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Champions Gone Too Soon

© Gary Presley

Suite 101 Dateline: 03 17 00

Indy car racing once was obscenely deadly. You don't need to crunch numbers and prove it statistically. Just check a picture of a car from, say, the early 50s, and you'll wonder how any driver survived a crash in one of those monsters.

The driver sat upright. His head was encased in a brain bucket, and he wore a simple pair of goggles and a bandanna over his face. He may even appear to be wearing a short sleeve shirt. There's no roll cage, only a roll bar, and it doesn't rise up much more than shoulder high.

Indy car racing remains brutal, in both its fractured forms -- CART and IRL. IRL driver Sam Schmidt was paralyzed in a testing accident earlier this year, and Penske driver Gonzalo Rodriquez died in practice for the race at Sonoma. Finally, Greg Moore, the promising young Canadian CART competitor, was killed in the race at Fontana. Ironically, Moore had signed to drive for Penske in 2000.

Moore's death struck hard, for he was popular with fans and fellow drivers alike, as Web sites like The Greg Moore Tribute page attest. The Tribute Page recites the stark details, quoting an ESPN report, "Greg Moore was killed Sunday in the season-ending CART race when he lost control of his car at 220 mph and crashed into a wall, spinning wildly and slamming into the ground several times.

"Television replays showed the Reynard-Mercedes skidded onto the infield grass, became airborne and crashed hard into a retaining wall, with Moore apparently striking his head on the concrete. The car then broke into pieces, with the open-cockpit driver's compartment spinning and hitting the ground several times before coming to a halt."

I had tuned in to the race broadcast, and I saw the fatal crash. Like most fans, I was numbed. People die every day, of course, but even the most hardened soul cringes when someone dies while providing us entertainment.

I didn't see my first racing hero die. I can only remember visiting my uncle's house on Memorial Day nearly a half-century ago.

"Is Billy Vukovich winning, Uncle Jim?"

"There was a crash. He died," came the quiet reply.

Why do we pick favorites among drivers? Few of us are personally acquainted with the driver we follow. We may have begged an autograph, but you can hardly call that a friendship.

Maybe I was a kid who liked the name. "Vukovich." That sounds like a race driver, doesn't it? Maybe it was because we were both native Californians. Maybe it's because we almost invariably admire anyone who is good -- very, very good -- at what he does.