Avoidable Contact by Tammy Kaehler Page A

to the Ferrari again. Ten laps of precision driving later—from both of us—I was grinning under my helmet.
    â€œWho is this guy?” I radioed to Bruce.
    â€œRaul Salas, new guy out of open-wheel, going to run for Redemption all year.”
    Well, Raul, you’re good. And this is fun.
    I managed a pass four laps later, only to have him return the favor on the next go-round. I was working on my next opening when I suddenly had a front-row seat to all hell breaking loose.

Chapter Twelve
    7:05 P.M. | 19:05 HOURS REMAINING
    Raul and I had just swung onto the back straight out of NASCAR 2 when I noticed the wrong kind of motion in the distance. I saw cars entering the Bus Stop chicane, arrowing through the turns instead of swinging side-to-side through them. Going way too fast.
    I kept pushing, pressing the Ferrari ahead, but I was ready for cars off-track, debris, or a flag. I wasn’t ready for racecar carnage. For flames.
    Over the next minutes and hours, I pieced together what I saw from a combination of split-second glances as I passed, and from video replays they showed briefly on SGTV.
    My sister car, the number 30 Sandham Swift Corvette with Ian Davenport behind the wheel, had come out of the track’s inner loop onto the banking of NASCAR 1 behind one of the all amateur-driven Benchmark Racing Porsches, the 77. Though the driver of the 77 tried to make his Porsche three lanes wide, he couldn’t keep Ian behind him in the Corvette. As the track flattened out onto the back straight, Ian had passed the Porsche and begun to pull a gap.
    Then came the Bus Stop.
    Ian braked and turned in for the first, left-hand bend of the four-turn complex. The Porsche behind him slowed enough to make the first turn—barely. Then everything went wrong. The Porsche slammed into the left rear corner of the Corvette, which propelled both cars across pavement and grass, straight into the wall. Hard.
    Neither driver could change the trajectory of the two-car missile—turning and braking were useless efforts when tires no longer had grip on the track—and the recent drizzle of rain meant the slick grass of the runoff area offered more help than resistance. Ian was fortunate to make impact with the right-front corner of the car first, so there was more car to absorb energy from the impact. But it was a huge hit.
    Nearly every wall in the Speedway was lined with steel and foam energy reduction, or SAFER, barriers, designed to absorb and dissipate the forces in an accident. That action reduced deceleration forces on a driver and vehicle and hurt drivers less. In addition, in high-impact areas, walls were lined with stacks of tires that absorbed even more impact and energy. But tires and foam can only do so much.
    Somehow Ian’s Corvette swung around at the last second before impact, so the car slammed into the tire wall broadside at something north of 150 mph, burying the passenger side of the Corvette in the stacks of rubber.
    The bit of turning by the Corvette opened up the driver’s side to bear the full impact of the Porsche—which also managed to pivot. The end result was the worst possible: the Porsche’s engine swung like a pendulum and smacked into the driver’s door of the Corvette. The heaviest piece of the Porsche hit the Corvette at its point of least crumple zone for the driver.
    Most of this was visible to me in the moment only as a vague sense of movement and plumes of dirt, mud, and grass kicked into the air. Plus an explosion of foam in the air as the cars hit the wall. As I followed the Ferrari down the back stretch, I didn’t even know which cars were involved.
    I braked on my mark. Glanced left again, looking for my line and trying to gather information on the accident—how bad it was, who it involved, and if it would bring out a caution.
    First glance. Only two cars. Green Porsche limping away from the wall. Turn in to the left-hander. Sighting my line for the two