death and racing

Mulvaney (Offline)
#1 5/26/13 1:21 PM

As a race car driver do we face the fact that "it could happen" or do we try to avoid it. As we all send our thoughts and prayers to the burton family and all others "lost in action" so to speak, we have to face the cold truth of racing. It could happen!! Any time anywhere. As a racer i try to send my prayers and leave it in his hands. myself and every other driver wants to come home safe but sometimes it just doesn't work out, and that is why select people are "racers". And if we get in that car and think about the tradgic things that have happened that is when racing is more dangerous then ever.

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hupp#9 (Offline)
#2 5/26/13 1:35 PM

We face the fact everytime we strap in and we just brush it off and try not to think about it. But it seams like every 3 years or so there's a wake up call and it all starts over. The way I see it though look how many people die a day in a regular car and we don't stop driving to work or town everyday so honestly our odds are a lot better in a race car

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jontheturboguy (Offline)
#3 5/26/13 3:34 PM

I think Sid Collins has said it best, even though it was many years ago. This speaks for all of us who will or have strapped into a race car.

Originally Posted by Sid Collins after Eddie Sachs dies at the Indy 500:
"You heard the announcement from the public address system. There’s not a sound. Men are taking off their hats. People are weeping. There are over 300,000 fans here not moving. Disbelieving.

Some men try to conquer life in a number of ways. These days of our outer space attempts some men try to conquer the universe. Race drivers are courageous men who try to conquer life and death and they calculate their risks. And with talking with them over the years I think we know their inner thoughts in regards to racing. They take it as part of living.

A race driver who leaves this earth mentally when he straps himself into the cockpit to try what for him is the biggest conquest he can make (are) aware of the odds and Eddie Sachs played the odds. He was serious and frivolous. He was fun. He was a wonderful gentleman. He took much needling and he gave much needling. Just as the astronauts do perhaps.

These boys on the race track ask no quarter and they give none. If they succeed they’re a hero and if they fail, they tried. And it was Eddie’s desire and will to try with everything he had, which he always did. So the only healthy way perhaps we can approach the tragedy of the loss of a friend like Eddie Sachs is to know that he would have wanted us to face it as he did. As as it has happened, not as we wish it would have happened. It is God’s will I’m sure and we must accept that.

We are all speeding toward death at the rate of 60 minutes every hour, the only difference is we don’t know how to speed faster and Eddie Sachs did. So since death has a thousand or more doors, Eddie Sachs exits this earth in a race car. Knowing Eddie I assume that’s the way he would have wanted it. Byron said “who the God’s love die young.”

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