Slower Speeds, Safety Measures Reduce Risk on Long Beach Course

The street course, over which Sunday’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach will be run at speeds up to 175 m.p.h., has a safe reputation that the top drivers do not dispute.

Although tragedy has touched the event in its 15 years, no one has been killed or seriously injured in the six years that the feature race has involved Indy cars.

“I’m knocking on wood, but I think a (fatal accident) here would be a very unlikely situation,” said Mario Andretti, who has won at Long Beach three times.

One obvious factor is that, despite the searing speeds along the Shoreline Drive straightaway, the Long Beach circuit is much slower than ovals such as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indy 500.

“It’s nowhere near as risky as Indianapolis because you are going slow most of the time,” said Bobby Rahal, who finished fourth in last year’s race. “I think it’s reasonably safe. It could be wider in places, but I think it’s a great circuit.”

The average speed at Long Beach is usually in the low 90-m.p.h. range.

The tight 1.67-mile, 11-turn course is bordered in most places by three-foot-high concrete barriers, emblazoned with advertising, atop which are high chain-link fences.

“It gets an A-plus from me,” Andretti said. “I don’t see any particular problem. In the critical braking areas, there are a lot of runoff roads and tire walls. At the hairpin turns, there are good and ample runoffs.”

Al Unser Jr., who won last year’s race after his car knocked out Andretti’s, also praised the safety of the Long Beach course.

“It’s one of the best,” said Unser, who has won at Long Beach two consecutive years. “It’s equal to the set-up courses at Toronto and Detroit, and to the new ones at Denver and Vancouver.”

The first hairpin turn off Shoreline, during which a driver must brake from 175 m.p.h. to 60 m.p.h. or slower, would seem to make the course perilous.

“That would be a dangerous spot if danger was related to speed, but it’s not,” Unser said. “If you make a mistake, any part of the track can bite you.”

The Grand Prix has had its terrible moments.

Clay Regazzoni of Switzerland was paralyzed from the waist down in a crash in 1980, when Long Beach was a Formula One circuit.

The brake pedal on Regazzoni’s car broke at 160 m.p.h. as he was approaching the hairpin off the straightaway.

Sent into an escape road that was only 100 yards long and held two cars that had dropped out of the race, Regazzoni smashed into a concrete barrier and tire stacks.

Chris Pook, founder and president of the Long Beach Grand Prix Assn., said the tires saved Regazzoni’s life.

Later, Regazzoni said that the barrier was too close and suggested that escape roads be longer.

“A tough lesson was learned from that,” Andretti said this week. “Now that escape road goes on forever.”

And dropout cars are put behind barriers.

In 1988, Dan Croft, 47, of Seal Beach died after suffering a head injury in the Trans-Am sedan race the day before the Grand Prix.

His death has been the only fatality on the Long Beach circuit.

“We don’t know the cause of the Trans-Am accident,” Pook said. “He was in back of the field. His car broke loose and he hit the wall.”

In 1975, Dick Workman of San Francisco was seriously injured when his Formula 5,000 Lola hit a retaining wall on a road leading to the race course during qualifying. He had to be taken by helicopter to a hospital.

Tragedy struck during the tearing down of the course in 1978.

“Three kids were moving barricades at 10 at night,” Pook recalled. “They got into a car and proceeded to race on the circuit. They crashed into a barrier and were killed.”

The concrete barriers at Long Beach give drivers and track officials some peace of mind. Each slab is 12 feet long by 18 inches thick and weighs 8,500 pounds.

“Concrete is the safest material we know because of its ability to absorb energy,” said Kirk Russell, director of operations for Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART). “And it keeps the vehicle on the track.”

Andretti said he thought the barriers are higher than needed but serve their purpose. “A car will stay on the track, no question,” he said.

Permanent race courses generally have highway-type guard rails, though they are increasingly being replaced by concrete barriers.

Unser fears guard rails. “They will bend,” he said, “and because there’s usually two of them, they act like a great big pair of scissors. They will cut the car if the car goes in between them. A concrete wall won’t go into the car and cut it.”

Still, if you run into one . . .

“They don’t move, believe me. I’ve tried,” Rahal said.

The system of barriers, fencing and tire walls used at all of the CART road circuits was developed in Long Beach by Pook in 1975. Tires, in four-foot-high stacks, sit in the runoff and high-impact areas of the course.

“They act as energy absorbers,” Russell said. “We have had heavy impacts here, but the system and the design of the course have minimized injuries.”

Spectators, too, have been safe.

“The city, the Grand Prix Assn. and insurance companies are constantly monitoring activities at the track,” Russell said. “People have fallen here, but no injuries have resulted to spectators as a result of accidents on the race course.”

In the last six years, the injury-per-incident rate for Indy cars in all races is below the national highway rate, Russell said.

Unser said: “What really is important is the people around the race track, the fire trucks, the medical units, the CART safety crews. If (they) are not there, the track is very dangerous.”

The tires, the concrete barriers and the people aside, there’s another reason why recent Long Beach races have been safe.

“The cars are a hell of a lot safer now,” Rahal said.