While stick-and-ball sports fans were whooping it up over the rhubarb that resulted from the American League Championship Series game between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox last weekend, racing fans were going “Phew!” Another close call.
Kenny Brack’s wild crash at Texas Motor Speedway in the final Indy Racing League event of the season apparently was less noteworthy than watching a 70 year old baseball coach get stopped from committing assault on a player. The crash left Brack busted up but alive. The prognosis for recovery is not yet known.
Robin Miller, who covers open wheeled racing for ESPN, is a rare sports journalist. He enjoys and respects OWR but is not afraid to say so when he thinks the emperor has no clothes.
Miller’s report on ESPN.com about Brack’s crash points to the irony that produces success. In creating the IRL, Tony George correctly predicted that fans would love watching nearly equal cars neck and neck on oval tracks.
Trouble is, what makes this form of racing so exciting also makes it dangerous. Miller also suggests that it is exciting because it is dangerous and the more dangerous, the more exciting.
He also suggests that Texas Motor Speedway is the epitome of this dichotomy and says that everyone approaches IRL events there with both “titillation and trepidation.”
He also cites some statistics that would seem to indicate that IRL racing is more hazardous per mile than CART racing, which also involves an absence of fenders.
Miller claims that in 87 IRL races over the past eight years, 76 IRL drivers have gone to hospitals with concussions or with fractures of the skull, neck, back, pelvis, legs, arms, wrists, ankles, feet, hip or shoulder.
He goes on to say that Championship Auto Racing Teams has put on 147 races over the past eight years, putting just 32 drivers in the hospital.
On the other hand, Scott Brayton was killed and Sam Schmidt was paralyzed in IRL cars, not necessarily under race conditions, while Jeff Krosnoff, Gonzalo Rodriguez and Greg Moore died in CART races.
This season, according to Miller, 13 IRL drivers but only one CART driver were put in hospitals.
The difference, Miller seems to be saying, is partly the venues on which the races are held and the rules aimed at evening the playing field.
CART’s schedule includes temporary street circuits and permanent road courses and well as short ovals and superspeedways. The IRL competes exclusively on ovals big and small, including Texas Motor Speedway.
CART racers backed out of a race planned at TMS last year, saying that the centrifugal force caused them to black out. The IRL cars go nearly, but not quite as fast.
Couple that with the fact that CART’s rules result in a wider range of capability among the field. In other words, some cars are real fast and some are slower.
The IRL rules, on the other hand, strive toward the seemingly proper goal of making all the cars equally fast.
Miller’s complaint is that equality results in cars all going the same insane speed. Fans love it. Drivers, brave though they may be, hate it.
In addition to the engine rules, Miller says that the aerodynamic designs allowed in CART make it possible for drivers to approach from behind and use the draft to get around another car.
IRL’s aerodynamic set ups, however, keep that from happening. As a result, cars race nose to tail and/or wheel to wheel at 215 mph or more lap after lap.
Exciting when we watch someone else do it.
Scary if we had to do it ourselves.