After drinking in Red Bull’s title success in Korea, formula one awoke on Monday morning to terrible news from the world’s other premier single seater series.<\/p>\n
33-year-old Dan Wheldon, the 2005 Indycar champion and two-time Indy 500 winner, was killed on Sunday during the American category’s 2011 finale at Las Vegas speedway.<\/p>\n
Given his nationality and his earlier links with a possible move to formula one, the Briton was well-known in the F1 paddock.<\/p>\n
“On a train from Mokpo to Seoul,” wrote Telegraph correspondent Tom Cary on Twitter.\u00a0 “News from Vegas puts everything in perspective.”<\/p>\n
Agreed the Mirror’s Byron Young: “Usual cheerful voices that fill the train leaving Mokpo are absent today.”<\/p>\n
Wheldon, who due to an Indycar promotional gimmick stood to win $5 million if he won on Sunday, was caught up in a spectacular 15-car crash on lap 12.<\/p>\n
Series CEO Randy Bernard said he died “from unsurvivable injuries”.<\/p>\n
“Rest in peace Dan,” tweeted Mark Webber.\u00a0 “I remember our early days in the UK (in) 95\/96.\u00a0 Miss ya.”<\/p>\n
Added The Times’ Kevin Eason: “Dan Wheldon reminds us that motor racing remains almost the only sport in which death is the highest price.”<\/p>\n
And former Super Aguri driver Anthony Davidson said: “Spent so many races trying to match Daniel as we grew up and raced together.\u00a0 I’m utterly devastated to hear the sad news.”<\/p>\n
Wheldon leaves behind his wife Susie and sons Sebastian (2) and Oliver, who was born this year.<\/p>\n
“This is a cruel sport,” said BBC commentator Martin Brundle.<\/p>\n
Added Jenson Button: “I can’t begin to imagine what his family are going through and my thoughts are with them at this very difficult time.<\/p>\n
“I have so many good memories of racing with him in the early 90s, a true fighter.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After drinking in Red Bull’s title success in Korea, formula one awoke on Monday morning to terrible news from the world’s other premier single seater series. 33-year-old Dan Wheldon, the 2005 Indycar champion and two-time Indy 500 winner, was killed on Sunday during the American category’s 2011 finale at Las Vegas speedway. Given his nationality …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3,16],"tags":[3310,5262,5340,3311,3312],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13949"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13950,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13949\/revisions\/13950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}