Poco-no

I remember the day Dan Wheldon died.

He hung it on the fence in a massive crash 12 laps into an IndyCar event at Las Vegas, and died of massive head trauma. I tuned in after they'd red-flagged the race to clean up the mess, and the first thing I heard was Scott Goodyear and Eddie Cheever talking about Wheldon in that certain way you talk about a guy when it's very, very bad. And that's when I knew.

Then I saw Tony Kanaan sitting on the pit wall crying, and that's when I really knew.

"Oh, my God," I said to my wife, Julie. "Oh, my God he's dead."

Then I got up and went into the den and wrote a column about Wheldon, whom I'd interviewed probably a dozen times. And I said IndyCar was unbelievably irresponsible for putting Vegas on the schedule to start with, because the venue was too fast and too tight for Indy cars -- especially when you put 34 of them on it, which for some unfathomable reason IndyCar decided to do that day.

That decision got Dan Wheldon killed. And I'll give IndyCar this much: It hasn't raced at Vegas since.

And now a lot of people are saying they shouldn't be racing at Pocono anymore, not after Justin Wilson was killed there and Robert Wickens was paralyzed there and a whole pile of cars got turned into scrap on the very first lap of the ABC Supply 500 Sunday.

I suppose I ought to be one of those people, given what I wrote about Vegas after Wheldon died. But I'm not.

What I am is a guy who thinks IndyCar should demand Pocono get its, um, business together before it does go back there again.

Look. Pocono is different from Vegas because IndyCar first started racing there in the 1970s, and it is no more inherently perilous now than it's ever been. Wilson's death, for instance, would have happened anywhere; he died because Sage Karam hit a nosecone lying in the racing line and flipped it in the air, and it hit Wilson in the head. An utter, tragic fluke.

But then Wickens got up in the fence last year, and he's in a wheelchair now. And then there was Sunday's crash, which began with Takuma Sato trying to do something he shouldn't have, particularly on the first lap, and ended with him upside down. Nearby, James Hinchcliffe and Alexander Rossi were twisted together. Farther down the track was Felix Rosenqvuist -- who, like Wickens a year ago, got up in the catch fence.

Want to know how the geniuses at Pocono repaired the damage to that fence Sunday?

Video evidence suggests they filled the hole in it with an old gate that apparently was just lying around somewhere. And they secured it with zip ties.

You'd hate to see IndyCar permanently abandon one of its long-time signature venues. But zip ties?

That simply won't stand. Or shouldn't.

And so IndyCar should consider bailing on Pocono not because it's too dangerous; it is and always has been a tricky place, with that tunnel turn and the odd tri-oval configuration. And it's not like IndyCar hasn't raced at tricky, dangerous places before. Ask some of the old-timers about Langhorne, for instance.

No. IndyCar should bail on Pocono, at least for now, because it's incredibly poorly managed.

That much it owes its drivers. And its fans, scarce though they may be these days.