Passion Drives The Drivers
My first interview at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was with a congenial driver named, appropriately enough, Gordon Smiley. The year was 1982. I was waiting around for a Mario Andretti press conference. Andretti was late. Smiley, standing outside a garage, struck up a conversation with me.
“Nice guy,” I remember thinking to myself as I stashed away the notes for a possible future column.
I wrote it sooner than I planned. A week later, Smiley was gone. As he steamed down the Indy backstretch into the third turn during practice, he lost control and hit the wall straight on, at nearly 200 mph.
Smiley died the way driver Scott Brayton did Friday in Indianapolis. Both men expired from what is called a “closed head wound.” This is a polite way of saying that while their skulls remained intact inside their safety helmets, the fierce impact with the wall at such a speed fatally shook up their brains.
I had never interviewed someone who died before my ink was dry. It bothered me for a long while. Eventually, I came to realize death is considered just one page of the record book in auto racing, which plays by the same rules as the Army. When you enlist, you know the worst can happen. Dead drivers still cause great sorrow - Brayton left a wife and 2-year-old daughter - but I no longer agonize over the concept in general.
Is that so insensitive? Before anyone condemns auto racing outright, please remember that all sports have their tragic sides. Men have died on football fields and basketball courts. Women have collapsed mortally while running marathons or playing volleyball. Christopher Reeve was paralyzed falling off his horse.
The Chicago Tribune quoted Brayton just a week ago, explaining why he kept coming back to the Indy 500, even though in 14 previous attempts he hadn’t finished higher than sixth.
“It’s something so exciting, so unpredictable, so totally uncontrollable,” Brayton said. “It’s something people with a passion fall in love with.”
There is no more passionate place in the sporting world than the Indianapolis Speedway, because no one puts on a driver’s suit and whines about it. These men (and women) love what they do.
This year at Indy, that passion is complicated by bad vibes, which is one reason Brayton’s death is so ironic. There has been an angry split in the IndyCar business recently. The owner of the Indianapolis Speedway, Tony George, is feuding with the owners of the best Indy cars - and the best-known Indy drivers. Those owners and drivers are boycotting the Indy 500 next Sunday to stage their own race in Michigan.
As the feud intensified and forced people to take sides, Brayton was the most experienced driver who stuck with Indy. Unlike most of the other drivers this year, he knew every dip and subtle quirk in the asphalt, feeling his way around the oval to win the pole position last weekend.
“Scott had a perfect car and a perfect day and a perfect track,” said his car owner, John Menard. “And it reached up and bit him.”
The bite could not be prevented, as it turned out. Brayton was testing a backup car - trying various setups to see if they might work on his own car - when he ran over something with his right rear tire. It suddenly went flat, causing his car to spin.
From that point, Brayton’s fate was pure luck. You will see dozens of cars at Indy with far more damage after a crash. But because his car hit the wall at just the wrong angle - lifted up slightly, so his helmet hit the wall before the well-protected cockpit - Brayton had no chance.
Why do drivers keep showing up at Indy, knowing they can die? The answer is the same as the question. Knowing the worst possibilities makes the pursuit of the best possibilities even more intoxicating. You often hear that race-car drivers die “doing what they love to do.” That’s not quite correct. They die because they love to feel alive.
That’s what my Gordon Smiley interview notes say. I still have them.