Back to Home > Friday, Mar 31, 2006 Sports Posted on Fri, Mar. 31, 2006 email this print this... Sampling of columns of note fr

HOMESTEAD, Fla. - A black limousine drove slowly Sunday afternoon through Main Street here at Homestead-Miami Speedway before stopping in back of a huge transporter reading "Rahal Letterman Racing."

Shortly after 2:30 p.m., one hour before the start of the Toyota Indy 300, tiny Danica Patrick walked barely noticed out from behind the transporter in a hooded sweatshirt, jeans and dark glasses, stepped into the limousine and was slowly driven away.

On a day Patrick and the rest of the Indy Racing League were to celebrate the beginning of their season - in the middle of all the celebrities, Playboy models, hospitality suites and tiki bar - a pall fell over this race.

Just after 10 Sunday morning during final practice, Ed Carpenter's car spun out in turn two, bounced off the wall and slid down the track, where Dana slammed into it at more than 175 mph.

Dana's car splintered into pieces and so too did the heart of the Rahal Letterman Racing team when it learned Dana had died of multiple trauma. By 1:30 p.m., Rahal announced the cars of Dana's teammates, Patrick and Buddy Rice, would not participate in the Toyota Indy 300.

"Everything happened so suddenly," said Helio Castroneves. "Maybe for us drivers it was hard for us to try and understand, to sink in. Obviously, the owners, everyone was trying not to talk about it around us to make sure we go back and do our job."

And they did in grand fashion when Dan Wheldon beat Castroneves in the ninth-closest finish in Indy racing history. But the celebration was muted and the afternoon cheerless. Dana, a 32-year-old husband who once worked as a mechanic at the Bridgestone Racing School in Canada for time behind the wheel rather than cash, was dead.

"It's tough when you lose a colleague," Castroneves said. "But all drivers know the risk ... We're part of the show. We're here to be able to play that role to fans."

And so they did. For 25 minutes, Patrick solemnly stood outside her team's transporter wearing impenetrable sunglasses, signing hats, cards, model cars and magazine covers while accepting condolences from fans. Patrick had watched Dana's excitement this week after qualifying ninth.

"She's pretty upset," said Rahal Letterman spokesman Brent Maurer of Patrick, who declined to comment. "Seeing (Paul) yesterday ... he was so excited. He couldn't wait. He was walking on air."

Wheldon should have been doing the same. But he was too emotional after the race to talk about his friendship with Dana or his reason for putting Dana's No. 17 on the side of his car.

"Life can be cruel sometimes, and this is one of those times," said former Indy champ Mario Andretti. "This is what builds the character. Life must go on."

MIAMI - The life-goes-on aspect is what struck you, and stunned you. The arrangements for Paul Dana - the transfer of his body, the funeral - hadn't even had time to begin Sunday afternoon while the high-decibel carnival continued full speed down here at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

The steady whine of an undercard race went off as background noise while Indy Racing League officials were informing gathered media that Dana, a driver no longer little-known, had been declared dead just before noon at Jackson Memorial Hospital from horrific injuries sustained in a practice-run wreck not quite two hours earlier.

The main race, the Toyota Indy 300 launching the IRL season, would run as scheduled later Sunday, minus Dana's two fellow drivers from Bobby Rahal's team: circuit star Danica Patrick and former Indianapolis 500 winner Buddy Rice, their cars idled out of respect for what Rahal called "a very black day for us."

In a scene almost surreal, Patrick, appearing visibly shaken, appeared outside the Rahal trailer an hour before the race, surprising fans and signing autographs for about 20 minutes. Some fans were not aware a driver had died. Perhaps some were too excited by Patrick to remember.

And it was, until 10:03 a.m., when Dana's No. 17 car struck another and disintegrated. Hardly any fans were in the stands. Ed Carpenter's car had spun out on his own and nearly came to a stop seven seconds later when struck by Dana, who was clocked traveling 176 mph.

Dana, traveling fast enough to cover the length of a football field in one second, never had a chance. The margin of error at that speed is negligible, and just outside that margin, death waits, and plays no favorites, treating an IRL rookie the same as it would treat NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Sr.

Dana was no star like The Intimidator was. His death will not profoundly affect so many. But the tears are as real to those who loved him. The tragedy is not less because his racing resume was.

Specifics of Dana's injuries were not forthcoming, but to probe seemed gruesome, and also unnecessary. Rahal said Dana had succumbed to "multiple trauma." That was enough information. That was too much.

Down in Homestead, an hour before the race, the carnival roared on. A moving nest of fans tailed basketball star Carmelo Anthony and his posse. KISS frontman Gene Simmons drew stares. Dolphins cheerleaders posed for pictures. A long, snaking line led to a table where four Playboy playmates signed autographs. Beer was flowing.

"Some of us might not admit it, but the possibility of a spectacular crash is part of the attraction and excitement," said race fan Miguel Medeira, of Miami. "But you always imagine the driver climbing from his car and waving. You do not imagine this. Not ever. If you did, you might never watch another race."

Overhead, stunt pilots were making small planes corkscrew and dip as fans oohed and cheered. Those pilots are called daredevils, but they are not the realones.

Dana was a real one. Anyone flying 200 mph in traffic, in an open-cockpit race car, qualifies. Safety is a misnomer when cars lose control at these speeds, beside concrete walls. You find very few agnostics out here.

The business-side imperative wouldn't allow it. Made it unthinkable. ABC-TV was on hand to give IRL, a struggling circuit, three hours of attention it could not afford to miss. The Homestead track and its owners were not about to write 30,000 refund checks and miss a truckload of concession and souvenir sales.

Count it as a small miracle that Rahal did the right thing by sitting his other drivers, and that ABC didn't (that we know of) try to strong-arm him to at least let Danica drive, for the sake of ratings.

For TV, this race losing Patrick hours before the start was like a golf tournament seeing Tiger Woods unexpectedly withdraw. Homestead track president Curtis Gray said a "relatively brief" discussion of canceling the entire race was overwhelmed by "the commitment we made to the fans."

So the cars roared again and again over the same spot of track where Dana had lost his life. Dale Earnhardt Jr. had raced the week after his father died, and every one of these IRL guys flying out here Sunday could relate.

This is racing. The danger and, occasionally, the death. Perspective? None is needed. The danger is too integral, too overriding. Yet what is always there is what you must not think about too much.

A colleague had died, but a chilling facade of normalcy played out. Runner-up Helio Castroneves spoke of "everybody trying not to talk about it around us."

MIAMI - Every so often, we have to be reminded. "We" being those of us for whom the number 14 is A.J. Foyt, Dale Earnhardt is the greatest No. 3, all yellow helmets say "Ayrton Senna" and the smell of suntan lotion means The Track.

We have to be reminded why we admire and respect race drivers, even those whose skill and will forever relegate them to being field filler. Sadly, the reminders come in moments like Sunday's death of Paul Dana.

If race drivers in the highest levels of the various disciplines have nothing else, they have the raw courage to not only desire to get behind the wheel knowing what can happen, but they crave being in the car.

Back in the 1980s, ABC asked several Indy Car drivers - Foyt, Mario Andretti and Johnny Rutherford among them - if they felt fear out on the track.

Only one driver, Scott Brayton, said he didn't feel fear if the car was operating well. Brayton is the only driver in that piece no longer alive. He was killed in a practice accident after winning the pole for the 1996 Indy 500.

This is the one sport where there's a chance during any phase of participation you might be taking the real Last Ride. This is the one sport that had to award a World Championship posthumously (1970, Jochen Rindt).

Every now and then, somebody argues that's exactly why it's the one sport that should be abolished. That would help nothing. Similar to horse racing, boxing and track and field, it's an elemental sport that'll exist as long as there are two cars and two halfway competitive people. You better license and regulate it because you sure can't stop it.

Tragedy never has. Thinking money was the only reason Sunday's race was run after Dana's accident is to ignore how many times the show went on during the days when money was only something racing people spent.

Some people also like to say the potential for spectacular accidents, danger and death are part of auto racing's attraction. I'm sure it is to some fans. It once was for me, at least the accident and danger part. I wouldn't have minded seeing a nonfatal car flipper.

I was sitting in Turn 4, finishing writing the previous qualifier's average speed on my Indianapolis Star qualifying chart. Hearing a collective groan, I glanced down toward Turn 3. Gordon Smiley's car was skidding toward the outer wall. At impact, it looked like the wall had burped a fireball seasoned with auto parts.

We rose without a "Wow!" Only worry. You didn't have to be a bad wreck veteran to recognize this one. We watched safety and ambulance crews attack the wreckage. One of a couple two rows in front of me said, "They pulled the sheet over his face."

The couple embraced. My thoughts plodded past checkpoints: pulled the sheet over his face ... That means he's in really bad shape... . That means he's dead, stupid. You've just watched a man die.

That finality hits me ever harder as the same years that put Smiley's crash further in the distance carry me closer to my own end in the future.

Tragedy has its place in the wry racing dialect my closest friends and I speak ("I got burned on that decision. Badly." "Niki Lauda?" "Try Sachs-MacDonald.") But never again would I want to see anything beyond a relatively harmless spin or skid off the course.

Then, I know no matter how bad off he is, he's going to get back in that car. Mel Kenyon lost a hand. Alex Zanardi lost his legs. Both figured out a way to race again.

"I know I probably should've retired 10 years ago," Foyt told ABC in 1987. "My own father, before he passed, said, "Son, you've won everything there is to win. What's there left to do but get hurt?' I said, "Dad, we're all going to die someday.' "

I'm sure that's scant solace to the wife and family who survived Dana. Then again, how many of us will be able to say we had the guts to risk everything to make a living at what we love, and we did it to the end?

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