Luyendyk survives crash at Fontana, Calif.

Thursday, Oct. 9, 1997 | 8:14 a.m.

TWO WEEKS AGO during the CART season finale at California Speedway, Arie Luyendyk hit another race car, then a concrete wall, at 210 miles per hour -- and lived to tell about.

The problem is, the two-time Indianapolis 500 winner doesn't remember much about the terrifying accident that turned his car into a crumpled piece of metal but left him with only a handful of aches and bruises.

"I remember everything except hitting the car that was spinning in front me," said Luyendyk, who has been cleared by doctors to drive in the Indy Racing League's Las Vegas 500K Saturday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

"The moment I hit him, I think that's when I went out; I was unconscious for not long, maybe 30, 40 seconds. It still took quite a long time for me to realize exactly where I was -- about 10 minutes."

Luyendyk, a regular on the IRL circuit the past two seasons, was filling in for CART series champion Alex Zanardi, who suffered a mild concussion after wrecking two cars during the opening practice session.

The two-time Indy 500 winner was forced to start the race near the back of the pack but was steadily moving up in the field when, on the 40th lap of the 250-lap race, rookie Arnd Meier spun in front of Luyendyk. The collision sent Luyendyk careening into the outside wall, where he was hit hard again by Meier's out-of-control car.

"I felt comfortable with the car and in the race, I wasn't going too aggressive because it was a long race," Luyendyk recalled. "We had quite a few laps under yellow (to start the race) so we didn't have that much racing time under our belt yet and I just started getting in a groove.

"Actually, I had just told myself that it's time to go now -- which means it's time to go faster -- and (Meier) spun in front of me and there was nowhere I could go. I watched the tape (of the accident) and from the moment he started spinning until the time I hit him, it was a second. I think I might have been doing probably 210 when I hit him."

Despite a sore back, shoulder and ribs, Luyendyk said he is looking forward to climbing into his Treadway Racing G-Force Aurora for the 200-lap IRL season finale -- and he readily admits he doesn't intend to forget the near-catastrophic accident in Fontana.

"It will actually be on my mind but that will be like my safety buffer," said the 44-year-old Luyendyk. "You have to be aware of what can happen and what can go wrong so you know your limits and the limits of the car -- and you don't want to overstep that boundary.

"I made the mistake this year of doing that once, in Colorado, where I wanted to push too hard with a car that wasn't handling well and I overstepped my boundary and my limit and crashed. Even at my old age, I tend to go against what you should do because you want to go out there and pass the guy ahead of you and get a better result.

"An accident like this puts those things even more into perspective where you've got to respect the limit of your car ... but it also shows you that sometimes you're just a victim of what can go on out there if somebody else crashes. It was one of those things where you have no say in what happens; you're like a sitting duck almost. That's one of those things where you just say, 'Oh, well, that is racing, that can happen,' but it is the most unenjoyable part of the business."

Luyendyk, the reigning Indy 500 champion and a two-time winner this season, insists it will be business as usual come Saturday as he attempts to secure third place in the points championship. He enters the Las Vegas 500K in fourth place, only three points behind third-place Eddie Cheever Jr.

And, perhaps in part because of his experience at California Speedway, Luyendyk was quick to praise the IRL for reducing the speed of its cars this year with different chassis and less powerful engines. The new cars, he said, have improved driver safety and made for better shows.

"The IRL has made big strides towards keeping the speeds down because speeds, with the turbo cars, were getting out of hand," he said. "At Indy, we were getting close to going around there at 240 miles an hour and here, I practiced at 229 on a mile-and-a-half oval last year and that was just so fast.

"It was imperative to bring the speeds down and keep them down and the package we now have in the IRL cars is really good. The chassis with the reduced downforce and the engine with the reduced horsepower has really done that but at the same time we have reliability now and we have good races."

Although Luyendyk exited last year's inaugural Las Vegas 500K midway through the race when an accident sent him into the wall in turn two, the Dutchman is eager to return to the 1.5-mile superspeedway.

"I took a liking to it right away," he said of the track. "Last year, it was pretty fast in practice and qualifying. They've made a lot of improvements around the race track so it's not as sandy on the track as it was last year.

"It should be a competitive race. It looks like with all the practicing that's been going on here, a lot of the teams and drivers are really close as far as lap times so it's going to be a close race, I think.

"That has actually been something that is really good this year; if you look at races like Charlotte and Texas, they were really good races. And Indy was a good race where the last 50 laps of the race we had five, six cars on the lead lap that could have won that race."

archive