Wrecks during LVMS test leaves teams scrambling (cont'd)

"We had a wheel force transducer on there, which is in the load cell probe that holds the wheel on there, so it had nothing to do with a wheel, [lug nuts] or normal stuff," Zipadelli said. "It was a part, I'm going to say that we just had from Toyota and we were trying to collect some data. The load cell failed and we've got a wrecked racecar."

Zipadelli said the wreck would have only a slight impact on his test plan.

Sam Hornish Jr. found the wall.

"My intentions were to spend one day [in California] and work on both cars," Zipadelli said. "We had a little bit of a test plan, but now I'm only going to work on the primary car, which was the car we had here. That car that we wrecked was going to be our backup for Vegas and California.

"I've already called back to the shop. I'm not going to say we're behind on cars -- we were in good shape until we wrecked that one. So I just ordered a new one and we'll have it built before we [need it]. We just moved some things around and we'll be OK.

"It will put us a little bit behind because that was a really good racecar. It was brand new and they both ran the same speed, so I was kinda encouraged by that."

A year ago, when the former "standard" cars came to Las Vegas for this test -- their first on a reconfigured track with relatively new pavement -- a flood of eight accidents plagued the high-speed layout. Five of them came on the test's first day.

A year later, the Vegas test was the first widespread carnage of new cars in testing, and again, five wrecks occurred on Monday -- when temperatures in the 40s and wind gusts estimated at more than 50 mph raised havoc atop haulers and on the racetrack.

Rookie of the year candidate Smith was the first to crash, when he said he made an error on his third lap on the track.

"I just messed up -- I didn't expect the car to snap like it did -- but if it makes a better story, say it was the wind," Smith said, smiling and saying he'd heard of 70 mph gusts. "I got sideways and it was really late in the corner -- I was almost on the straightaway when it snapped sideways on me, off of [Turn] 2.

"I almost had the wheel pointed straight and then it went sideways. I went to correct it and over-corrected and turned the right side back into the wall. I hate that it happened so early-on, but we're here testing, also. These guys work their butts off and build me great racecars, they'll fix it up and life goes on."

After practice resumed Monday afternoon following a couple rain delays, three accidents in quick succession heavily damaged the cars of Hornish, Franchitti and Ragan.

Neither of the first two drivers, both stock car newcomers after championship-winning Indy car careers, blamed the weather or conditions, but their crew chiefs told a different tale.

Hornish's Penske Racing crew chief, Chris Carrier, told a story of almost cartoon-like proportion, if he hadn't been contemplating how to replace the three-time Indy Racing League champion's wrecked No. 77 Dodge.

"Sam's pretty quiet, pretty low-key," Carrier said. "And he didn't say anything about the wind being the cause. But me and Matt Gimbel were on top of the hauler grabbing onto our scoring monitor and cover. I've been in 50 mph gusts before and that was at least that.

"I looked out at the racetrack and our car was spinning out -- so I blamed the wind."

Ganassi Racing crew chief Steven Lane agreed about the wreck that eliminated one of his and Franchitti's No. 40 Dodges.

"We just weren't sure what happened, and neither was Dario," Lane said. "But when we looked at the data, it showed us that [Franchitti] crashed before he even began to turn the wheel, so we feel like it had to be the wind."

Ragan's crew chief, Jimmy Fennig, said he had freed up his driver's car and the loose condition resulted in the crash. Fennig said he had nothing to replace the car with for the three remaining days of testing -- one at Vegas and two more this week at California Speedway -- so his test plan would be a lot more conservative, "so we don't end up with nothing to test."

In the most bitter irony in recent memory, Martin's crash occurred in the garage area, when he drove his No. 8B Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevrolet into a three-and-a-half-foot tall red pole guarding one of the fire plugs sprinkled throughout LVMS's garage.

The crash apparently occurred when the flat bed that brought Ragan's car -- the No. 6 Roush Fenway Racing Ford that Martin drove for nearly 20 years -- parked partly in the travel lane on a corner of the garage. (Continued)