Life In The Fast Lane

By Dario Franchitti as told to Brant James

Dario Franchitti (center) was consoled by Team Target teammates after Dan Wheldon's death at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in October 2011.

Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Dario Franchitti wept not of joy, but of inconsolable despair on the day he won his third consecutive IndyCar championship. For the second time in his 14 years at the highest echelons of North American open-wheel racing, a close friend had died at the same track on which both were racing. This time it was former teammate Dan Wheldon, who died a dozen laps into the race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Oct. 16, 2011. Twelve years earlier it was Greg Moore.

Every death of a driver resonates in the paddock. But on the drivers move, shutting out nagging thoughts that may cast doubt on their ability to find the space between control and chaos, where the best drivers dwell. This one was different, yet all too familiar.

But life goes on. Career goes on. And the helmet has gone back on numerous times since and will again as he prepares to move on, move forward again. Franchitti spoke recently with SI.com's Brant James about the ever-elusive state of safety in an inherently unsafe profession.

The Voices

Danger, it's not something that is in the front of your mind. It's certainly not in the front of my mind. It's certainly something I was aware of from the first time I sat in a car or certainly from the first time I had an accident in a car. There are reminders of that when people close to you are hurt or you hurt yourself, or worst-case, obviously, when you lose somebody like we lost Greg or we lost Dan. I bring those guys up because I was very close to both of them. It's in the back of your mind. I think it sometimes shows you where the limit is. You're not thinking about it consciously. It's in the back of your mind, and you accept that. You either accept it or you don't do the job. And you're always trying, the series is always trying, to make it as safe as it possibly can be, but you understand it can't be 100 percent safe.

Safety is something that's ongoing. Each year we try to improve it, whether it's head surround or seats or seat belts or seat position in the car. They're not standing still, the IndyCar Series. The FIA [Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile] are also getting heavily involved in it. The manufacturers, I think are trying. It's an ongoing thing. Particularly after Dan's accident, the series has taken another look at itself and redoubled its effort. That's something we're in the middle of right now. We've not seen the results of any of that stuff yet. We've talked to drivers, talked to team owners, talked to everyone trying to improve things.

Obviously, there's a lot of discussion about the fencing right now. I think a big advance was the SAFER barrier. That was something that IndyCar funded and came up with, along with the guys up at the University of Nebraska, although NASCAR will try to take some credit for it sometimes. That was an IndyCar thing, and I'm happy that any series that races on an oval has the advantage of it, regardless of who came up with it. That's something, NASCAR, IndyCar, whoever -- we're pushing in the same direction. We're all in the same boat together.

Missed Opportunities

Dr. Terry Trammell, an orthopedic surgeon who has rebuilt the bodies and careers of numerous drivers and been among the vanguard of motorsports safety advocates, told SI.com in a December story that IndyCar squandered a chance to make the new car -- set to debut in 2012, bearing the name of Wheldon , its primary test driver -- safer by rushing its timetable for deployment.

I'm not going to disagree with Terry. He's one of the guys who talks about safety moving on all the time. He's one of the people who has worked on it, year after year, for, I don't know, the last 30 years. That's his field of expertise. He's a guy I owe a tremendous amount to, the fact I am still racing, the work he did for me, on my spine. If Terry said that the new car could be safer, that's good enough for me.

There's obviously the two sides to it. They have to start working on the new car at some point to get ready for the start of the season, and safety is ongoing, but, you know, I was a little surprised with some of the new pieces in the new car. There're a couple areas I thought, "Wow, that's not much of a step forward from the old car." There are definitely some areas that are better with all the foam around the cockpit, energy absorbing foam, and the fact you sit on that stuff. But that stuff Terry and I talked about two or three years ago wasn't incorporated, and that was a little bit of a surprise.