The Lost Talent of Gordon Smiley

Posted by Kevin Guthrie May 21, 2009

Well, I'm getting pretty excited about Indy now, only three days away. I'm sure this year's 500 will provide the usual dose of excitement, disappointment and ultimately, for someone, triumph. There will be the inevitable accidents, but the risk of serious injury will be pretty low. With SAFER barriers and the latest generation Dallara chassis crashes, more often than not, look worse than they are.

27 years ago this was not the case. In May 1982 the Indianapolis circuit was still lined by a concrete wall. It was in turn three, on May 15th, that Gordon Smiley's March lost downforce and ploughed headlong into the outer retaining wall. Smiley's accident has been dissected and documented over the years and I don't see any need to go into the details here. Suffice to say, survival was impossible.

To many racing fans that is all Gordon is remembered for, a few spectacularly destructive seconds. Scan the internet for information about the crash and you will discover frequent references to his inexperience and arrogance. These are easy explanations, rolled out to dismiss the accident as the fault of an overly confident young driver who didn't show Indy the respect it deserved.

I can't help feeling that these explanations do a great disservice to Smiley's memory. This, after all, was a driver who had led the Indy 500 the previous year. The March chassis he drove in 1982 was known to be an evil handling example and Smiley struggled throughout practice, fighting against both the car and some underhand opposition in similar cars who were not reading from the same rulebook.

Smiley's background was in road racing. During the 1970s he was one of the quickest Formula Ford drivers in the world, with a spectacular cornering technique. He also raced, and won, in the Aurora AFX Formula 1 series. Smiley was comfortable with oversteer, instinctively applying opposite lock when the back stepped out of line. When his March broke away at Indy that day it was most probably pure road racing instinct that made him try to correct it. In a ground effect car it was the wrong thing to do, as the suction provided by the skirts was lost. From that moment the situation became irretrievable.

I'd urge any racing fan to investigate Smiley's life before May 15th, 1982. They will be rewarded with the discovery of one of racing's great forgotten talents.