IndyCar veteran Justin Wilson, the Longmont resident who was involved in a freak accident Sunday at Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pa., died of severe head trauma Monday night. He was 37.
Wilson, an Englishman who lived in Colorado the last 10 years, died at a hospital in Allentown, Pa. He had been struck in the head at least twice while competing in open-wheel racing’s exposed cockpit cars.
Sunday at Pocono, Wilson collided with debris on the heels of a single-car crash. Race leader Sage Karam lost control and collided with the outside wall. Karam’s car crumbled to pieces — they are designed that way to dissipate energy — but the nose cone bounced several times on the track before striking Wilson in the head.
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Presumably unconscious, Wilson veered off the track and into a barrier protecting the pit area.
“Your heart goes out to him and his family,” former Grand Prix of Denver general manager John Frew said Monday of Wilson, a one-time Formula One driver. “It’s a tragedy, but the nature of motorsports — as with most sports — is risk, and how you manage the risk. This was something that couldn’t be managed. This was a freak accident. I’ve watched the film over and over (Sunday) night and it’s almost impossible for this to have happened, and yet it did.”
Wilson was nearly crushed at the 2005 Grand Prix of Denver when Cristiano da Matta’s car went airborne and landed on Wilson’s roll cage, with a rear wheel brushing Wilson’s helmet. Both drivers walked away from the first-turn, Lap 1 crash, with the 6-foot-4 Wilson telling reporters his height contributed to the contact with his head.
“It was remarkable,” Frew said Monday while awaiting news on Wilson’s condition, which at the time was critical. “But there, he had that roll bar. Without that, it would have crushed the guy.”
Wilson was driving for Loveland-based RuSport in 2005. The next year, da Matta joined Wilson as a teammate and was nearly killed when he collided with a deer in a RuSport test session at Road America in Wisconsin. The deer struck da Matta in the head, causing a subdural hematoma and forcing doctors to put him in an induced coma. Da Matta survived but hasn’t returned to elite-level racing.
Wilson is survived by his wife, Julia, and two children who attend school in Longmont.
“We like it so much we stayed. We love the lifestyle,” Wilson told The Denver Post before the 2014 Indianapolis 500. “We enjoy the outdoor life and all our friends.”
Frew has fond memories of Wilson. “What a great guy. He loved Colorado, loved being here. Like so many others, he was so sad of our race not continuing,” Frew said. “But there’s a testament to somebody that lived his dream and fell in love with our state.”
The accident has brought back conversation of adding a cockpit canopy to protect drivers in open-wheel racing. A high-strength plastic canopy likely would have prevented the serious injuries suffered by da Matta and Wilson, among others.
“These cars are inherently dangerous with the open cockpit like that, head exposed,” driver Ryan Hunter-Reay, Wilson’s Andretti Autosport teammate, said during Sunday’s subdued winning news conference at Pocono. “Maybe in the future we can work toward some type of (canopy). We’ve seen some concept renderings of something that resembles a canopy — not a full jet-fighter canopy, but something that can give us a little protection, but keep the tradition of the sport.”
Denver-based Furniture Row Racing, a NASCAR Sprint Cup team, issued this statement: “Everyone at Furniture Row Racing is deeply saddened about the passing of IndyCar driver and Longmont resident Justin Wilson. Our heartfelt condolences, thoughts and prayers go out to Justin’s family and friends.”
Mike Chambers: mchambers@ or
