Nothing Matches the Thrill of Indy, Says Bedard : Driver Is Still Broken and Hurting From a Crash That He Doesn’t Remember

Something is missing for Patrick Bedard, broken and aching from the spectacular crash he doesn’t remember in last year’s Indianapolis 500.

It’s the thrill, the intensity of a 200-mph chase around the 2 1/2-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“I can’t find anything that quite captivates me the way that did,” he says. “You can’t do it from writing; you can’t do it from anything. . . .

“When you’re a race driver and you have speed at The Speedway, that’s as good as life gets.”

Bedard, 43, is a journalist and was a race driver until the 59th lap of the 1984 Indy 500, when his car hit an inside retaining wall and turned into an orange fireball. It became, he says, “a whirling asteroid of junk that only a millisecond before had been a $180,000 automobile.”

The crash sent Bedard back to the typewriter.

“I’m a used buckaroo, worked over hard enough to void all warranties, both expressed and implied,” he wrote in an article in the May issue of Esquire magazine. “My jaws are wired shut; the mandible is broken in two places. And the after-effects of the concussion have me in siege.”

The article, “Anatomy of a Crack-up,” offers a perspective on what it’s like to drive a high-speed race car--a machine, Bedard indicated in a telephone interview from New York, that he’ll stay out of at least until his balance and motion sensing “are back up to snuff.”

Bedard doesn’t know what caused his crash.

“We had some substantial handling problems that day, and I assume that something came up that just set it off,” he said in the interview. “I have no memory of it; it’s almost like it doesn’t exist.”

In the Esquire story, Bedard said major-league race drivers are “icemen. They know no fear.”

Still, he wrote, “ . . . when you ascend to the level of Indianapolis, with its pared-to-the-minimum cars and over-200-mph speeds and ever-present walls, the danger is palpable. Even the spectators sense it. Just a cut tire, you get into the fence, and snuff. The helicopter doesn’t even bother lifting out of the infield.

“There are essential delusions required of race drivers. If you have them, no problem. All you have to believe is ‘Nothin’ bad is gonna happen to me.’ That’s how simple it is. If you’re a believer, it’s as though the sharks had no teeth, the gallows had no rope, the wall had no thud. You’re untouchable.

“That’s Essential Delusion No. 1. There’s another. Essential Delusion No. 2 is ‘I can drive that car.’ Not ‘I can drive it at 200 mph’ or ‘I can drive it as good as Mario Andretti.’ No qualifiers. I can drive that car, period. Get back the women and kids.”

For Bedard, there’s no terror at driving 200 mph.

“Only joy. Nothing focuses the mind like 750 horsepower at your foot and a license to use it. Nothing else demands the level of concentration. Or commitment. You’re the captain of the ship. You’re the inertial guidance system. You’re the force that makes it work. Without the driver, a racing car is just a tool, dumb as a hammer.

“The driver transforms it into kinetic art, makes it waltz with physics. And the dance makes the spirit soar. Some people use different words. Kevin Cogan is a gifted driver, young and fast. He knows the feeling. ‘It’s like a drug they don’t sell,’ he told me once.

“Clearly, it must be powerful stuff to make us move like a band of nomads to Indianapolis, Indiana every spring.”

Bedard also wrote about being “fitted” for the race.

“You slip into it like a shoe,” he said. “The belts are the laces--a strap plus one over each shoulder and two up between the legs. You can move your arms and feet, but from your knees to your shoulders, you wear the car like a pointy Italian oxford.

“This perfect fit is essential because when the car is up to speed, the side forces in the turns will be three G’s (three times the force of gravity). Against three G’s, you can’t even hold up your head, at least not for long. The drivers wear a mini-horse collar around the neck and a tether strap from helmet to left shoulder; otherwise their necks would be bent over like willow trees in a windstorm.

“Below the neck, the best you can hope for is to spread the load, avoid pressure points that rub down to raw meat as the race progresses. So a liquid foam is poured into the cockpit, filling the space between man and machine before it hardens. The cockpit accommodations alone are a fine indication of man’s automotive progress; he is almost to the point of making a car so fast he can’t stand to drive it.”

Bedard said in the interview that, once behind the wheel, an Indy driver encounters “some things you wouldn’t ordinarily think of. The methanol smell. Your eyes water. It’s hard to breathe. It is physically very violent with the heat, the G-forces, the buffeting from other cars.

“There’s the constant talking to yourself: ‘Don’t take a chance; don’t risk something now that might take you out of the race.’ There’s a constant weighing of every judgment. The intensity for that much time is beyond what most people would expect, or be prepared to put up with on a Sunday afternoon.

“Once that race starts, it’s a real hard job.”

But a job, Bedard said, “well worth doing.”