Bob Jenkins’ Emotional, Incorrect Defense of IndyCar

As a response to the knee-jerk reactions of the detractors of IndyCar racing following Dan Wheldon’s death last week during the season finale race at Las Vegas, noted broadcaster Bob Jenkins published an article on his website taking issue with Jimmie Johnson’s broad assessment that stock cars were safer. However the sloppy manner in which the esteemed broadcaster presents his facts may have actually made a case against the sport.

Jenkins, by his own admission may have taken Johnson’s quote out of context. But that comes off as an excuse as he uses that to paint his argument with a very broad brush, citing the number of deaths attributed to all stock cars since 2000. He includes not only NASCAR’s premier series, but fatalities in regional, and semi-pro series as well as weekend short tracks.

To compare the broad array of “stock cars,” implying anything with fenders to the homogenous construction of IndyCars shows how much his take is as a visceral reaction as those calling for scalps from the IndyCar community.

By cherry picking – or more accurately, reaching for the entire fruit basket – he delivers an apples and oranges argument. And worse, if any sort of standard statistics measure such as one used by governments or insurance agencies, much less by anyone who took basic statistics in college would see – he actually indicts IndyCar racing by (conveniently?) ignoring even a basic per-capita analysis.

You don’t even have to crunch numbers. The hand-waving argument alone supports the theory.

If he is comparing all forms of stock car racing, then consider three factors:

1.      fatalities per lap of competition

2.      fatalities per race

3.      fatalities per number of competitors

And his argument loses credibility quickly.

The NASCAR premier series – Sprint Cup – alone runs over twice as many races per season, most in the 4-500 mile range (longer than IndyCar), at a higher average rate of speed as most of the races are on ovals vs. the number of races on street/road courses for IndyCars. They run almost twice the amount of competitors per race.

The number of potential opportunities for a serious accident is much greater in NASCAR Sprint Cup alone. Add the feeder series (Nationwide, ARCA) and the hundreds of local series races run each week and while the risk is theoretically much more given, the percentage of drivers killed per amount of race time on the track is far lower than Indy Cars.

Trust me, I'm no NASCAR fan but the comparison using Jenkins' criteria is just playing a childish game of semantics. 

Perhaps Johnson's context only referred to Sprint Cup cars as being safer. Even comparing those two: the fatality count is 4 in NASCAR, 3 in IndyCar over the period. Hardly enough evidence to say one is either safer or more dangerous than the other. That said, the last premier-level series death in NASCAR was 2001. So – does that mean that NASCAR has improved safety while IndyCar is failing to keep pace? Of course not. 

This aside, one has to look at the accident that occurred at LVMS. It was a freakish accident, but it wasn’t a freak one. A guy lost control and spun out in front of a large pack of cars. This wasn’t a pothole, an odd mechanical failure or any bolt-from-the-blue event. It could happen again and again.

THIS is why IndyCar needs to sit down and look at the way it does things up to and including where and the nature of its races and where Johnson's statement holds weight. The nature of the event with 34 cars of highly variable talent at a track where even the drivers (including Wheldon) had concerns about the speed needs to be looked at.

Sometimes, the spectacle can’t be such that it justifies bloodsport. There’s a point where the ‘show’ has to take a back seat.

It’s not to say racing isn’t dangerous. Racing is also voluntary. Any driver or team that concerned should have parked it. But I hope that we never see a promoter use the unique mentality of the driven, hungry driver as leverage for raising the level of danger even higher than what’s accepted.

And Jenkins, well meaning as he was may want to let this argument rest lest he be hoist by his own HANS device, so to speak.

-Jason