Dan Wheldon celebrates winning his second Indianapolis 500 in May of this year. Wheldon lost his life in a racing accident in the IndyCar season finale Sunday. Photo courtesy IndyCar
Sunday was meant to be one of the brightest days in IndyCar history. But on lap 13, it became one of the sport’s darkest, as two-time and defending Indianapolis 500 champion Dan Wheldon lost his life from injuries sustained in a massive 15 car crash.
The accident broke loose in the second turn at Las Vegas Motor Speedway as the Izod IndyCar series held their season finale. As cars slid across the track, at least two cars became airborne. One of those was that of Wheldon.
Wheldon, along with three other drivers, was transported to an area hospital. As the race remained under a red flag condition to allow for track repairs, it became apparent that the situation for Wheldon was dire.
Just before 6 p.m. eastern time, IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard made the heart breaking announcement.
“IndyCar is sad to announce that Dan Wheldon passed away from unsurvivable injuries. Our thoughts and prayers are with Dan and his family. INDYCAR, its drivers and teams have decided to end the race. We will run a five-lap salute in honor of Dan.”
A native of Emberton, England, Wheldon moved to the United States in 1999 to compete in open wheel racing. He would make his IndyCar debut in 2002, winning his first race in 2004 at Twin Ring Motegi in Japan. The next year he would win the first of two Indianapolis 500s, and would become the 2005 IndyCar championship.
In all, Wheldon would score 16 wins in his IndyCar career, with the most recent coming in May when he won his second Indy 500 title.
He had entered 2011 without a ride, signing a one race deal to compete at Indianapolis. Wheldon would put himself in the right place at the right time, slipping past leader J.R. Hildebrand on the final turn during the final lap when Hildebrand hit the wall.
Wheldon would grab the lead and the victory in what would go down as an Indianapolis classic.
Wheldon was also a former winner of the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, winning with co-drivers Scott Dixon and Casey Mears for car owner Chip Ganassi in 2006.
The accident has left the racing world stunned, and has left those who knew Wheldon grieving for the loss of a great driver and a unique person.
“We lost, I lost, a good friend, everyone in the IZOD IndyCar Series considered Dan a friend,” said IndyCar champion Dario Franchitti. “He was just one of those special, special people. From when he first showed up in INDYCAR and he was kind of brash, and he was a charmer. Then he became this loving, family guy…he was still charming but he had this whole new side to him. With Susie, and the boys…that’s all I’m thinking about, and I’m trying to hold it together.”
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“He was such a big presence in our sport and quite a talent,” said Wheldon’s former team owner Chip Ganassi. “Today we lost a little bit of IndyCar. He raced here for us for three years, won six races and made many friends – the whole Chip Ganassi Racing organization mourns his passing. My thoughts and prayers go out to Susie, the boys and the whole Wheldon family.”
“This is incredibly sad,” said fellow competitor Oriol Servia. “We all know this is part of the sport. Cars are getting safer, tracks are getting safer so fortunately it hasn’t happened in a long time. We all had a bad feeling about this place in particular just because of the high banking and how easy it was to go flat and if you give us the opportunity, we are drivers and we try to go to the front — we race each other hard because that’s what we do. We knew if could happen but it’s just really sad.”
The drivers chose to run five laps in a three wide formation in a salute to Dan Wheldon following the news of his passing. The race was not restarted. Photo by LAT Photo USA/Courtesy IndyCar
Servia also talked about the decision to not complete the race, but rather to run a five lap tribute to their fallen comrade.
“There was no right or wrong thing to do really on how to proceed,” he said. “It’s the first time ever that we knew that a driver was gone so I think the series did the right thing. Even if you were going to be more careful we were still going to be traveling at a very high speed and in a risky situation. I think Randy’s call was rational. He was saying ‘Listen, you guys are not thinking straight.’ If they had kept us in the car and we still had hope that Dan was going to be okay and they restarted the race sooner you can just focus on what you do. This wasn’t the right way either to finish the race or the season; it feels wrong but there was no right way to deal with the situation.”
Franchitti talked about those parade laps as well.
“First of all, I’ve got to say thank you to all the fans for showing so much respect for Dan and also to all the people from the teams. I thought that was a very nice thing,” he said. “I was thinking about Dan, actually. I was thinking of all Dan’s stories and just things that we did. In situations like this, I think obviously the sadness, I was thinking of some of the fun times we had. But really right now it’s just sad. It’s just really, really sad. It’s the ugly, ugly side of our sport. You see it all.”
Even in the face of disaster and sadness, Franchitti took the time to remember one of his favorite stories about his fallen friend.
“I think he had a lot of Scottish, especially when he was driving for the Andretti Green, he was like he could never buy dinner or drinks or something. He was always ‘oh, they don’t pay me enough,’ so we always bought dinner. We kind of joked that he was the little brother we didn’t want. Then he signed for Chip. We were all in New York, and he called, ‘Hey, boys are you in New York?’ We said, ‘yeah.’ ‘Let’s go for dinner. I’m buying.’ And we all kind of went, ‘what?’
“So we ended up going to this restaurant that I knew that was going to give his credit card a beating and proceeded to order lots of expensive things, lots of champagne, the whole thing. The bill was about $5,000 bucks. I’ll never forget his face. It was priceless. That was revenge.
“But in fairness to Dan, he didn’t even flinch. He got the card out and he paid. He said to us, ‘that’s for everything you guys have done for me,’ yeah. We’re going to miss him.”
IndyCar Media contributed to this story.
