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 That is the question currently facing Mark Miles, the CEO of Hulman
& Co., which owns and operates the Indy Racing League in addition to
the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
In 2001, a similar question was put to the France family, owners of
NASCAR and the Daytona International Speedway, after the death of
Dale Earnhardt Sr. on the last lap of the Daytona 500. The late Bill
France Jr. responded with a comprehensive effort to reduce the
threat of driver fatalities in NASCAR's major traveling series. That
included breaking ground on a multi-million dollar research center
dedicated to safety as well as rules development and enforcement.
Within eight months of Earnhardt's crash, NASCAR required head and
neck restraints to be worn by all Sprint Cup drivers after
concluding the devices were the missing link in its safety net
following the deaths of four NASCAR drivers from skull fractures or
neck injuries within a nine-month span. Since the introduction of
mandatory use of head and neck restraints, no drivers in the major
traveling series have suffered a critical head or neck injury - much
less fatal - despite many incidents with high g impacts. Overall,
there have been no fatalities in NASCAR's major traveling series
since Earnhardt's crash in Daytona.
For IndyCar, the missing link continues to be canopies over the
traditional open cockpit. Given that the Top Fuel class in the NHRA
- where speeds exceed 300 mph - has been using canopies successfully
since 2012, it's less a question of technology or implementation and
more a question of changing tradition.
Enclose cockpits to protect drivers and you will kill the sport.
That's the point of view of traditionalists when it comes to a form
of racing that goes back farther than the first Indianapolis 500 in
1911.
But racing tradition sometimes suffers when it meets live
television, which is the main driver of sponsorships. That has been
the experience of not only NASCAR but also Formula 1.
Formula 1, which lost three-time champion Ayrton Senna due to a
crash in 1994, and NASCAR were each popular enough to generate a
major groundswell of antagonism from the mainstream media following
deaths to its major stars. Each series launched major safety
initiatives as a result. Until Julian Bianchi died this summer from
injuries sustained in Japan last fall, F1 had gone 21 years without
a fatal race injury. NASCAR has gone nearly 14 seasons without a
death in the Sprint Cup, Xfinity Series and Camping World Truck
Series.
Those who have voiced opinions against the use of canopies for
IndyCars, which includes tweets from Indy 500 winners, are old
school racers. They believe that an individual choosing to put his
or her life at risk in a racing machine is a fundamentally sound
moral choice. In this view, not only would canopies change the
tradition of being able to easily see the driver in the cockpit, it
would alter the nature of the game.
But the question remains - would an enclosed cockpit have helped
prevent the death of Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon in 2011 when his
car landed upside down on a wall in at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway
as well as Wilson? More important, can it be expected that other
drivers may suffer fatal consequences in the future absent a canopy?
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Experience confirms that drivers in open cockpits are more likely to
suffer severe or fatal injuries. The great Senna was killed by a
suspension piece that flew into his cockpit. Maria de Villota, who
died in 2013 from injuries in a F1 testing crash, and Bianchi likely
would have been helped by better cockpit protection. Felipe Massa
suffered a life-threatening head injury in his Formula 1 Ferrari in
2009 when an errant suspension spring hit him in the head. In
IndyCar, James Hinchcliffe suffered a concussion when hit by debris
in 2014 and in the same race, debris narrowly missed Takuma Sato's
helmet and then pierced his cockpit head surround.
Changing the traditional appearance of race cars has always been a
touchy issue with fans. One of the prominent elements in the decline
of NASCAR's ticket sales and ratings was the Car of Tomorrow.
Introduced in 2007, it incorporated changes designed to reduce
driver injuries, particularly when it came to high-speed wall
impacts and car-to-car contact. But fans despised the car's
appearance, including a rear wing that replaced traditional
spoilers. Above all, it symbolized the new era of safety. After
focus groups identified the COT has a problem, the concept of cars
that better resemble street cars and traditional NASCAR racers was
re-introduced with Gen 6 in 2013.
So there is the economic threat of losing fans by changing the
traditional appearance of cars in the name of safety. At present,
IndyCar has decent TV packages, but struggles to bring in sufficient
sponsorship to keep fields full and the schedule constantly migrates
to different tracks in search of better ticket sales. Unlike F1 and
NASCAR, where the outcry against fatalities was overwhelming after
the death of a major star, the political pressure to improve driver
safety in IndyCar has also been more reflective of its lower public
profile.
Ultimately, NASCAR and F1, which greatly reduced fans' ability to
see drivers in the cockpit after Senna's death with new safety
rules, have proven that they can prosper while pursuing better
safety for its drivers. It's reasonable to believe IndyCar can
follow the same path.
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