Sometimes a story doesn’t work out. I had planned to write a book about the 2011 IndyCar season as part of National Novel Writing Month, but life — specifically my thesis — intervened. Might as well share the prologue. Enjoy.

Prologue

There is no one to blame for the disheartening event that took place at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on October 16, 2011 – nor should there be. The heartbreaking loss of Dan Wheldon at the age of 33 truly was an accident, caused by a combination of events that managed to happen just wrong and leading to the demise of one of the sport’s underappreciated stars. Assigning blame would be counterproductive, looking for a scapegoat to erase the problem.

The open-wheel action of IndyCar, through its setup, is a sport that defies nature. Its participants rocket at speeds that can exceed 230 mph. There’s a reason we are supposed to abide by speed limits and why everyday cars on the road are limited to speeds that are more than half of that. Going that fast is inherently unsafe.

But the search for speed is part of human endeavor. The only event of the first ancient Olympics was a footrace. Since then, man has always competed in battles to determine who could traverse a distance in the shortest amount of time. Once the tools became viable, the competitions no longer had to be on foot. Instead we competed using horses, boats, hot-air balloons and, of course, racecars.

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