South African IRL star Tomas Scheckter is “still in shock” over fellow driver Tony Renna’s fatal accident at Indianapolis and hopes the Indy Racing League will take action to reduce the number of big crashes – specifically ones where cars become airborne.
South African IRL star Tomas Scheckter is “still in shock” over fellow driver Tony Renna’s fatal accident at Indianapolis and hopes the Indy Racing League will take action to reduce the number of big crashes – specifically ones where cars become airborne.
CARtoday.com reported last week that Renna, Scheckter’s replacement at Ganassi Racing, was killed during a test session at Indianapolis after his car became airborne, cleared the concrete wall and struck the catch fencing.
The 23-year-old Capetonian was himself involved in a frightening accident with Kenny Brack in the last race of the season. On that occasion, Brack’s car became airborne and disintegrated on the circuit’s concrete wall – leaving the American with multiple fractures.
“We have seen cars becoming airborne too many times,” admitted Scheckter. “But I think there’s been some weird stuff happening. Also, obviously, there’s nothing you can do to keep a car down when it touches wheels with someone else because it’s just like hitting a ramp, I suppose. The thing is going to get airborne. I have full confidence that the IRL will do something about it and make sure that this doesn’t happen as frequently as it has been.”
Scheckter, who joins Panther Racing for 2004, spoke about his shock at the loss of Renna.
“It’s hard for me to speak about it now,” said Scheckter. “It was an extremely funny feeling. I was driving, I had to actually pull off on the side of the road because I had given Chip [Ganassi] a call just to speak to him to thank him about some stuff. He said ‘Tony has been in a crash’. I said ‘Sorry to hear that’ but I didn’t know anything. I thought maybe he just had a little bit of a bump, or whatever.
“Then I gave Scott [Dixon, Scheckter’s former team-mate] a call and he told me the news. It was a bit shocking, to be honest. It still is a little bit shocking now,” he added.
