dan-wheldon Stories - Pop Off Valve
Catharsis by generosity: the miracle of the Dan Wheldon Memorial Auction
If I were to summarize the news lately, I could probably rewrite the entirety of the 1990s Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire" from the events of the past month alone. Granted, Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian do not carry the kind of historical weight as thalidomide or the fall of Dien...
Long IndyCar off-season a blessing in disguise
Someone recently asked me what I thought about the yawning divide between the 2011 IZOD IndyCar Series finale at Las Vegas and the start of the 2012 racing season. The question was fraught with complexity because of Dan Wheldon's death. Normally, most of us would say that the new season couldn't...
Defending Randy Bernard
For nearly as long as I've been alive - and probably longer, if I bothered to ask older fans than myself - the go-to policy for assigning blame for INDYCAR's and its predecessors' woes is a simple one. Blame the CEO. This is otherwise known as "scapegoating." The term itself refers to the...
Rahal helmet auction turns into industry-wide push to help Wheldon family
Graham Rahal may be one of INDYCAR's younger drivers, but his maturity and leadership outweigh his years. The latest evidence of this is the fundraising auction he is helping put together for the family of the late Dan Wheldon, who lost his life at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday. The...
The Paddock Pulse: Lionheart Edition
This is one of the hardest - yet most fulfilling - things I've done since Dan Wheldon died. The Paddock Pulse is usually my gift back to my fellow fans and bloggers, giving them whatever boost I can by highlighting their opinions and creativity. I think, though, that this week's Pulse is a gift...
A note of appreciation to the ESPN-ABC broadcast team
As with many others, I'm still struggling with yesterday's tragedy at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. I don't have the breadth or depth of knowledge of open-wheel racing that others have, but I have spent time with racers, their families and their supporters in my capacity as a sportswriter, blogger and...
For safety's sake, the IndyCar "pack racing" era must end
In the early spring of the year 2000, there was a small, yet vocal group of journalists who were ramping up the rhetoric in NASCAR circles about the dangers faced by stock car drivers on the track. We were not popular with the series, many of the drivers and teams, or indeed the traditionalists in...
Wheldon Focused On Vegas Dash For GoDaddy Cash
Left standing alone without a ride when the silly season music stopped, Dan Wheldon must be given credit for retooling, refocusing and quite simply, throwing a huge roll of the dice in signing with Bryan Herta Autosport for the 2011 Indy 500. After all, Herta's underfunded outfit had barely...
Tagliani ouster a full-Schmidt move
All anyone could talk about yesterday was the baffling decision by Sam Schmidt to put Dan Wheldon into the #77 Bowers & Wilkins Dallara in place of Alex Tagliani for this weekend's race in Kentucky. Well, let me qualify that - "anyone" means IndyCar fans on the Internet. Let's keep that small...
Wheldon $5 million shot inadvertently makes gimmick more promotable
So it's come to this, you might be thinking. Travis Pastrana breaks a few bones. Kasey Kahne only wants to run for a guy who doesn't want to field an extra car. Alex Zanardi? Yeah, not a great idea, no matter how we all love him. It looked like Randy Bernard's white elephant, this $5 million...
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