The 15th of May, 1982, exactly one week after Gilles Villeneuve was killed at Circuit Zolder, qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 was underway. In his third consecutive year at the Brickyard, Gordon Smiley was looking to set an average speed for qualifying that would put him on, or near the front row. Contrary to popular belief, he was not piloting a March 82C which was making it's debut that weekend. Instead he was piloting the prior year's March 81C while the Intermedics team was still building the 82C.
Gordon in the March 81C...
A fraction of a second before impact...At 12:15 p.m., Smiley left the pits to start his qualifying run. On his second (of two) warm up laps, he approached turn three. The back-end became loose, and Smiley overcorrected. The front wheels suddenly gained traction, the car turned and crashed head-on into the concrete wall at about 200 mph (320 km/h). The fuel tank exploded with a large fireflash, the car disintegrated into thousands of pieces and three large sections, and most of the shattered car went airborne for at least 50 feet (15 m). Smiley's exposed body tumbled amongst the scattered debris for hundreds of feet through the short-chute connecting turns 3 and 4. The appalling violence of the accident meant that Smiley died instantly from massive trauma inflicted by the severe impact, and the impact of Smiley's accident was so violent and so extreme, that the crash looked like that of an aircraft crash- there were pieces of the car strewn all over the track on the short straight between Turns 3 and 4. The poor impact resistance of the material the car used meant that Smiley simply had no chance of survival- nearly every bone in his body had been shattered. His helmet was pulled from his head during the impact, and the top of his skull was scalped by the debris fence and asphalt. His death was the first at Indy since 1973, and to date, the last during a qualification attempt.
The actual impact...the steering wheel can be seen flying upward in the first picture...
The actual crash footage...
The sheer violence of this crash has stayed with me, and it serves as a stark reminder of just how deadly motor racing can be. It also was an era where given how in-your-face the danger was, you had an immense amount of respect for the drivers because of how thin the line was between life and death. Indianapolis is still a terrifying track because of the speeds, but even back in those days when they were around the 200MPH barrier, it was something else. No SAFER barriers...just concrete walls.
Unfortunately for Gordon Smiley, the crash was a pure motor racing accident with no mechanical failures. His road racing instincts kicked in when the rear end slid out in turn 3, and he applied a little bit of opposite lock, which is a huge no-no. As soon as the car regained traction, the front wheels took the car in the direction they were ponted; the wall. Mario Andretti and Al Unser Sr. had commented about how loose the rear end of his car was, and they were astounded by his willingness to want that kind of a setup.
Some interesting quotes from people who knew Gordon...
Smiley was a great old friend and I had the pleasure of accompanying him to England in 1974 when he raced FF/FAtl and saw him win in the Surtees at Silverstone, oddly the last time any American won an FIA sanctioned F1 event.
At Indy that year he was beside himself with rage and aggression and confusion that he couldn't match the (cheating) Whittington team in his March. His car never worked right, was a real handful at Atlanta earlier, and Gordon simply forgot his observation of the Ongais accident about turning down away from a spin. He and the team could never get the March to work correctly and handle, and he made the classic road racer mistake of trying to correct a ground effect car going 200 mph at a track 80 feet wide.
There was no way he was on any drug, he was a fitness fanatic and conservative and almost violently against them. He simply made a mistake in an car that as AJ said "just hit wrong," exploded and killed him. Sometimes crashes at Indy end oddly and they are all different in nature.
It was a bloody, stinking nightmare in the garage afterwards, all our team in tears while the USAC officials pulled bits out of the pile of parts to "examine." I thought at the time they were just ghouls.
Gordon was a fearless and aggressive driver, and perhaps that style didn't fit well with the concrete walls of the Speedway, but he did lead the event the previous year in a car identical to Johncock's and Mario's and was always very quick. Quite impressive in UK FF races and in the AFX finale in 1979.
One of he funniest men I've ever met, although with an underlying anger and impossible impatience. I miss him to this day. He was spectacular in smaller formula cars and one of the fastest FF drivers of all time.
The real root of the accident lies in his past, if Gordon was guilty of anything it was his belief that his talent could carry any car. When he started road racing in small production cars (Spitfires mainly) and Formula Ford he developed a style of running into the corner at unbelievable speeds and throwing the car to scrub off speed and power out to the exit. The first 100 times I saw it, it scared me terribly, I have seen veterans stand at the fence with their mouths open at some of his cornering "displays." Certainly the most fearless driver I have seen, and I have seen and worked for several in that catagory ( Bob "Easy Money" Lazier in his FF days comes to mind. Lazier and Smiley were good friends.)
At the brickyard that year, Smiley was very frustrated by several things, this mental state, plus his faith in his own skill led him (I believe) to revert back to his roots. To get the last bit of speed out of the car I believe he entered too fast, tried to toss the car to scrub some off and "unhinged" the sliding skirts immediately losing some 1800 lbs of downforce.
