Dario Franchitti was thousands of miles away when a freak accident nearly killed Felipe Massa.
That didn’t lessen the impact on Franchitti and every other race driver.
Massa, a 28-year-old Brazilian driving a Ferrari, was qualifying last week for the Hungarian Grand Prix when a spring came off another car and ricocheted into the left side of his helmet. The blow caused him to loose control and hit a tire barrier at 120 mph.
The photo of a stunned Massa — sitting in his car, the side of his helmet destroyed, blood running around his closed left eye and his right eye wide open in disbelief — haunts Franchitti.
“It was a pretty horrible accident,” the IndyCar Series driver said softly.
Broken bodies and broken lives are a constant specter in racing, yet jarring images of twisted metal, flames and frenzied emergency workers always bring the danger back to the forefront.
Massa underwent emergency surgery for multiple skull fractures and was planning to return home to Brazil on Monday.
His was the second accident in six days in which track debris struck a driver in the helmet and caused an accident. F2 driver Henry Surtees, the son of former F1 champion John Surtees, was killed at Brands Hatch on July 19 after he was struck by a tire from another car, lost consciousness and drove into a barrier.
“We are aware of the danger, but if you’re going to race you have to be willing to accept the potential consequences,” said legendary driver Mario Andretti. “All you can do is hope that it’s not going to happen to you, or at least feel that you can control it.”
Franchitti, preparing for this weekend’s Meijer Indy 300 at Kentucky Speedway, said Massa’s injuries reminded him that not only is his sport dangerous, but that such tragedies cannot be predicted.
“It just shows you that these things are possible,” Franchitti said. “If you look at Massa’s accident, what are the chances of that spring bouncing exactly like that and following that exact line? It’s so random sometimes, these things. They just remind you of the dangers of the sport.”
Massa’s accident sparked a call for racing officials to re-examine safety issues. Drivers said such efforts cannot account for chance.
“Every sanctioning body in the world, they’re constantly trying to make their cars and track safer,” said Franchitti, second in the IRL driver point standings behind Target Chip Ganassi teammate Scott Dixon. “(There is) so much safety equipment. The drivers are safer, but there are certain things you just cannot prepare for.”
Formula One’s Mark Webber, who finished third in the Hungarian GP, called Massa’s accident “incredibly freakish.”
“This is the job we do, but also we’re very relieved, of course, that he’s OK,” Webber said.
Andretti, the 1969 Indy 500 winner and 1978 Formula One driving champ, said when getting behind the wheel a driver must accept that there are things that cannot be controlled.
“We look at it as a calculated risk,” he said. “We know that many factors of a race can change things dramatically, such as being caught up in other people’s mistakes, or equipment failure. Look at the situation with Felipe Massa; certainly it was not his fault. Someone else’s mechanical failure — and he almost paid for it with his life.”
Drivers tend to minimize the risks. Then along comes tragedy to remind them.
“Sometimes you can become complacent because these things haven’t happened in a while,” said Franchitti, a 36-year-old veteran driver. “Then you get something like what happened with Henry Surtees, unfortunately being killed the week before, and then Massa’s accident. …”
There is no room for doubt and fear in racing. Drivers will again strap themselves in and go as fast as possible, though Massa’s accident did give them pause. Still, they have faith that those who set up the cars and tracks are doing their best to make the sport safe.
“The sport has come a long way in really addressing the safety aspects of it and making the tracks and cars so much safer than ever,” said Andretti, a 69-year-old survivor of decades on tracks of all kinds. “But no matter how hard you try, no matter how much of a safety net you have around you, there’s still the possibility of a fluke situation that can do you in.”
As in life, there are no guarantees.
“You can be walking across the street and you can get hit by a car when someone looks down to pick up a phone that dropped,” Franchitti said. “There’s so much … things happen.”
After the Hungarian GP, Webber offered a glimpse into the mind of a world-class driver.
“We missed (Massa) on the grid today,” he said, “but the show goes on.”
It’s a show Massa intends to rejoin as soon as he recovers.
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