Bad crash.


They pulled his team out of the Miami race but they will be driving in the St. Pete Grand Prix next week.

 

I just read this in todays TBT. Very sad.

 

indeed RIP

He was 30 yrs old. I havent been able to find a video of it yet but I saw it on ESPN, something like 205mph at impact I heard. I Dont know why he didnt slow down, the onboard caution lights went off, he got a caution message through the headset, and the track workers were functioning fine.

EDIT: This was Paul Dana's 4th indy car start he raced in 3 last year...

 

i know this is off topic but i'm confused, did you join almost 4 years ago and this is your first and second post?

either way this was a horrible accident, you hate to see it, and i only hope that this weekend goes well without any deaths

looking for video

EDIT: well, the only thing i found was on the ESPN website, but you have to have ESPN360, so if anyone has the membership or whatever, can you try and get it for us and post it up here?

 

RIP, this guy gave up alot to chase a dream as a Indy Car driver and got to live his dream however short the time that is something to be honored.

 

i guess his post count was erased at some point, but Bill is gangsta, hes been around for years, search for him in war stories

 

On Speed last night they said the in car telemetry speed was 176 at the time of impact.
....and that was 8 seconds after the first car hit the wall. Hard to understand how this happened.

 

rep points please

 

Apparently the IRL doesn't know why he didn't slow down. He had plenty of warning. Yellow lights, spotters, other cars slowing around him. Looks like he just kept his foot in it. Maybe just an over-enthusiastic rookie mistake.

 

I don't believe he did anything different than any other driver does during a caution. One of the things that amazed me the first time I did coursework at the St. Pete Grand Prix was that when there's a caution, the only cars running substantially slower are the cars that are immediately behind the pace car. For everyone else, it's an opportunity to close on the leaders. They have spotters on the track telling them what the issue is and where it is. They'll back down just enough in that section to give themselves a safety margin, but for the most part, it's racing as usual.

Telemetry had him running at 175 mph. IIRC, lap speeds at Homestead were around 215mph during the race. That's a 40mph margin which I suspect is about as much as any driver would back down unless bottlenecked behind a pace car. In this case, I suspect that his spotters told him what line to take and the other car rolled down the track faster or slower than expected and they wound up in the same place at the same time.