Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Dan Wheldon died yesterday doing what he loved. Should he have died? We will probably never know, but unfortunately in racing there is always that risk, and fortunately it is rare these days due to the safety systems in place. Track designers like myself must never forget that death or traumatic injury will result if we get it wrong.

Joe Saward says we should avoid trying to analyse the accident , leave it to the accident analysis guys, and we will. There are comments however about whether they should have raced there, but is Las Vegas really any different to Texas? Remember when CART cancelled a race at Texas due to the speed and G Forces? But Indycar had already raced there this year without this sort of problem. Would it really have made a difference if they were doing 215 and not 225 mph? Were 34 cars too many, I doubt it. I do worry sometimes about the standard of drivers down the field in Indycar, and especially those that do not race full time.

I will only offer this observation. Speedway Motorsports, Bruton Smith's tracks, are the only ones I know that put the cable on the track side of the mesh on the catch fence. I would add that there are places on ISC owned tracks that have no mesh at all, and neither practice is one I would endorse.