R.I.P Paul Dana

Very sad..

Greg

 

My condolences...

RLR won't be running their other cars.

Sad way for the season to start.

 

R.I.P.
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I met Paul a few years ago down in Homestead during a ROLEX series test. He and I were disussing our careers in motorsports and provided me with excellent advice. I often saw Paul at various events after that and we always chatted. He was a great guy and a true friend. He will be missed...Godspeed my friend.

 

Very sad. My thoughts and prayers go out his wife and family.


Leslie

 

Prayers and condolences to his family.

 

He nailed the other guy pretty good and looked to be going full tilt. Here's a video of the accident:

http://www.ogrish.com/archives/indycar_driver_paul_dana_dies_in_crash_Mar_26_2006.html

 

Very Very sad and unfortunate. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family.

Vasco

 

Very sad and when I saw the very early footage I didn't know who was who.
I, mistakenly, assumed the car that was hit was the fatality. There was a lot of time between when he drifted into the inside of the track and then was hit. What went wrong? I was truly surprised to see him hit that car and I guess he payed the price. What can we learn from this?

Bob S.

 

Pulled this off the site I aways read:

Carol



Dana's death 'black day' for IRL

By Jeff Olson Sunday, March 26th 2006, 18:47 GMT


Paul Dana died of multiple injuries on Sunday following a crash during a pre-race practice session for the Toyota Indy 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

IRL president and chief operating officer Brian Barnhart made the announcement at 12:45 p.m. local time.

Dana's Rahal-Letterman Panoz-Honda crashed into Ed Carpenter's Vision Racing Dallara-Honda on the second lap of the final practice session before the IRL IndyCar Series season opener.

Bobby Rahal, co-owner of Rahal Letterman Racing, said Dana's two teammates would not compete in Sunday’s race, which will be held as planned. The cars of Danica Patrick and Buddy Rice were duly parked.

"This is a very black day for us," Rahal said. "On behalf of our team, David (Letterman) and our sponsors and associates, our prayers and sympathies go out to Paul, his wife, Tonya, and the whole Dana family.

"This is a great tragedy. As a result, and in honor of him, we will not be competing with cars 16 and 17."

Dana’s Panoz slammed into Carpenter’s Dallara after Carpenter’s car had spun to a stop in turn two. The yellow flag had been out for several seconds, and several cars had slowed and passed Carpenter’s spinning car, before Dana’s car hitit at speed.

Both Rahal and Barnhart said there were no communication issues regarding the crash.

"There was no problem with the communication," Rahal said. "The spotter made clear the incident.

"From what I could see, there was a car on the outside that Paul was passing or had just passed.

"It would be conjecture and probably be very irresponsible for me to dissect why it happened, but there was no problem with the communication."

Both drivers were airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.

Carpenter, who reportedly was knocked unconscious at impact, was reported to be awake and alert and was listed in stable condition.

Barnhart said caution lights were on, the flag was out and the radio call had been made - and responded to - before Dana's car crashed into Carpenter's.

Video replays showed only a brief puff of tire smoke from Dana's car before impact, the only indication that he had attempted to slow before the crash.

"This was the first time this weekend that we’d had all 20 cars on the track at the same time," Barnhart said. "Ed had his problem in turn two initially. The yellow lights were called immediately and all systems functioned properly.

"It’s just a busy time out there with a lot of cars and a lot of traffic."

Barnhart said he spoke with officials of International Speedway Corporation, which owns the track, and with track president Curtis Gray before deciding to continue with Sunday's race as scheduled at 3:45 p.m. local time.

"We're all in agreement that the race will go on as scheduled today, on time," Barnhart said.

The crash was the first fatal incident in the IRL since Tony Renna was killed in October 2003 during a test session at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

 

Bummer.

I do not go to this race, as for me, it is really scary to watch how fast these cars go on this oval. Too fast for open wheelers in my opinion. Even from the top row of the stands at Homstead, it looks and feels intimidating.

 

Flame suit on, and its horrible that he died, but he did not slow down.

In racing, some folks feel a yellow is their chance to get ahead. They feel if they slow down, others wont and they keep their foot in it. These drivers are idiotic, dangerous, imbeciles.

Dana did not lift. He f-ed up and he died because of it. Just lucky he didn't kill someone else too.

The excuse is always "if I lift then others wont and they will get ahead", but the reason all drivers must always take it back a few notches is what we've seen here - all it takes is one driver not lifting and then everyone else feels they need to do it too or risk losing position.

Flame me if you like, but that's what should come out of this and its NOT impolite to say a person who is dead made a mistake, rather it is the ultimate lesson for everyone else.

 

Guys out of respect let us not speculate, this was in practice where there is nothing to gain or lose. From what I saw in the video, it looked like Dana ran over some debris. We do not know the exact details of what happened, and to me its insulting to demean someone who has just recently departed.

 

I just read about this on another site...just terrible....my condolences to his loved ones.

Aaron

 

mike this was practise, they were not racing.

he was going way too fast and blew by buddy lazier and scott sharp who had slowed for the yellow.

 

I have always felt that most the guys on Fchat have our act together, sometimes we agree to disagree BUT I think this guy SRT MIKE that posted these comments is just too far out of line and turns Fchat into some type of aol chat room which we (Fchat) aren't. There doesn't seem to be any standards of anything anymore in this society. SRT MIKE just helped to lower the Fchat web site standards.

 

That's too bad. Unfortunately, no matter HOW safe they make the equipment and how good the rescue crews are, we are going to get reminders like this that auto racing is a dangerous sport. Condolences go out to his family and friends, may he rest in peace.

 

Those of us racing all make mistakes out there. In practice, in qualifying and during the race. I can name one at least for each of the above I made just today in my race. Had a Porsche spun in the middle of a turn. Got by by chance only. Did not see the waving yellow flag because I was focused on the rear view.

Racing means making mistakes. Obviously if he passed cars while the yellow was out he did not register he was under yellow.

Godspeed Paul. Godspeed!

 

If you can't handle it, KnittingChat would welcome you, I think

Even his TEAM said the same thing - they said they would not want to say what they felt happened because it would be demeaning to the guy, but they said "we DID tell him there was an obstacle in the way".

Bottom line - he didn't slow for the yellow, he took a risk, and unfortunately he paid for his mistake with his life - young guy too.

If this guy CAR CRAZY is too emotionally weak to accept that, then its not my problem.

As I said, very sad for his family, and it seriously reinforces a major important factor of racing, you MUST slow for yellows. I've been on track and when the yellow comes out, everyone wants to be the last guy to lift. That makes for a "chicken" scenario and it can be very dangerous, as we've seen.

 

We have differences of opinion. His team said that they did transmit the radio signal that he should slow down, and he did not slow. They said they would not pick apart what happened next out of respect for the guy. Its pretty clear to read between the lines what they were saying.

Furthermore, I think its silly to make it taboo to speak about why someone died. I remember the same thing happening on here after Dale Earnhardt died, as well as others. These things must be discussed, and especially when they are fresh in peoples mind. If his relatives were on this site I would certainly not bring any of this up, but this is a RACING forum and that includes discussion of the good and the bad of RACING. Videos get posted of people who do silly things and pay the price - or pics or stories get posted in off-topic and other sections and we discuss it, or point fingers. In this RACING section this highlights a personal pet peeve of mine when I am on the track - the guys who do not lift when the yellow comes out. This was a hot topic of debate a few years back in the F1 world and the rules were updated to ensure safety.

Really tragic for him and his family - and very sad that it could easily have been avoided. It was in practice and there was no need to run at 10/10ths nor to neglect to lift. There was nothing to gain and everything to lose.

 

SRT Mike:

We do not know the details, maybe his radio wasn't working or maybe after he hit debris he couldn't control the car, etc, etc, etc, etc. Everything we infer will be mere speculation because we do not have access to the black box data. Is it wrong to voice your opinions? Absolutely not, but there are times when you should set them aside for a brief moment and this is one of them.

We as a community love racing, whether as spectators or as drivers. Losing one of our members, no matter whether we knew them personally or not is tragic.

 

Ironically, I had just been reading Brock Yates' excellent book "Against Death and Time" about the horrific 1955 racing season. Did you know that 18 of the 33 starters in that year's Indy 500 would meet their death on racetracks? Back then, accidents like today's were the rule; I think we all need to be thankful that nowadays, they are the exception.

 

Always sad when we lose one of our own... God Bless...