than paddles. The idea is to make driving the car much more difficult. Faster cars, better drivers, less pack racing, remove inept management. Easier said than done - too many egos and cognitive dissonance for them to do what they know is right.
this (although I'd keep 2-4 short ovals, Milwaukee, Richmond, Phoenix, Gateway, Iowa, Nazareth if you can get the tree out of the back straight, etc)
What we're seeing before our very eyes is the whole Indy Car deal going kaflooey. The sponsors, and everyone else involved, would be better served if they just ended it all right now. Can you imagine, that little prig Montoya is going to be the champion? Tell me what other legitimate series on the planet where that may happen? If these idiots in Indianapolis had a shred of decency, they'd pull the plug right now. F-ing A! BHW
This is very sad, but I knew deep inside that somebody was going to end up killed this season. The way Indy has been running the season, it was bound to happen. Indy used to be one of my favorite racing series a close second behind F-1 in the 90’s now they are somewhere between soap box derby and cockroach racing. The part I hate the most about Indy is the yellow flags. They throw yellow flags for everything, they last forever and they allow the pit stops to cycle, which in turn packs the cars. As we know yellow flags bread yellow flags, did we need 6 laps under caution after the fox ran across the track? That was soon followed by the Catroneves crash, and then the Karam crash. Not to mention the injustice to seeing a back-marker camping in 19th place all race long to get lucky on a yellow and win the race. In understand the need of yellow flags. But maybe, they should consider racing in circuits with twentieth century safety standards.
