Dan Wheldon, Bryan Herta made a good team

During the Long Beach Grand Prix in April, Bryan Herta announced that Dan Wheldon was going to drive one of his cars in the Indianapolis 500.

Bryan Herta Autosport was making its second trip to the Brickyard, but this time with an IndyCar Series champion and Indy 500 winner.

It was an amazing partnership. Herta was running a fledgling Firestone Indy Lights team and entered only one IndyCar Series race prior to the 2011 Indianapolis 500.

Wheldon, who won the Indy 500 and the IndyCar Series championship with Andretti Green Racing in 2005, did not have a full-time ride and was available.

Wheldon and Herta teamed up – they were teammates with Andretti Green for nearly four years – and pulled off one of the most dramatic wins in Indy 500 history.

Wheldon took the lead from J.R. Hildebrand on the last turn of the last lap of the race. Hildebrand, a rookie driver who had a comfortable lead as the Indy 500 winded down, slid into the turn 4 wall. His mangled car crossed the finish line in second place.

Wheldon had enough time to pass Hildebrand and win his second Indy 500.

Wheldon and Herta, a Hart High graduate who lives in Valencia, teamed up once again for the IndyCar Series season finale this weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Wheldon was driving one of two entries from Bryan Herta Autosport in the race.

But the Las Vegas race did not have quite the fairy-tale ending that Indianapolis had. Wheldon died tragically in a fiery crash on lap 12 of the Las Vegas race. He was caught up in a 15-car crash that sent two cars into the track’s catch fence.

Three drivers were hospitalized in the wreck. Wheldon was taken by helicopter to University Medical Center in Las Vegas. Reports were that he was unconscious, but in stable condition, when he left the race track.

IndyCar Series officials announced that Wheldon had died almost two hours after the crash.

“Everyone at Bryan Herta Autosport is reeling from the loss of our friend and teammate Dan Wheldon," Herta said in a release. "Dan was the glue that bound our little team together. It was his spark and belief in us that carried us all to Victory Lane at Indianapolis this year, and his legacy within the sport as a tremendous champion and competitor is unquestioned. But more than that, Dan became my little brother from our time together as teammates at AGR. I watched with pride as he developed from the brash young hotshot on the circuit to a man who was a great husband and father, ambassador, friend, champion and hero."

The remaining 19 drivers in the race, those whose cars were not wrecked in the crash, paid tribute to Wheldon with a five-lap parade around the track.

The drivers, teams and IndyCar Series officials decided not to continue the race.

Wheldon had to start from the back of the 34-car field. He was the only driver taking the IndyCar Series challenge. Any driver who was not full time in the IndyCar Series could enter the race with a chance to win $5 million. The only stipulation was that those drivers had to start from the back.

Wheldon competed in only two IndyCar Series races prior to the Las Vegas race. He won the Indy 500 and was 14^th at Kentucky Speedway two weeks ago.

Much of the blame for the deadly crash is being put on the number of cars in the field, 34, one more than the starting grid for the Indy 500. The large entry field combined with the 1.5-mile track, compared to the 2.5 mile track at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, made for a deadly combination, some are saying.

Wheldon moved up 10 places in the first 10 laps of the race. He was in the middle of a pack of drivers with little experience and little to lose. In the end though, it was Wheldon who paid the ultimate price for other drivers’ mistakes.

A driver hasn’t died in an IndyCar Series race since Paul Dana at Homestead-Miami Speedway crashed in practice in 2006. Even Hildebrand’s crash at this year Indy 500, as scary as it was, was not fatal. Safety at the tracks and in the race cars have improved so much is such a short time.

It will be some time before the cause of Wheldon’s death is determined. Hopefully, the impact of his life will be remembered for a long time to come.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with Susie and the boys, and all of Dan’s family and fans who are trying to make sense of this terrible loss," Herta said in a release. "We are all lucky and blessed to have had Dan Wheldon influence our lives, and his spirit lives on in each one of us. Godspeed my friend.”

Photo: The No. 77 of Dan Wheldon was the only one displayed on the scoring pylon at Las Vegas Motor Speedway after the driver was killed in a crash at the track on Sunday. (Chris Jones)

Pursley dominates at Las Vegas

Greg Pursley won the pole, set the track record in qualifying and led every lap in Saturday night's NASCAR K&N Pro Series race at the Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Pursley has won four of the five West Series races this year. He has a 201-point lead over Moses Smith and is running away with the West Series championship.
Dylan Kwasniewski, Pursley's teammate at Gene Price Motorsports, finished second. Jason Fensler, the only other driver to win a West Series race this year, was third. Fensler won the West Series race at All American Speedway in Roseville, Calif., and was making only his second West Series start of the season at Las Vegas.
Go to the K&N website for more on the West Series race at Las Vegas.

Photo: Greg Pursley in the No. 26 car, leads Eric Holmes at the Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Pursley won the race, his fourth of the season. (Jeff Bottari/Getty Images for NASCAR)

Kenseth going for three in a row

The storyline out of Las Vegas will be watching Matt Kenseth try to become the first NASCAR driver to win the first three races of the season. This is of course at the Cup level, be it Winston Cup, Nextel Cup or Sprint Cup. The last driver to win the first two races of the Cup season was Jeff Gordon who did it in 1997. It's been a while.
Kenseth won the season-opening Daytona 500 and followed that with a win at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. He will have a chance to win his third straight race as Las Vegas Motor Speedway in Sunday. This coming after a 2008 season in which he did not win one race.
“I haven’t really thought a whole bunch about it, to be honest with you," Kenseth said from Las Vegas. "I didn’t think we would have won the first two races, so I haven’t really thought about the third. We’re just gonna take it one race at a time like we always do and just be business as usual. Hopefully we can get our car to handle good this weekend and have a shot."
One of the reasons Kenseth won the Fontana race was because of great pit stops. His crew won the race off pit road on the last set of stops and gave Kenseth the lead late in the race.
"The pit crew has been operating at an extremely high level, and so have all the guys getting the cars to handle and run – the engine guys and everything – so I feel like we have the tools to be competitive and we’ll just try to be as competitive as we can and hopefully be somewhere in position at the end,” Kenseth said.

Hendrick engine gremlins

A couple of the Hendrick Motorsports cars had issues at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana last weekend. Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s car lost a transmission and it had to be replaced before the start of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race. Mark Martin's car had engine troubles during the race. Neither driver finished and had to withdraw early.
As for Jeff Gordon, his car was strong. He ran up front and battled Matt Kenseth for the win before settling for second. Jimmie Johnson's car actually led from the pole, even though he qualified second, and finished ninth.
Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman, who get their engines from Hendrick for their Stewart-Haas Racing team, made it to the end of the Fontana race. Stewart actually led a few laps, and finished eighth. Newman was a couple laps down in 28th.
Johnson was asked about his team's engine troubles during qualifying for this weekend race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
“It appears that a batch of valve springs that got our other two cars and they literally broke on the same lap," Johnson said referring to the cars for Earnhardt Jr. and Martin. "Fortunately my car and Jeff’s car didn’t have those in them or the No. 39 (Ryan Newman) or the No. 14 (Tony Stewart) and we made it through. So it’s frustrating on that part because there is no way to x-ray valve spring and components beforehand to find impurities. Once something breaks, you can get in there and look at it and it’s pretty easy at that point for our guys to know what went on. But it’s frustrating on the front side."
Johnson added that the team tests the parts on cars as much as possible and it has no control if a bad batch of parts comes in. He said it's part of the risk of racing.
As for his car at Fontana, he said it started racing tight and he made it worse by offering some bad advice.
"At the start of the race, the car was really good, but tight," Johnson said. "As we tried to help the car, we actually kept making it tighter. Looking back on it, I really felt like the splitter was on the ground. So we made adjustments to help the front travel of the car to get the splitter off the ground and it just made the car worse. Come to find out after looking at our travels afterwards, the splitter wasn’t on the ground. So I kind of steered us in the wrong direction there. I was just tight. It wasn’t the splitter dragging and making the car tight. And the adjustments we made to try to help that just hurt it even more. We kind of missed it a little bit there and tuned ourselves out, which is not common for the No. 48 car but you live and learn and we have a better idea of what to do this week.”