No, I don’t like crashes.  I hate to see injuries to racers, race workers, and spectators, cars wasted, creating work for track and series safety crews, creating work for car crews at the tracks and back in the shops, damage to track surfaces, walls, & fences, and suspension of competition during cleanup (disruption of flow of races and even fuel-economy gamesmanship).  And I have really hated, since the 1980s, to see my favorite racers unfairly ‘taken out’ of races by their crashing competitors, even if their uninjured.  When someone whom I greatly admire and follow closely has been taken out of contention for a win, maybe taken out of a race, championship points are lost and a car is smashed, I have been mad.

Today’s Indy 500 didn’t see racers wiping out their competitors and jeopardizing their lives until one of the last few laps.  Single-car crash followed single-car crash, and pit-lane snafu followed pit-lane snafu, none of them seeming to threaten the lives of crewmen or racers.  Scott Dixon slamming Ryan Hunter-Reay in pit lane made me mad, and he likely angered Ryan and his team.

But unlike earlier years when racers lost their lives or were horribly burned or had legs, pelvises, ribs and arms smashed, today’s race belied the danger that’s inherent in high-speed open-wheel racing.  In one of the last few laps rookie Mike Conway vaulted over Ryan Hunter-Reay then almost came down on Ryan’s cockpit.  The accident looked horrific.  I thanked God that Ryan wasn’t horribly injured or killed and that Conway only suffered a broken leg.  Remember Briscoe Inferno at Chicagoland (2005) and Kenny Brack’s career-ender?  This could’ve been much worse.

Photos slideshow is provided by The Indianapolis Star