Grim Reality

By Dan Proudfoot
©1999 Canada Online, SpeedCenter Internet Publishing/Champcar.com

My memory of the death of Gonzalo Rodriguez on Saturday morning will not be of the car's fatal somersault over the wall at the corkscrew turn, but of a young woman standing alone, crying an hour later.

She was another driver's girlfriend. She stood by a row of the luxury motorhomes parked in the Laguna Seca infield that established racers prefer over hotels, and she would not be comforted.

It was as though her emotional armour was shattered. She was not alone in this. The drivers' faces were pale, empty, grimaced. Most wouldn't talk to reporters, who didn't want to talk about the tragedy either, but were required to pursue the subject.

The 27-year-old Rodriguez was not well known within the CART community — this would have been only his second start — but already he was recognized as someone who lived for driving on the edge of control, and every racer understands that. His death, hitting like a hammer in the 28th minute of a 75-minute practice session, exposed the frailty of many other lives.

Outsiders think of racing as a sport in which people get killed. Insiders — drivers, those close to them, all those who work around them — live in denial of the possibility. The risk is acknowledged but, noting that it is greatly reduced from earlier decades, none ever expect death to come calling any time soon.

In all his years of racing, Roger Penske had lost only one other driver in one of his entries, his friend Mark Donohue. In 42 years of racing at Laguna Seca, nobody had ever died during a pro event.

During the post-race news conference a young journalist asked the triumphant Bryan Herta and runners-up Roberto Moreno and Max Papis if they had felt differently passing that point on the circuit where Rodriguez had sped into the wall.

The youthful Herta and Papis appeared shocked, but Moreno, 40, replied kindly.

"As drivers, we have to have a blocking system," Moreno said.

"Otherwise, we couldn't perform."

That was the extent of his explanation, but then he added another thought. "This is my best result, but it will always be in my mind remembered as a sad one."

To send your condolences to the Family of Gonzalo Rodriguez, write to:

    The Rodriguez Family
    Millington Drake, 1914 - cp. 11500
    Montevideo, Uruguay

 

Source: Canada Online, used by permission