Danger Always There in Racing

For as long as there have been automobile races, one great fear has been that a car might break loose and careen into a spectator area.

The major fear is for wholesale loss of life, but there is an underlying fear as well, that a major disaster could end racing.

Such a wide-scale disaster hasn’t happened since nearly 100 were killed at LeMans, France, in 1955, but what happened Sunday, when three people were killed and six others injured during the U.S. 500 at Michigan Speedway near Brooklyn, Mich., was tragedy enough.

Adrian Fernandez, the pole-sitter, was running third at more than 200 mph when his car lost traction in the fourth turn and slammed into the outside retaining wall. The impact caused a tire-wheel combination and other debris from his car to sail into a grandstand.

Open-wheel cars such as those driven in CART and the Indy Racing League are engineered to break apart at impact, thus dissipating the crash forces on the driver. When cars were built rigid, there were crashes in which the car appeared almost undamaged but the driver was killed by the sudden impact.

In Sunday’s crash, the car broke apart, as it was supposed to, and Fernandez suffered nothing more serious than bruised knees. But the flying debris somehow cleared a catch-fence and resulted in disaster in the stands.

News of the deaths was withheld from drivers, teams, reporters and the TV audience until after the race, even though it was apparent something terrible had happened. The grandstand area where the accident had occurred was evacuated and the bodies were covered and left in place.

“When there are fatalities involved, the medical examiner has to come in and do an investigation,” said Gene Haskett, president of Michigan Speedway. “Therefore, the bodies cannot be removed until after the investigation is complete. I know that that is very difficult for the fans to understand, especially when they could have witnessed it, but we had to wait for the medical examiner. It’s the law.”

The accident occurred on Lap 175 of the 250-lap race--about 3:30 p.m. EDT--but no announcement was made until 4:30 p.m., after Greg Moore had taken the checkered flag.

People watching on ABC-TV were never told of the fatalities, even though they had seen pictures of the wheel flying off Fernandez’s car and into the stands.

“We can only rely on information that the track gives us,” said Mark Mandel, an ABC spokesman. “At least twice during the telecast, we talked to track representatives for information. They said, ‘Yes, there was an incident,’ but they never told us there were any fatalities.

“After we went off the air, we were informed of them, and during a break in the next program, the Tour de France, our announcer, Robin Roberts, put the information on the air. We certainly would have given it out during the race if we had obtained it.”

According to Ron Richards, CART vice president for communications, the only person who can make such an announcement is the medical director in charge at the event. Sunday, that was Dr. Gregory Baumann of Penske Motorsports.

“The first announcement made by anyone was at 4:30 p.m. by Dr. Baumann,” Richards said. “He could not make it sooner because he was at the scene of the accident, tending to the injured. Greg Penske’s first concern was to have Dr. Baumann at the site immediately. [Greg Penske is president of Penske Motorsports.]

“Nothing could be released until the doctor could do it. That is the procedure followed by both the sanctioning body [CART] and the race facility [Michigan Speedway]. We made [the announcement] the minute the doctor was available.”

The race continued as if nothing had happened, which has been widely criticized.

“Let me explain why,” Haskett said. “First, when we arrived at the scene we knew that there were serious and multiple injuries. We did not know how many were injured and so our complete focus was the immediate needs of the injured parties.

“Once we started doing that, it just kept going in the same direction and even as the race was going on behind us, the medical people, the emergency people, the fire-and-rescue [teams] continued to do their job. We knew that with multiple injuries, we were going to be transporting several people to the hospital.

“We didn’t stop to make a decision [to continue the race], we just kept doing our job. In retrospect now, if we had stopped the race, we wouldn’t have been able to get the ambulances to the hospital and the crowd control would have been very difficult. So, in light of everything that had happened, to continue to run the race was the right thing to do.”

The wheel, which weighed 27 pounds, and the suspension parts, which weighed 12-15 pounds, flew over a four-foot wall topped with 11 feet of cable and wire. Why wasn’t the fence higher, some concerned racing fans asked.

“It would be impossible to build a fence high enough to guarantee safety,” Haskett said. “It is a very sickening feeling, and we are sorry for members of the families, but I think it is significant that in 31 years of racing [at Michigan Speedway], this is the first time there has been an incident of this type.

“Certainly, we will evaluate the situation. We feel very comfortable with what we’ve had here over the years. Once again, any incident that occurs here, we always take under review and look at it to see if there is anything that we could change.”

In a similar accident, a spectator, Lyle Kurtenbach, was killed in 1987 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway when a wheel flew into the stands during the Indianapolis 500. He was standing on the top row of a grandstand, 80 feet above the track.

The wall at Indy is 39 inches high on the straightaways and 42 inches in the turns. The fencing atop it is 19 feet high.

“There is no way of knowing what can happen--every accident has its own dynamics,” said Mai Lindstrom, public relations director for the Speedway and the Indy Racing League. “We take every reasonable precaution to contain debris, but when we have cars going 200 mph on a race course, it is impossible to anticipate everything that could possibly happen.

“Over the years, the IMS has invested significantly in upgrading safety measures at this track.”

Even so, when an accident such as the one Sunday occurs, there is a question of liability.

There is a disclaimer on the back of tickets sold at races to the effect that the ticket-holder assumes all risk and danger incidental to the event.

But liability goes far beyond that.

“We have had personal contact with each of the families of the deceased,” Haskett said. “We are going to do anything that they need from us to assist them in their time of [grief].

“The CEO of CART, Andrew Craig, and I flew to Foote Hospital [in Jackson, Mich.,] Sunday night. We visited with all but one of the injured parties, and he had been released. We just wanted to let them know that we wanted to assist their families in any way we can. It’s a very traumatic time for them.”

There is also a strong possibility of lawsuits.

“As soon as some sharp attorney gets ahold of this, everybody--the tire company, wheel manufacturer, car builder, sponsor, driver, the track and the sanctioning body, and probably a dozen others--will be sued,” said one driver who asked not to be named.

Lawsuits in such instances are nothing new.

Kurtenbach’s widow, Karen Ann, filled a $9-million wrongful-death suit in federal court. She and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway reached a settlement Feb. 23, 1990. Part of the settlement was that neither side would reveal the terms.

In 1931 at the Indianapolis 500, a wheel flew off driver Billy Arnold’s car and sailed over the stands, which were much lower then, and across Georgetown Avenue, where it smashed into a concession stand run by the parents of 11-year-old Wilbur Brink. The tire demolished the stand, then hit young Brink, who was playing in his yard, killing him.

Relatives sued the speedway and were awarded $10,000, a huge sum in those Depression days.