Dan Wheldon was one of my good friend's heroes. My friend was sitting in the stands there at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. He was gutted when he saw his hero die right in front of him.
This is stupid. So much could have been avoided. As for ideas for improving safety, I found that after watching the other video (the flip), I think a good idea would be to raise the nose. If you think about it, the nose on Indycars is just an extension of the floor. It looks in the video that the Penske ran over a good-sized chunk of debris, which acted as a launch ramp as it got stuck underneath the floor. Had a Formula One car ran over that, the front wing would have been punted but the debris would have been deflected by the barge boards after having been passed over by the nose.
I think the raised nose of Formula One cars actually prevents a lot of potential accidents. While it does have an aerodynamic purpose, it doesn't contribute to the overall force of sheer ground effects that the floor does, instead acting like a wing in itself. I think raising the nose of the Indycars would allow debris and other junk to be deflected by the barge boards, and not be disturbed as part of the ground effects like it would do now.
And for the life of me I am hoping IRL will still be around as I just got tickets to the Long Beach Grand Prix over here, and it would be a shame to see that money wasted.
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Yes, thank you for noticing I am the most amazing being in the galaxy.