IndyCar walks away from the Pocono Raceway – and its troubled legacy Globe_Sports
Drivers led by enter Turn 1 after taking the green flag to start the IndyCar Series auto race at Pocono Raceway, on Aug. 18, 2019, in Long Pond, Pa.From the air, the second turn at Pocono Raceway doesn’t seem all that imposing. The corner that left Canadian IndyCar driver Robert Wickens paralyzed – after a horrific accident last year ended his record-setting rookie season – is a broad, sweeping curve with a straightaway on either end.
With three high-profile accidents in the past four years, beginning with the 2015 death of driver Justin Wilson, followed by Wickens’s paralysis and a crash this year on Turn 2 that sent another driver to hospital, Pocono leaves behind a troubled legacy.Some drivers have called the track unsafe. Others have rushed to Pocono’s defence.
In 2015, Karam’s car hit the wall at Pocono, scattering parts of the vehicle all over the track. One piece of debris ricocheted off the asphalt at high speed and struck Wilson in the helmet, killing the 37-year-old British driver.Story continues below advertisement “Yes, it’s a racetrack; yes, it’s dangerous,” Igdalsky told The Globe. “Dangerous more than others? I don’t think so.”
A year later, the sport is no closer to ensuring any driver would walk away from the same crash if it happened again. Proponents of change have argued for a clear Plexiglas structure, not unlike hockey boards, but bigger, that wouldn’t ensnare the cars. However, purists doubt such a structure would be able to sustain a collision and argue the cost is simply too high.
With few safety solutions to offer up, IndyCar appears ready to simply move on from Pocono, putting the tragedies and controversy in the rear-view mirror.On one hand, it prevented his car from hurtling out of the track into a grove of trees beyond Turn 2. On the other, it changed his life forever. In many ways, the sport has returned to business as usual: the long-held belief that racing is just inherently dangerous, potentially deadly, and that everyone involved – including drivers and fans – accepts it. Like other racing circuits, from NASCAR to Formula 1, IndyCar knows that risk is part of the attraction. When it comes to attendance and television rights, it’s partly what pays the bills.
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