Perfect Storm: IndyCar's Las Vegas Nightmare 

😥

That's the worst part about this whole video. Dan seemed like such a charismatic and genuine dude...

This hits different.

Jesus...

What if you got rid of the desk? What plans do you have for it if/when that happens? Serious question, not written for laughs. Also, you're extremely lucky to get that photo. Cherish it.

yeah

Everyone will eventually be forgotten. It is just a reality of life. The longer back you go, the less names survive history. Even Cesar, and Napoleon will in the end be over shadowed by those yet to come.

@@alltheusernameswastaken8936 Okay and?

nice Rimi Ushigome profile avatar!

@@alltheusernameswastaken8936 can you just shut up PLEASE you don't know him I know him and you dont

Thing is, everything about that event could have been good if they'd have run the old Vegas Street circuit, Champ Car had in 2007 that was actually really good.

@Rob F 34 cars on a street circuit... I don't think so

I'm far from a CEO fanboy; but you're right. The guy's job was to get eyes on the sport; not become a technical expert in every aspect of it. The team owners and IRL staff were supposed to be the experts, and have issues like race safety in hand. They would've had the language + credibility to work with Bruton Smith about resolving as many issues as possible before this race went on. They did not, and when the worst happened they let Bernard take the fall.

​@@dsnodgrass4843the sport is a disgrace. Las Vegas is a dump and should be nuked.

@@jacobmassey3897 [citation needed].

Is your Dad Townsend Bell?

@@andrewmeyer4124 yeah

Jaxon- i was 27 when this race happened and there was a lot of bad judgement calls from the people that manage the racing organization that your dad runs. Hopefully your dad is doing well.

Wasnt your dad one of the upside down cars after the crash?

I am so sorry. I am new to the racing fandom, but I have only heard good things about Mr. Wheldon: I can’t imagine your loss. You were blessed to meet him, and cursed to lose him: the cruel irony of life…

I cannot stand Will Power as a driver since he wrecked my favorite #9 at Baltimore in 2013. However I strongly agree with your statements.

This Aussie is proud of that Aussie

41:25

Jackie Stewart's opinions were not always appreciated either, but someone has to speak up. Someone needs to be the asshole if it means no one dies during the race.

Wow yeah

Exactly what I was thinking

That is scary.

Slapped my head, didnt remember him saying this,but in canada here we only got the qualify and races on speed network. Hated how it ended.

My heart broke when he said that.

Agree 100%

I agree, I knew nothing before this video and now I am kinda into racing cars!

Agreed!

I was looking for the excitement that led up to the race. In my opinion this race was equivalent to the excitement that led up to the 2001 Daytona 500. I dont need to go into anymore detail that occurred in that race.

Its for bloods yeah

@@sandordomonkos8351correct

It makes it actually interesting plus it’s pretty hilarious 😂

@@sandordomonkos8351or death and an investigation?

It's sad that we've seen it happen enough that we know exactly what it means... The only positive is that at least we learn from these tragedies as a sport and have made huge leaps forward In driver safety from what these accidents taught us

Empty is the perfect word to describe the feeling after this. I was 17 watching it, hadn’t really seen death in racing even though I had watched it all through my childhood. I was super excited for this race too, not knowing the danger. I’ve never felt the way I felt after seeing the first image of Wheldon’s roll hoop sheered off and immediately knowing it was unsurvivable. Turned me off of motorsport for a solid two or three years afterwards.

I also saw this live, and was crying so hard I could hardly see the tribute lap; also haunts me as was so unnecessary . . . now we have the Halo

Dude exact same story right here bro I feel you

I felt the same in 2001 as a 21 year old Earnhardt fan and then to see this race when I was 31 bad nightmare. I could relate

The bagpipes. I can keep it -cool- *under control* until the bloody bagpipes..

That was a rough day...

I was 12 too.

I was once 12... not on that day though

Same, it was my first live race, so excited to see them in person. The racing was awesome. But on that 12th lap, I new it was bad. Definitely an emotional day.

I was 11 when I saw Greg Moore crash and pass away, those things change you.

Greatest Decade In IndyCar History The Early 90s ☺

@@jefferyrobertson7520 CART Indycar racing throughout the whole decade (90s) was just perfect.

@@ariansmovies My Favorite Tire Brand IndyCar Is Goodyear From The 70s 80s And Early 90s

@@jefferyrobertson7520 I was a Goodyear fan too. I managed to win an eBay bid last July 2020 of a Gil De Ferran 1:18 scale Superspeedway trimmed Valovline ChampCar and its like my fav top 5 or 6. I can still hear those screaming single sided V8 turbo going 245+ on the Superspeedway with that diecast. It just puts a smile in my face. 🙂

@@ariansmovies That Was Amazing

Yea..

The irony there

So true :(

Lmfao

Yeah you're right, he looks incredibly anxious.. Sadly we know it was for good reason.

It’s still hilarious

He speaks up a lot and it can be very annoying but if you really pay attention to him he always seems to have a good point, especially when he is concerned for the safety of the racing.

Wheldon's quote at 23:09 is the most disturbing one to hear considering what happened imo

@@jeffgordonfan2462 there is a thing I notice when a driver dies, most of their pre race interviews all seem to be so eery

He would have been a success as a CEO, I believe, but the Las Vegas disaster permanently damaged his reputation.

@@philipdawson7800 and he was very shaken after it

@@lordshankracing4724 Yeah. He had very good intentions & really tried his hardest to get Indycar out there. Just unfortunate & flawed execution that ended up in the worst way possible. Had Wheldon survived or better yet not happen at all & the race ended smoothly, i think the direction they would've been pushed towards would be through the roof, but unfortunately it went the opposite way.

He didn’t do a very good job of it 😂

there was testing but it did not indicate these speeds. Briscoe and Dixons test speeds were way below what the field was running.

tire choice might help a little bit , but if everyone is on the same compound its not really going to split the field up that much . plus you have the problem of people pushing the tires and setups and risking blistering blow outs. probably best to play it safe with tires on a fast oval and go with the most durable and usable option you have.

@@AlistairMaxwell77 if tyres are less grippy, drivers will have a harder time going full throttle in the wake of the car ahead. That alone disrupts pack racing. BTW, it would have helped if the engines were a bit more powerful... 650hp was a joke. If the engine doesn't push the car to the limit on a big oval, pack racing is what you get.

Bruton has no soul only money see the shit he pull to get his drag strip at charlotte

Basically, they did the same mistake CART did in 2001 with Texas.

Doing what exactly?

You're about 22 now,I bet you will remember this when you're 82.

@@richardmorris7063 Definitely.

@@rareapple3 mine as well go on back to another race... may be exciting and safer now. i almost went to one this year at laguna seca ... but i got covid and couldnt do anything =(

Wheldon was one of my favorites I had turned 18 the week before he got killed when it happened i almost walked away as a fan but during that off-season I gave it a lot of thought and decided it would be wrong to not watch or go to a race again it would be dishonoring him so I've still stuck it out and watched every race from then to present go to the 500 every year and have been to Texas the last few years still hard to believe we're coming up on the 12 year anniversary of this

Last time something like this happened, it was with helmutt koenigg, and years later after dan's death it was Jules Bianchi, and it almost happened with Grosjean recently, thankfully the halo saved his life.

@@knightofthenine3121 now he’s nearly won in Indycar, can’t wait to see him finally win in an open wheel car.

@@knightofthenine3121 Greg Moores roll bar was completely torn off his car in his fatal crash at Fontana ten years earlier. He went top side first into the infield wall after his car flipped when his wing dug into the infield grass, the wall tore the roll bar off his car and his head hit the wall. Moore's crash also happened at the last race of the season, early in the race, with a championship on the line, only difference was it was a CART sanctioned IndyCar race and they finished the race announcing his death to the fans during the waning laps. Montoya would win the championship, in the post race interview you can see his smile completely disappear when his crew chief whispered into his ear that Greg had died.

@@chrish931 I was at that race. When they announced Greg’s death, it took the energy out of the crowd. I actually got up and left. Wasn’t fun anymore. I just wasn’t in the mood anymore. Sad day.

@@chrish931 I wouldn’t call the hoop on Moore’s car torn off, but it was certainly deformed. In the end, it didn’t matter, hoop or aeroscreen. If Moore’s wreck were to happen today, it would still be fatal and it’s not even a question.

I think that's what happened to Darrell Russell in 2004. I don't know if his autopsy ever was made public. His accident didn't seem very bad. It was hard to imagine that he was killed. But they immediately made changes and it wasn't hard to figure out from those changes what must have happened.

@@bbigjohnson069 And... the driver racing against him was Scott Kalitta... who also died (I think he was the next to die) in 2007.

@@brendanschuett I didn't remember that's who he was racing.Blaine Johnson's was tough. He was leading the points and he gets killed. Lee Sheppard. How different is Bob Glidden's career with Lee Sheppard around. Darryl Gwynn ending up in a chair. When he came up to TF it was the start of the season. His dragster wasn't even painted. It was bare metal. First round, he does his burnout, and waves to the fans as he's backing up! Kind of odd different cool. Then he proceeds to whip everybody's ass.

@@brendanschuett Eric Medlin, who actually had a lot of similarities to Darrell Russell, was the next NHRA driver to lose his life in a crash after Darrell after a testing crash in 2007. Scott Kalitta's crash was the following year.

Geez! What a horrible circumstance for Rick Moore to return to a track. Thanks for the detail. #99

Just when I didn't think that day could have been any sadder. I can't imagine what that was like for Ric. I quit watching open-wheel racing after Robert Wickens was paralyzed. It's the same crash again and again. They can make everything else as safe as they want, but if there is open-wheel racing, there will be open-wheel launches, the most dangerous crashes in racing.

My first proper exposure to IndyCar was the BBC report that night. In 2012, I was watching the series. Pretty morbid way to come into the series but it's a good 11 years.

Race probably should’ve been called like CART Texas race in 2001. Then the drivers felt uneasy about it. Plug should’ve been pulled here.

Thanks bud

Cymotorsport makes some hard hitting F1 shit. Between the both of you, now I know everything

I was 6 when this happened, and I just remembered watching that on tv and not understanding what happened

I'm not crying your crying

@@TheFoyer13 I’m crying, you’re crying. I was there when it happened. I was crying then. I’m crying now.

What was the apprehension regarding the race in Las Vegas??

@@mrkipling2201 There were concerns about track dynamics, unevenly matched cars and part-time drivers. Add to that the $5 million dollar incentive for Wheldon to race from last to first.

Yep I remember that whole weekend at Imola in 94’ being a complete disaster. Barrichello was lucky to survive his crash in practice and Ratzenberger had his fatal crash in qualifying. That race should’ve never happened.

Way I felt after the crash. Earliest memory for me was 2001 Daytona 500. Looking back at that race when I watch. It’s eerie. This race on the twelfth anniversary it’s still eerie. If only the Aeroscreen was on 77 that day in 2011.

My condolences first to you and your family for your loss. I can tell you that a coworker and I both were in our office watching that Daytona 500 with Newman’s wreck at the end. We both saw Newman’s crash live and when LaJoie hit Newman like that, I thought for sure he was gone. It did not look survivable, and the way Mike Joy, Jeff Gordon and Clint Bowyer were sounding in the booth sounded eerily similar to the way that the Fox trio in 2001 sounded after Dale Earnhardt’s fatal crash. It was beyond a relief when I heard about two hours later that Newman was gonna be alright.

Do You Like Stanton Barrett

I have no idea, that dude is

@@Ryeblue Stanton Barrett Was NASCAR Drivers Hollywood Actor and Stunt maker ☺

It still was

@@PointNemo9 Oh Yeah

Danger is an unfortunate reality of motorsport, the legendary Imola circuit should not have had it's most iconic corner removed.

@@PointNemo9 Sadly it already has been removed. It was done before they went back in 1995. there is not a trace of it now.

The only 1.5 mile they've run since is Texas.

I mean one could argue why did the piece come off, or why did it hit him on the head. The aero screen was partially built to stop that from happening again.

T.b.f. wilson was just a very weird freak accident that I'm sure even when the DW12 was in development no one would have thought would ever happen

@@michaelsorber7859 exactly, I doubt that anyone could have predicted a piece of bodywork to come out of the sky and just happen to strike a driver in the head.. Wilson's death was rather similar to Felipe Massa's accident in Hungary in 2009, a total freak accident that couldn't have been prevented, it's not the fault of Pocono Raceway, IndyCar, Chevrolet, Honda or Dallara

@@gregsalisbury9783 I mean, IndyCars are designed to have their bodywork come off during a crash to dissipate energy

@@patrickracer43 I understand that, just I thought that was one of the pieces less likely to fall off, but that's my mistake.

There is no driver that doesn't think "they're talking to everyone else about taking it easy, not me, I know what I'm doing". If the racing or track and cars allowed that much aggression and speed then the drivers were going to give it everything up to the razors edge. That's absolutely racing.

@@tractorback76 yep you can't put it on the drivers because they're out there to race and have careers and goals to meet. It is the series that has the responsibility to account for safety especially when the drivers themselves are all concerned. I don't think Bernard was purposely negligent. He doesn't strike me as that type of person although I don't know much about the man. What I do think is that he took on a difficult challenge after a difficult period for open wheel racing in the US and I think the pressure on him to succeed blinded him to the inherent realities of the sport. Couple that with his own lack of knowledge about the sport and disaster was imminent. The series should have had a retired panel of drivers to approve his decisions.

33 cars at Indy is one thing. The cars get spread out going 220mph+ now. 34 cars at The Vegas with these cars. To quote Cheever. Pure lunacy. It’s a bowl as Robin Miller said once.

Was brought in to clean up Tony George’s mess that the split from CART caused but ended up with someone killed. It also something that CART ran a lot safer races and raced at ovals made for Indycars like Michigan and didn’t pack up the cars like the IRL did.

@@robertmusgrave9236 racing at Las Vegas was a dumb discussion though

@@bullseyearcher1 the first years of the IRL were a big gimmick before NASCAR started any gimmick.

@@bullseyearcher1 Racing 34 IndyCars on a track like that was lunacy.

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Was there in the Petty terrace. Didn’t go to a race again until I moved to Texas again this year. And I had been to darn near ever Vegas race for 11 years in NASCAR. My parents back home are getting the fridge replaced. We’ve had it for 11 years. Found my RIP Dan Lionheart shirt in the bag still. I stashed it because I didn’t want to see it damaged. My first and only Indy Race ever. And to learn he was taken to the same hospital I was born in. It’s just devastating.

@@natereg9747 thankfully the cars are so much safer now.

@@nolancain8792 that is true. I speculate though if he would’ve been killed in today’s car. The windscreen might have saved him. It was such a violent impact and there was intrusion into the cockpit, specifically his head that I doubt he would have survived. We’ll never know. I’m sure glad they have the windscreen because I believe it has already saved lives and significant injury. The HANS device has definitely saved lives although it’s unprovable but logic tells me it has. I don’t think there have been any injuries or deaths from brain stem trauma since it was started. The SAFER barrier has been a huge help. I don’t know how much more safety they can build into the cars but they’ll keep looking. Unfortunately it takes a death or critical injury for some weak points to appear. I still think the current catch fence designs are dangerous but I don’t know the alternatives.

i used to change tires for my uncle that used to drive dirt stock cars, and saw one driver die in a wreck and saw a pit member from another team die buy being run over in the pits i was near where that happened it was the worst thing i have ever seen, later that year i saw dale earnhardt die at daytona, and i also watched this race on tv had a feeling weldon was dead i still love racing but its dangerous no matter what type of car

Second darkest, after the death of Dale Earnhardt

You could even argue that about NASCAR currently. There's a sense of complacency when it comes to safety (both in the cars and the officiating/safety crew response). It parallels the 2000 season somewhat.

@@TheRyan597 yes that was exactly the series I was referring to the most with my comment. They are caring less about safety because it's been so long since a bad accident.

@@jamesburroughs3813 Well we had Newman’s wreck in 2020 but he ended up ok. It’s easy to become complacent after seeing these drivers walk away and get lucky time after time. If Newman got hit a little more in the roof rather than directly on the B-pillar, I don’t think he makes it. It’s certainly encouraging to see the cars become safer though but the danger of serious injury is often forgotten.

You really think any of them had the stomach to recreate the 1969 Talladega 500 shitshow? There would’ve been a tiny amount of IndyCar drivers with underpowered Indy Lights cars as field fillers.

Everyone says "we were anxious and worried" after a disaster happens. Fact is, no one was speaking up prior to the race. People knew it was going to be tight racing, dangerous and there would probably be crashes, but they all went out there 110% aware of the risks. They all made the decision to race that day, in a sport where they definitely did not have to. Out of all the racing series, Indycar is and always has been by far the easiest to say "you know what, I don't want to race today, I just don't think it's worth it". Basically every single team at the track that day could have found a replacement driver for anyone who didn't want to compete. No one would've gotten in trouble, someone else just would've gotten in that car and raced instead, and they'd be the one that got paid. You wouldn't get fired, or chewed out. People went out there knowing exactly what the risk was. Dan Wheldon knew the risk. "If it's your time, it's your time". He knew he could die, it was a reality every time he drove onto a track, and his death wouldn't have shocked him one bit. Racing has always been dangerous. Death in Indycar wasn't even particularly rare compared to other series. Everyone suddenly had 20/20 hindsight the second the race was over. If they were actually aware of the risk and opposed it prior to the race, then that death is on them for not speaking up and trying to stop the race at any point prior to the day. Racing will never be as exciting again. You might think safety is better, but the fact is, open-wheel racing and oval racing is dying a slow death because of safety. And maybe that's okay. But being unwilling to lose a driver once or twice a decade means that the truest forms of car racing have been dead for a decade now, and they will never, ever recover. Car racing has been killed forever by safety. Thankfully, Rally and Motorcycle still accept that every time you race, you risk death. When people die at the Isle of Man TT, or in the Dakar, they don't cancel everything. They don't demand safety changes. They don't kill the sport. And they have atleast 1 death every single year. Indycar was having one every 5 or more. They mourn, and then they go back out and race. They do what they love. People in the Isle of Man aren't even racing for huge winnings. There's not millions on the table. Yet they risk their lives and die for the love of the sport. That's what racing is. Risking everything for the thrill, for the show, for the fame. If there's no risk, there's no entertainment. It's just a weird form of a running race.

I thought they did speak up beforehand. I remember there being quite a controversy before this race concerning driver safety and the suitability of the Vegas track for Indycar racing.