Mike's Miraculous Escape

On Sunday night, a British racing driver literally cheated with death in America’s most famous car battle.  Mike Conway, a former GP2 driver, who resides in Kent, suffered a huge smash on the penultimate lap of the Indianapolis 500 at the Brickyard.

As the video above shows, Conway clipped the back of Brazilian driver, Ryan Hunter-Reay and was launched into the air.  Shockingly, his car ended up catapulting into the catch-fencing on the left-hand side of the track, his car disintegrating into pieces across the road.  The scattered debris saw several spectators dive for cover, some suffering minor injuries, whilst other drivers such as three-time winner Helio Castroneves saw their cars damaged in the smash.  Hunter-Reay was also incredibly lucky to escape any injury, as large pieces of Conway’s car threatened to do some severe damage to his well-being.  This was a chilling reminder of the threats that carbon fibre can do in open-wheel cockpit racing following Felipe Massa’s serious life-threatening shunt in qualifying for last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix and the death of talented F2 racer, Henry Surtees. 

Paramedics were on the scene very quickly, with Conway conscious, but clearly in a lot of pain.  Amazingly, despite the destruction of his car in many small pieces, his only main injury was a broken leg.  The smash is by far, the biggest I have witnessed in IndyCars since the tragic death of Canadian driver Greg Moore at the CART finale in California, 1999.  Other drivers such as Bruno Junqueira, Memo Gidley, Alessandro Zanardi and Kenny Brack have had horrific shunts in recent years, yet walked away with their lives.  This once again highlights the fact of safety in racing events in America and the massive steps that have been taken for these accidents to take place, but prevent the fatal loss of some talented stars.  The work of Professor Sid Watkins and particularly, from the official American racing doctor, Dr. Steve Olvey needs to take a large slice of the credit.  Without their advances in medical technology and the assistance they have given the officials and designers, we would be talking about death in far more cases in American racing.

Conway’s crash overshadowed a historic result in Sunday’s showpiece event, which saw a British 1-2-3.  Following Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button’s McLaren 1-2 at Sunday’s Formula One Turkish Grand Prix, Scot Dario Franchitti, reigning Indy Racing League champion won his second Indianapolis 500 for Chip Ganassi.  Dan Wheldon, from Milton Keynes was 2nd for Panther Racing.  Wheldon was catching Franchitti rapidly before the crash, as Dario had been struggling to get to the finish, due to a fuel conservation problem.  Youngster Alex Lloyd rounded the all-British podium, with Castroneves, chasing a 4^th victory at Indy, winding up a frustrating 9^th, after stalling in the pits during a caution flag interval.

However, this race will be fully remembered for Mike’s Miraculous Escape.