Fatal crash still fresh on racers’ minds

Terry Blount

Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999 | 5:33 a.m.

The first practice session for the Texaco/Havoline Grand Prix of Houston will be Friday morning. It comes exactly two weeks after CART rookie driver Gonzalo Rodriguez lost his life in an accident at the Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, Calif.

The sorrow of that moment is still fresh in the minds and hearts of many drivers.

"It was a very sad day," said CART driver Tony Kanaan. "I felt like it was the second time I had been through that because I lost my friend (Formula One driver) Ayrton Senna a few years ago (in a racing accident). We have to remember they were doing what they loved, but it's still hard to accept."

Rodriguez was killed when his car went off the racing surface and hit a concrete barrier head-on at more than 140 mph.

An accident that causes the death of a driver always is tragic, but it has become so rare in major racing series that a fatality is an enormous shock.

"When something like that happens, you see things from a different perspective," said Dario Franchitti, the defending champion in Houston. "You see how it affects the drivers - these tough guys who won't give an inch on the track. But when you see them after something like that, you realize they are human beings with feelings.

"We all got together and sat down and discussed it. We just talked amongst ourselves about our grief. Gonzalo was one of us, and he had a great future. It was a horrible tragedy."

Rodriguez's death was the first driver fatality in the CART series since July 1996, when Jeff Krosnoff was killed in an accident at Toronto. That covered a span of 58 races.

"Motor racing is dangerous, and we all recognize that," Franchitti said. "But we do everything we can to minimize those dangers."

Statistics prove that a person wearing a seat belt in a passenger car that has a collision at 50 mph has a much greater chance of serious injury than an open-wheel race-car driver in a collision at 150 mph.

"Racing is really safe now compared to 25 years ago," said Christian Fittipaldi, driver of the Kmart Ford/Swift car. "There's no doubt about that. I would say it's probably 100 times safer now than it was then."

But Fittipaldi also knows firsthand that dangers exist.

He will be back in his race car this weekend after missing five races because of a crash he had in a practice session at St. Louis. Fittipaldi suffered a subdural hematoma and the second concussion of his career. He also suffered a broken leg in a crash in Australia in 1997.

"Safety obviously is a big concern for all drivers, because no one is out there to get hurt," said Fittipaldi, a member of CART's safety committee. "The cars are safer than ever before, but we never can get to the point where we feel the tracks and the cars are safe enough.

"We have to constantly work on making the tracks and the cars safer in order to avoid what happened two weeks ago."

Technological advances have enabled drivers to walk away from racing accidents that might have been fatal in the past. Today's race cars are built to come apart on impact, which enables most of the energy of the collision to be absorbed by the car instead of the driver.

There were times 30 years ago when a car received little damage in a collision and the driver was killed - because he took most of the force of the crash.

Drivers also were seriously injured or killed by the fire from exploding fuel tanks; today, it is rare to see a major fire associated with a crash.

Rubber fuel tanks are covered in anti-intrusion ballistic cloth and protected by carbon fiber. The tanks are self-sealing in the event of an impact that causes a crack. Jim Melvin, general manager of the Grand Prix of Houston, said the system was developed in Vietnam to use on helicopters.

Safety advances involve the spectators, as well as the drivers, but the last two seasons have proved spectators also can be at risk while watching a race.

Three people were killed in May at an Indy Racing League event in Charlotte, N.C., less than 10 months after three fans were killed in Michigan during the U.S. 500 CART event. Both tragedies were caused by wheels coming off cars during a crash and flying into the stands.

Those incidents brought about several changes, including a device to tether the wheels to the suspension of the cars. Many speedways, including Charlotte, Michigan and Fort Worth, increased the height and the arc of the debris fencing.

The spectator fatalities at superspeedway ovals never have happened at a street course like Houston's.

"It's just not the same animal," Melvin said. "To the best of my knowledge, in all the years of street racing in this country, there never has been a serious spectator incident.

"The cars on superspeedways are traveling at speeds approaching 230 mph, and centrifugal force is pushing them out toward the wall. They can hit the wall with the force of 80 G's, and that's a lot of energy to disperse.

"The fastest part of this track (about 175 mph on the Austin backstretch) is a long straightaway coming off and going into a slow turn. Any brush with the wall likely would be a glancing blow."

Melvin said Grand Prix of Houston officials have spared no expense in making the 1.53-mile, 10-turn downtown layout the safest street course in the world.

"Safety was our No. 1 priority from day one," Melvin said. "Spectators who come to an event deserve the right to feel safe and be taken care of properly. We were not going to do anything to jeopardize the well-being of the public.

"CART officials said last year that Houston was the finest example of track safety for any temporary circuit on the schedule. They raved about our safety system, as did the drivers. It came through clearly that Houston was the safety standard all other street circuits should be looking toward."

The dangers of the sport are something drivers accept because they love what they do, but they also want each event to be as safe as possible. And a tragedy like the one two weeks ago leaves everyone shaken.

"I don't think there is one driver out there who doesn't have a little bit of fear," Fittipaldi said. "Everyone has fear. Sometimes you can forget about your fear and overdrive the car. That's when you can find yourself in a complicated situation."