NASCAR Cup Series

Indy 500-winning car races at Texas, driver on TV

Published Jun. 12, 2011 6:04 a.m. ET

foxsports

The Indianapolis 500-winning car crashed in the IndyCar race at Texas on Saturday night, even though the winning driver was in a broadcast booth high above the track.

Indy 500 champion driver Dan Wheldon had only a one-race contract with Bryan Herta Autosport at Indy two weeks ago, when he drove to victory in the No. 98 car that was leased from Sam Schmidt Motorsports.

Because of damage to one of its other cars at Indianapolis, the Schmidt team decided to use that championship car at Texas for the Firestone Twin 275s, the first dual races in major open-wheel racing in 30 years. Rookie driver Wade Cunningham drove the car, which had No. 99 in Texas.

The championship car sustained significant damage when rookie driver Charlie Kimball pushed up the track and collided with Cunningham with 22 laps left in the first race at Texas. That brought out the only caution in either of the 114-lap races.

''We just got together, it's unfortunate,'' Kimball said. ''I was just trying to run smart until the end.''

Cunningham said he was ''trying to stay clean'' and thought he had a top-10 car until the crash.

In the blind draw for the second race, Cunningham drew the No. 2 starting spot and ran in a backup car. He went on to finish 26th.

Wheldon said before the race that he was surprised Schmidt was using the winning car of the 100th anniversary Indianapolis 500 in another race. During the TV broadcast, he said the accident was ''a case with two rookies.''

The TV broadcast was the first of three races Wheldon is scheduled to work as an analyst for the Versus network. He said he had two opportunities to drive at Texas but said they ''just didn't feel right.''

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ROUND AND ROUND: Danica Patrick prefers going round and round on oval tracks in the IndyCar Series.

''Unbelievable, in 2011, we have 10 road course and seven ovals,'' Patrick said in Texas, the fast 1 1/2-mile quadoval where she finished 16th in the first of two races Saturday night and came back to finish eighth in the second. ''It's a disappointing schedule.''

There was actually supposed to be one more oval on the schedule, but the September race scheduled at Twin Ring Motegi in Japan will be run on a road course instead because the oval was damaged in an earthquake earlier this year.

Patrick's only IndyCar Series victory came at Motegi in 2008.

''I don't make a mystery that I like the oval racing, and I think it's good racing for us,'' Patrick said. ''This how we started. ... We were oval racing, and it's exciting.''

The IndyCar Series was an all-oval series until 2005.

''For some-odd reason, we're much more skewed towards road course races. I don't pretend to know reason, I know there's business reasons and decisions,'' Patrick said. ''I feel like I hear about road course ideas ... but I don't hear a lot about oval races necessarily.''

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DECADE AFTER CRASH: Two days before his 49th birthday, Davey Hamilton was racing Saturday night at Texas for the first time since a horrific accident 10 years ago.

Hamilton finished 27th for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing in the opener of the doubleheader, and improved that only two spots in the second race.

During a race at Texas in June 2001, Hamilton's feet were so badly mangled that doctors initially thought amputation would be the best option. Both legs and feet were broken and he needed 21 surgeries to reconstruct his feet.

Hamilton had planned to make his return to Texas last year with de Ferran Dragon Racing, but that team wrecked both of its cars at the 2010 Indianapolis 500 a week before going to the Lone Star State and was able to get only one of them ready. Raphael Matos drove the team's lone entry last year.

A decade ago, another car lost an engine in the second turn and spun into Hamilton. His car slammed into the wall so hard that it shredded all four tires.

After being taken by helicopter to a Dallas hospital, trauma surgeons were ready to amputate. The ankle joint from his left foot was missing, as were bones and muscle tissue from the right one.

An orthopedist who worked with the league and was at the race that night instead had Hamilton transferred to Indianapolis to try to save the driver's feet.

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ANOTHER FIERY REMEMBERANCE: Simona De Silvestro is still wearing a lot of protective tape for the burns on her hands sustained during a frightening crash in a practice session at Indianapolis before she qualified for the race.

''The wounds are sealed off, so it's a little bit better,'' she said. ''Still pretty nasty looking. ... But it's getting better. Everything we tried is really working.''

At Texas last year, De Silvestro burned her right hand in another fiery accident.

''You try not to really thing about those things,'' De Silvestro said this week. ''In racing, bad things happy and you just try to forget them. ... (In practice at Texas), I was pretty quickly up to speed and we were working towards a really good setup. It brings you a lot of confidence back as a driver.''

Her car looked like a fireball last June as it slid off the backstretch and came to rest between Turns 3 and 4. De Silvestro struggled to get out of the car before an emergency official got there and basically had to yank her out of the cockpit. She then walked to the inside wall and slumped down into a sitting position on the track.

IndyCar Series officials later acknowledged that a malfunctioning hose complicated efforts by safety workers to extinguish the fire.

While her confidence is getting better, De Silvestro admits that she is still not completely over what happened at Indianapolis last month.

''For sure, it's not right there where it was before the incident,'' she said. ''But it's getting closer and I think the more laps I'm going to do, it's going to go better and better.''

She was 26th in the first race, and 27th in the nightcap.