Posted on 12/26/2011 10:17:09 AM PST by ColdOne
Dan Wheldon was killed when his head hit a post in the fencing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, contact that created a "non-survivable injury" to the two-time Indianapolis 500 winner.
IndyCar officials released their findings Thursday of the Oct. 16 accident in the season finale. Wheldon was killed in an early 15-car accident when his car launched into the catchfence.
The reports finds several factors contributed to what became a "perfect storm," and no one reason could be singled out as the sole cause of the accident. IndyCar found it is "impossible to determine with certainty that the result would hav
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
To much speed. Too many cars. Too much open space above the cockpit. Too much financial incentives to take unnecessary risks.
This is very, VERY little consolation to his family but he must have died very quickly and I can only assume with little pain. At that type of speed, your head hitting a post hopefully means he was here one second... and in heaven the next second.
I agree.
Sounds like a nice way to say he was essentially decapitated.
Dan Wheldon Suffered ‘Non-Survivable’ Head Injury
Sounds like a nice way to say he was essentially decapitated.
....or had part of his head cut off. They had a blanket/covering right next to his vehicle...which tells me there was some body parts there.
Reportedly his family was there with him when he died at the hospital...so he still lingered on a few hrs after the crash
“Non-survivable.” We used to call that “fatal.”
I was at the race, and watched the accident unfold literally beneath me.
I had just commented to my friend as the cars had come out of the far turn that they were coming 3 wide down the straightaway.
Somebody panicked in the corner, slammed the brakes, and it was all over from there.
It sounds similar to Gordon Smiley’s practice run crash at Indy in 1982. His skull was opened by the wall and it splattered brains all over the track.
I once found myself coaching a Jr. High track team for awhile.
My "coaching" consisted of saying "bear to the left and get back as fast as you can".
I just don't get it. A 200 MPH road trip to nowhere.
To nowhere? Those guys are doing 200mph to increased sales for automakers?
Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday. That’s all it’s ever been.
His head was opened up by being dragged along the catch fencing, not the wall, though it amounted to the same thing. That was probably the most destructive crash ever caught on tape. One doctor said he had no unbroken bones in his body.
This was not NASCAR
It may look like NASCAR drivers are just turning in left circles, but those cars are on the absolute edge of control and actually sliding around the track. Just controlling them is intense enough, having to navigate other cars while doing so is what makes nascar exciting to me. Open wheel bores me because they are such high down force vehicles that given high enough speed they can actually be driven upside down.
You are correct. I found a grainy black and white picture online once of Gordon’s body after the cockpit came to a stop.
He was sitting upright with arms and legs attached, but his skull appeared to have been opened with one of those saws used in autopsies.
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