A very sad day indeed ... Dan Wheldon will be missed tremendously.

http://danwheldonmemorial.com/

What bothers me about IndyCar racing is the lack of respect some of the driver display to each other and their sport. Racing at this level is a high stakes game where lives are always at risk. It's one thing to be fierce competitors on the track but another thing to blatently drive recklessly. I have watched so many races this year where the chief steward tells the drivers before the race to take of each other and it just doesn't happen. It's amazing there haven't been more fatalities this year. The drivers had concerns going into the event about the speeds and safety. They were bumping wheels at 225 mph at the start of the race. The crash happened on lap 11 of 188 laps. Everybody knows these races are won in the last 30 laps. What were they thinking? Some of the drivers are not qualified to drive these cars. Something needs to be done to stop this stuff before a Franchitti, Dixon, Kanaan or Castroneves is next. Danica Patrick is smart. She's leaving for Nascar where it's a little bit more safer.

We lost a great champion and ambassador of American open-wheel racing yesterday. Something that probably could have been avoided. Hopefully this event wakes IndyCar up. Unfortunately, next year's redesigned cars are supposed to be more powerful. Let's see what happens. I have seen Scott Brayton, Jeff Krosnoff, Greg Moore, Gonzalo Rodríguez, Paul Dana and Dan Wheldon get killed over the 30+ years I've followed this sport. Tony Renna died at Indy during a testing session. He crashed threw the catch fence and landed into the Turn 3 grandstand where I sat for the 2003 Indy 500. I don't want to see any of these incidents happen again.

The response will always be "These things happen in Motor Racing". Do they really need to?

Thanks for the comments and respect.

Agreed. But these are not rational personalities. This is like giving a Navy Seal Team F1 cars. Drivers are a breed unto their own and if they can go faster, faster they will go.

What I think is unfortunate is that the 2012 car design is already done.
2012 IndyCar
Gallery
As you can see they just can’t quite enclose those rear wheels and the driver’s head is still in the wind. There is lots of buzz about improvements to the catch fence but the fact is this is an expense born by the track owners not IndyCar or NASCAR and most tracks just went through the expense of adding the safer barrier to the walls and a few just repaved due to track aging. Where is the money to come from? I can only speak to American tracks but most here are barely starving off bankruptcy. Attendance is way down and costs way up. Even NASCAR, the “monetary jewel in the crown”, is losing sponsors at an alarming rate and teams are getting smaller or going under. IndyCar appears to have even more serious financial woes. But, as you say, let’s see what happens in the off season.
BTW, totally by accident I was a bit prophetic in my previous post. This morning I listened to a very interesting discussion on the similarities between racing IndyCar/F1 cars and jet boats and the evolution of their cockpit/canopy. One thing is certain, at the speeds they both travel, if you go airborne and upside down you are going to have a bad day.

It will always be an inherently dangerous endeavor but I think safety can be improved and still keep it exciting. My question is whether or not IndyCar can survive it financially.