A speedway seen from above. Stock image for illustration; not Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Eleven laps into a season finale built around a $5 million promotion, the IndyCar paddock stopped caring about the promotion. On Oct. 16, 2011, a 15-car crash at Las Vegas Motor Speedway killed Dan Wheldon, the reigning Indianapolis 500 winner, at age 33. Fifteen years later, IndyCar’s chassis design, its choice of ovals and its tolerance for pack racing at 220 mph all trace back to that afternoon.
What happened at Las Vegas
The IZOD IndyCar World Championships closed the 2011 season on a 1.5-mile oval with a season-high 34 cars on the grid. On lap 11, contact between James Hinchcliffe and Wade Cunningham between Turns 1 and 2 set off a chain reaction that involved 15 cars. Wheldon, running 24th at about 224 mph, was blocked by the wreckage, slowed to roughly 165 mph and hit Charlie Kimball’s car. His Dallara was launched into the catch fence, where a post struck the cockpit area. He was taken to University Medical Center of Southern Nevada and died of blunt head trauma.
After a driver meeting, series CEO Randy Bernard announced that the race would not restart. The season ended there, the championship went to Dario Franchitti, and the 19 remaining cars ran five tribute laps in Wheldon’s honor.
The context: why Wheldon was in that car at all
Wheldon had won the 2011 Indianapolis 500 for Bryan Herta Autosport, inheriting the lead on the final lap when J.R. Hildebrand crashed while leading. It was his second Indy 500 win, after 2005, but he entered 2011 without a full-time ride. For the finale, Bernard created a $5 million challenge, split between a driver and a randomly selected fan, if a driver won from the back of the grid. Wheldon accepted, and Sam Schmidt’s team put him in its No. 77 car for the last two races, Kentucky and Las Vegas, to build some familiarity.
Add the venue. IndyCar had not raced at Las Vegas since 2000, most of the field had no experience on its banking, and the surface allowed cars to run in multiple lanes at speeds near 220 mph in practice. Put 34 cars on that and you do not get a race so much as a flat-out pack with very few exits.
Why it mattered: the investigation found no single villain
IndyCar’s investigation, released that December, described a convergence of factors, a “perfect storm” with no single cause. It pointed to the track’s multi-groove surface, the high speeds, the season’s biggest field and a grid with little experience at the venue. It also found that Wheldon’s driving did not contribute to the crash. The uncomfortable conclusion was that nobody had broken a rule. The rules simply had not accounted for this many cars on this much track.
The lasting effect on cars, ovals and safety
The most visible legacy is the car. The new Dallara chassis that arrived in 2012 was named the DW12 in Wheldon’s honor; he had been its first test driver and worked extensively on it in early testing. It debuted with changes to the seat, seat back and headrest, rear bumpers meant to keep wheels from interlocking, and bodywork about half an inch wider than the wheels to make wheel-to-wheel contact less likely to launch a car. Franchitti has said it arrived one race too late for Wheldon, and some of those features were already in development before October 2011. Franchitti also calls the aeroscreen, which came years later, the biggest safety development of the decade that followed.
The calendar changed too. IndyCar’s planned return to Las Vegas in 2012 never happened, and Franchitti says the series no longer runs the kind of pack racing seen that day. Catch fencing has been a slower story: Sam Schmidt has said there has been little progress on fence redesign, and some tracks still have posts outside the fence line.
The sport Wheldon left is still arguing about related questions: what engines, what speeds and which manufacturers. That is why the Ford IndyCar engine evaluation for 2028 and Arrow McLaren’s extension with Chevrolet matter beyond horsepower. For another reminder of how long Indy 500 history echoes, see our piece on Gordon Johncock and his two Indy 500 wins.
Franchitti dedicated his 2012 Indianapolis 500 win to Wheldon, and Wheldon was inducted into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame in 2019.
Related Reading on Backfire Racing
- Ford Is Looking at IndyCar. The 2028 Engine Isn’t Waiting for It
- Arrow McLaren Re-Signed With Chevy for an Engine Nobody Has Raced Yet
- Gordon Johncock Dies at 90: Two Indy 500 Wins
- Today in Motorsport, Oct. 15
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