Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Drivers are always aware of great risks

Friday, Sept. 21, 2001 | 10:18 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand's motor sports notebook appears Friday. Reach him at bh@lasvegassun.com or 259-4089.

It is one aspect of auto racing that those who do not follow the sport are unable to understand: How, after the death of a fellow competitor or their own accident, can drivers get back into their cars and continue to compete?

Sam Schmidt, the Henderson resident and former IRL driver who is paralyzed from the chest down and confined to a wheelchair, has called racing an "addiction." Three months after suffering severe injuries to his feet in a crash at the end of the 1999 season, Schmidt returned to racing, only to suffer his devastating injuries in a testing crash.

Most racers are at a loss to explain exactly why they continue to participate in a sport in which death and debilitating injuries are common -- even expected.

Patrick Carpentier tired to explain it just days after CART driver Alex Zanardi lost both of his legs in a violent crash Saturday in Germany. Zanardi's car was hit by the car driven by Carpentier's Player's/Forsythe Racing teammate and fellow Las Vegas resident Alex Tagliani.

"In our sport, as you go through the ranks, you know that when you get to that top level, it's extremely risky and everything involves a lot more risk than I suppose a guy working in an office," Carpentier said. "So we know it and we expect it.

"A lot of drivers have lost good friends and some have been badly injured but always kept racing and that's what we have to do; there's no other way around it."

Carpentier and Tagliani know intimately how dangerous the sport of auto racing can be: Carpentier was a teammate of Greg Moore's when the popular driver was killed in an crash in the CART season finale in 1999 in Fontana, Calif. Tagliani drove for Player's/Forsythe in the Toyota Atlantic series that year and was promoted to the team's CART operation after Moore's death.

"When I was younger, I was struggling with that a little bit more and as you go through the years, for me, it went away," Carpentier said. "I know it can happen; I guess the hardest part was when it happened to Greg -- I really realized that it can happen.

"It's very sad what happened and we're going to try to help Alex Zanardi as much as we can. We wish it never happened but it did happen and everybody has to go racing again. Unfortunately, it's one part of the sport that attracts crowds like this sport does because you never know what's going to happen."

Reflecting on the tragic events in America last week, Carpentier drew a parallel between racing and "real life."

"If you look, it's the same in life," Carpentier said. "If you look at the people working in the World Trade Center, their life was not too risky but one morning they went there and that was it. I think when your time has come, there's not much you can do.

"It makes me realize that every day that you spend with your family and every day you spend at home or outside racing, you have to enjoy them as much as you can because you never know what's going to happen."

"Alex's wife, Daniela, would very much like the show to go on with the Pioneer-WorldCom team this weekend at Rockingham," Nunn said in a statement released by the team. "Especially since both Alex and Tony were running so well in Germany until the accident happened, she feels there is unfinished business to tend to at Rockingham.

"However, some of the guys on the Pioneer-WorldCom team are understandably so devastated by what happened that we believe it would be difficult to fully concentrate on the task at hand. And that could pose a safety risk as we compete on another oval track this weekend. We've consulted with our sponsors, and they concur with this decision."

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