Savage Words: Worth the price to pay on a rough day

We’ve all had rough days.

Everyone on the planet has experienced a day – likely more than one – in their lifetime that is seared on the brain. 

One of those for me was 19 years ago today. It was a day I’ll never forget, and each March 26 takes me right back down that road.

I was the Director of Public Relations at the Indy Racing League (IRL). The job came with so many thrills and experiences that I’ll cherish for a lifetime.

But as motorsports go, it’s not a perfect sport. There is inherent danger when IndyCars are going 230 miles per hour, barreling down the front stretch at Indianapolis with a concrete wall directly in front of them.

Those guys and gals are built differently. I always admired them, even as a child. My heroes growing up were these crazy dudes riding the edge at every turn.

I grew up in a motorsports family. My father was a longtime journalist in the sport. I guess it makes sense that I found the passion as a young person. It’s what I knew.

When I got the job with IndyCar in 2003, my father gave me some advice: “Try not to get too close to the drivers and do your best not to create close relationships with them.”

I understood that. No doubt over his career covering the sport in a much wilder time in the 60s, 70s and 80s, he saw his fair share of terrible things. He lost friends to the sport, close friends.

No doubt his advice to me was to protect me from going through the same loss.

But it was tough. I was with these daredevils every single day during the summer. Oftentimes, I’d travel with them from Indianapolis to the next race on the schedule, from Milwaukee to Chicago to Tokyo, you name it. We raced 17 times throughout the summer. Against the advice of my father, I built some relationships with a few of them.

One of those was Paul Dana. The St. Louis-born driver was one of the smartest athletes I’d ever worked with. I always admired him because he, too, had a journalism degree. Mine from the University of Sioux Falls, his from Northwestern University near Chicago, one of the top journalism schools in the country. Needless to say, his credentials were stronger than mine.

Still, we had that in common, and we talked about it a lot. He used to tell me that he was jealous that I had the job that I did. That was a big deal to me. This guy raced IndyCars for a living. I simply wrote about them, yet he was jealous that I got to do it.

Paul came up to IndyCars through the Indy Lights program, the development league for IndyCar. He had some success in Indy Lights with 23 starts with one race win and a second-place finish in the championship points in 2004.

He moved up to IndyCar in 2005 where he made three starts before a season-ending injury during practice for the Indianapolis 500. It’s a wicked looking crash if you YouTube it. Sam Hornish, the eventual winner of the 500 two weeks later, takes a wild ride through the air after hitting Paul’s debris when he hit the Turn 2 wall.

Although Hornish’s flip through the air was dramatic for the cameras, it was Paul that took the brunt of it. The heavy hit resulted in broken vertebrae in his back, and he was done for the season. He wore a brace for the rest of the summer that went from his waist to his neck.

He was bored for the rest of that summer, and used to come into our IndyCar headquarters. Everytime he came into my office, I would often flick my finger on his three-foot long brace and ask him if it was worth it.

But again, race car drivers are built differently, and Paul was excited for the 2006 season. He had recovered, and he was racing for a powerhouse team in Rahal Letterman Racing. His teammates were Danica Patrick and 2004 Indianapolis 500 champion Buddy Rice.

He was very excited for the start of the season, March 26, 2006. I was, too. It was a long winter and we were in Miami for the Toyota Indy 300 at Homestead/Miami Speedway.

He qualified well, scheduled to start eighth.

As it is at every IndyCar race, the entire field goes out for one last warm up in the morning before the afternoon race.

That final practice was always a chance for me to relive some of my childhood. Every Saturday night growing up, we attended Jackson Speedway in Minnesota. My dad was the Public Address announcer. My brother and I would go down to Turn 1 and watch the field of sprint cars heading our way. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I did the same thing when I was at IndyCar. During the final practice, I went to Turn 1 and watched these blistering fast IndyCars scream by me.

On March 26, I saw Paul whiz by. He headed into Turn 1 and made his way towards Turn 2. I’d seen enough, and started to walk back to the media center, my work home for the past three days. 

“Yellow, yellow, yellow,” I heard in my earpiece. That’s obviously a signal to the entire facility that there was an incident on the race course.

Moments later, I heard, “We have two Code 5s. Two Code 5s.” 

A Code 5 is the worst of the worst when it comes to a crash on the IndyCar circuit. A Code 1 was a simple spin or slap against the wall where the driver is clearly uninjured. A Code 5…well, you can imagine.

When I heard it, the pace of my walk back to the media center picked up.

It was bad, and it was my friend who just went by me. Paul hit the spinning car of Ed Carpenter, who was sliding down the track and into the racing line. Paul hit him at 176 miles per hour.

I went directly to the Medical Center in the infield where some media had gathered outside. I could hear things in one of the patient rooms I’ll never get out of my head. But that’s not where Paul was. He was still on the backstretch, still sitting in his mangled IndyCar as track emergency crews attempted to extract him.

I knew my friend was in trouble. He was pronounced dead at a press conference I emceed about an hour later. Ed survived the crash, but Paul’s injuries were too severe.

I always admired Paul in his efforts to bring ethanol to the sport. He was successful, and in 2006, the entire 33-car field at the Indianapolis 500 raced on corn-based ethanol fuel. That’s all thanks to Paul Dana, who had died in Miami two months earlier.

His car was sponsored by the ethanol industry. The No. 17 he was going to race in the Indianapolis 500, which debuted in Miami, had the following on the side, about halfway up from the front wheels to the cockpit, and I always thought it was so cool:

BROIN INDUSTRIES

SIOUX FALLS

SOUTH DAKOTA

How cool, I thought, to have a car in the Indianapolis 500 with Sioux Falls on the side. After the crash in Miami, I spent some time alone with the car. Paul was gone, and I was processing it. The car was in a distant garage at the Speedway, with yellow police tape around it. 

The side of the car now read:

BROIN

SIOUX

SOUTH

The rest of the wording was ripped away because of the hard impact on the front end of the car hours earlier.

So, March 26 will always be a day of reflection for me. My time with IndyCar was filled with excitement, and obviously days of tragedy. But I do my best on this day to reflect on the good days, and the laughs with Paul.

Although I didn’t heed my father’s advice, I guess it was a price I was willing to pay for the memories.