UPDATE #5 According to a report on SPEEDTV.com, Pablo Perez's lower extremity injuries were termed “gruesome” by an observer in Turn 2 and it was believed surgeons are fighting to save both legs.
Open wheel racing on ovals is hard enough for the highly experienced. Throw in "inexperience" and the results are predictable. I just studied the injury results from Champcar and the IRL since the split in 1996. The findings are "in press" for the Journal of Trauma - a surgical publication. The results are what you would think. I have included the abstract to the journal article below.
Background: Motor racing is perhaps the original modern day “extreme sport.” All extreme sports push the human, and machine performance and safety envelopes. Exceeding these performance and safety envelopes places one at risk for significant injury. While motor racing has become safer it still involves a calculated risk. Recently journalists and physicians affiliated with motor racing have perceived a pattern of driver injuries suggesting that all races do not seem to involve the same risk level. We hypothesized that the magnitude of risk of driver injury is directly related to the type of track on which the race takes place.
Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of driver injuries and fatalities on the circuits of the Championship Auto Racing Teams and Indy Racing League between
Results: The total number of sustained driver injuries, head injuries, and spinal fractures were respectively 6.1, 12.4, and 5.9 times more common on oval versus road course configurations when averaged per total number of races. Fatalities were statistically equal when averaged per number of races.
