The 2011 IZOD IndyCar World Championship Presented by Honda was the scheduled final race of the 2011 IZOD IndyCar Series. It was to be run at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on October 16, 2011, and was scheduled for 200 laps around the facility's 1.544 mile oval.
The race was red-flagged after 12 laps had been run due to a massive 15-car crash, which resulted in the death of former IndyCar Series champion Dan Wheldon and injuries for drivers Will Power, Pippa Mann and J. R. Hildebrand. Contact between drivers Wade Cunningham and James Hinchcliffe triggered a chain of incidents in a cluttered 34-car field, with Wheldon, Power, and Hildebrand getting airborne due to contact with slowing vehicles. Wheldon's No. 77 car somersaulted in the air and crashed into the Turn 2 catch fence at a 90 degree angle, cockpit side first, with his helmet hitting a fence post.
After a two-hour stoppage, the event was abandoned when IndyCar announced that Wheldon had died, less than five months after his second Indianapolis 500 victory. As the necessary minimum of 50% of the race distance (101 laps) had not been completed, no winner was declared, and the event was voided entirely.
KV Racing Technology driver Tony Kanaan started from the pole position, and was leading at the time of the crash. The race was to feature a title fight between championship leader Dario Franchitti and Will Power, who was eliminated from contention after being involved in the crash. With the race being scratched, Franchitti won his fourth IndyCar Series title by default.
The circumstances of the event were heavily criticized afterwards. Immediate blame was put on the experience level on high-speed ovals of some of the drivers, the Dallara IR-05 aerodynamic package that allowed drivers to follow each other closely in a huge pack, and the unsuitability of the Las Vegas oval, whose configuration allowed for up to four-wide, side-by-side racing at speeds in excess of 224 mph. Further criticism was levied on IndyCar's management for the number of cars entered, and the show-first approach of the event.
The fallout of the race led to major changes in IndyCar racing beyond the scheduled and safer Dallara DW12, the new spec chassis for the series from 2012, for which Wheldon had been the development driver. Oval racing became less prevalent in IndyCar competition, as the contract with Las Vegas was terminated, and the 'pack racing' style adopted by the Indy Racing League since the early 2000s on high speed ovals was subsequently avoided, with further recurrencies of the phenomenon (such as the 2015 MAVTV 500 and the 2017 Rainguard Water Sealers 600) being compared to the Las Vegas disaster.
Report
Media The event was televised by ABC in the United States. Marty Reid led the commentary team in the booth, with Scott Goodyear and Eddie Cheever as analysts. Vince Welch, Rick DeBruhl, and Jamie Little reported from pit road.
IMS Radio handled the radio broadcast with Mike King and Josef Newgarden in the booth and Mark Jaynes and Jake Query reporting from the track. Davey Hamilton, who was normally in the broadcast booth, served as in-race reporter.
Background The Las Vegas race was added to the schedule for the 2011 season, replacing the event at Homestead-Miami Speedway as the final race of the IndyCar season. The races at Homestead and the International Speedway Corporation tracks were removed from the schedule following the previous year's season. Las Vegas Motor Speedway was returning to the IndyCar schedule for the first time since 2000, and the event marked the first open-wheel race at the circuit since the Hurricane Relief 400 Champ Car event in 2005. The circuit since was reconfigured in 2006, which saw a greater degree of banking added to the circuit to encourage side-by-side racing. The race was scheduled for 200 laps around the oval, totaling .
As the final race of the 2011 season, this was also the final race for the Dallara IR-05 chassis, which would be replaced by an all-new design the following year. This situation, combined with the great deal of publicity and expectation surrounding the race, encouraged multiple teams to field additional entries for this race. The entry list featured a total of 34 drivers, five more than the previous event at Kentucky. It had the highest number of drivers entered for an American open-wheel racing event outside of the Indianapolis 500 since the 1993 Toyota Grand Prix of Monterey at Laguna Seca Raceway, the highest number of starters since the 1997 Indianapolis 500 that featured 35 drivers, and the highest outside of the Indy 500 since the 1983 Domino's Pizza 500 at Pocono Raceway.
Among the 25 cars that contested the full season, Sebastián Saavedra returned to the No. 34 car for Conquest Racing after missing the Motegi and Kentucky races because of an sponsorship shortfall, and Townsend Bell remained in the No. 22 car for Dreyer & Reinbold, having become the fourth injury replacement for Justin Wilson at Kentucky. Dreyer & Reinbold fielded the No. 11 as its third car for veteran Davey Hamilton, as the last of his three-race deal along with Indianapolis and Texas, and Buddy Rice joined Panther Racing in a second No. 44 car for a two-race deal at Kentucky and Las Vegas, having also driven the car at Indianapolis.
Part-time teams in the series also took part, as Sarah Fisher Racing was fielding their regular oval specialist Ed Carpenter in the No. 67 after his surprising win at Kentucky. He was joined in a one-off entry, the No. 57, by Tomas Scheckter, who had contested three races that season for other teams. AFS Racing, who had missed a number of races before striking an alliance with Sam Schmidt Motorsports, entered the No. 17 car for Wade Cunningham, fresh from a 7th-place finish at Kentucky in his third IndyCar start. Cunningham had initially signed its three-race programme with Schmidt shortly before the team regained full time status by buying FAZZT's assets, and he was farmed to AFS for the final two races of the deal.
Dragon Racing contested their seventh event of the season with Paul Tracy, who was making his fifth appearance in the No. 8 in 2011. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing entered Pippa Mann in the No. 30 for the final race of her three-race deal after New Hampshire and Kentucky, and she was joined in the No. 15 one-off entry by Jay Howard, who had last raced at Indianapolis and the Texas twin races for Sam Schmidt. Finally, there was the Bryan Herta Autosport entry, which involved a switch of drivers between Dan Wheldon and Alex Tagliani (see The 5 Million Dollar Challenge below).
This race was also touted in the leading weeks to the event as the potential final entry for Danica Patrick in IndyCar racing, after she had announced a full-time move to the NASCAR Nationwide Series in 2012. Patrick wouldn't race in IndyCar again until 2018, where she would participate in the Indianapolis 500 to conclude her racing career.
The 5 Million Dollar Challenge On February 22, 2011, IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard announced that a $5,000,000 (USD) purse would be awarded to any driver not on the IndyCar circuit to enter the race at Las Vegas and win while starting from the back of the field. Bernard's original offer was exclusively to "any race car driver in the world outside of the IZOD IndyCar Series," hoping to attract interest from Formula 1 or NASCAR. Bernard received offers that he deemed viable from motocross racer and X Games gold medalist Travis Pastrana, former IndyCar champion Alex Zanardi, and NASCAR's Kasey Kahne, but all three offers were not without issue.
Pastrana, who also drove rally cars and would eventually compete in NASCAR, showed formal interest in taking part in the challenge in July 2011. Shortly after, he broke his foot and ankle in the Best Trick event at X Games XVII in Los Angeles, after crashing on landing during his attempt at a rodeo 720, which ruled him out of his planned NASCAR Nationwide Series programme.
Zanardi's problem was twofold. He had not competed in an IndyCar event since the 2001 American Memorial at EuroSpeedway Lausitz, during which both of his legs were severed on impact after Alex Tagliani hit his car after Zanardi, who had been exiting off pit road and lost control of his vehicle. Zanardi also requested to drive for his former team, Chip Ganassi Racing, and they were unable to fulfill his request due to a lack of available resources. Kahne also had this problem, as he desired to drive for Team Penske. In his case, cross-country travel would cause a logistical issue; NASCAR would be running the Bank of America 500 at Lowe's Motor Speedway the night before IndyCar's event.
Bernard later revised the challenge to include a driver who had only competed in IndyCar part-time during the 2011 season; on September 11, 2011, the challenge was officially accepted by 2011 Indianapolis 500 winner Dan Wheldon, who agreed to split the purse with a fan if he went on to win. To compete in the event, Wheldon reached a deal with Sam Schmidt Motorsports to drive the No. 77 car, raced by Alex Tagliani during the season, in a joint effort with Bryan Herta Autosport.
Wheldon had won the Indianapolis 500 in the No. 98 car fielded by Herta, which was loaned and prepared by Sam Schmidt's team, but that car was crashed at the following event in Texas by Wade Cunningham, while driven as the No. 99. Therefore, the deal allowed Wheldon to race the car on which Tagliani had scored the pole position at Indianapolis and Texas, the two high-speed ovals that had been raced until that point. In return, Tagliani would get to drive the No. 98 car for Bryan Herta Autosport at Las Vegas.
Up until that point, Wheldon had only run at Indianapolis, but he later reached a deal to race the No. 77 at the Kentucky Indy 300, the penultimate round of the season, as a warm-up to Las Vegas. Also starting towards the back of the field after failing a pre-qualifying tech inspection, Wheldon went from a 28th starting position to a 14th-place finish at Kentucky.
Championship battle Entering the race, the only two drivers still in contention for the IndyCar Championship were Ganassi's Franchitti and Penske's Power, for the second year in a row. Franchitti was 18 points ahead of Power, retaking the championship points lead from him with a second-place finish at the 2011 Kentucky Indy 300 two weeks prior. Power was still mathematically in the points race despite a poor finish at Kentucky, but needed to finish far ahead of Franchitti in order to win the championship. Power had to finish in the top 6 to have any chance of taking the title, and a top 10 finish by Franchitti would've forced Power to finish first or second, positions he hadn't achieved yet in a full-distance oval race.
The race's honorary grand marshal was skateboarder Tony Hawk, who gave the command to start the engines.
Qualifying
All thirty-four entered cars qualified for the race. Tony Kanaan, driving the 82 Dallara for KV Racing Technology, qualified on the pole, scoring the 15th and final pole position of his career, and his first one since the 2008 SunTrust Indy Challenge at Richmond Raceway. Kanaan had started on the pole in the second of the twin-races at Texas earlier in the year, but it didn't count towards his total as it was achieved through a draw. Kanaan shared the front row with Oriol Servià, who fell short of his second career pole by 0.017 mph driving the No. 2 Dallara for Newman/Haas Racing.
Ed Carpenter, the winner at Kentucky two weeks earlier, qualified third in the No. 67 Dallara for Sarah Fisher Racing ahead of Indianapolis 500 polesitter Alex Tagliani, driving the No. 98 Dallara for Bryan Herta Autosport that had been driven to victory by Dan Wheldon at Indianapolis. Danica Patrick, driving the No. 7 Dallara for Andretti Autosport, started 9th in what was her final IndyCar start before joining NASCAR.