If you drive a high-downforce race car, you count on the rear wing to produce the downforce needed to make it through corners at speed. With no real way of knowing if the thing is still behind you, all you can do is assume that it has not spontaneously broken off the car at some point since the last corner. A driver makes that assumption thousands of times over the course of a season and it is almost always a non-issue, which makes it all the more of a problem when it does suddenly pop off at full speed.
IndyCar driver David Malukas learned that the hard way yesterday. Malukas was in the middle of one of the best races of his career when his wing suddenly popped off at some point between Nashville street circuit's long straightaway over a bridge and the first braking zone on the other side of the river, forcing Malukas to come to a complete stop before finding out just how much of the car's cornering ability comes from that big rear wing.
According to his Dale Coyne Racing team, the wing broke off after an unseen fire created enough heat to delaminate its support pillar. Malukas was fortunately able to stop before either the lack of a wing or the fire itself created bigger issues, but it marks one of the strangest ways a race has ended for a driver.
Given that Malukas was coming off one of the best qualifying performances of his young career, good for fifth on the grid, and looked fast enough to fight for a spot on the podium, the sudden retirement is a huge disappointment. The good news is that tethers attached to the wing itself kept the part on the car at speed even as the main support failed, keeping the component from becoming a huge chunk of debris on a straightaway. That may have protected a driver from yet another full-speed test of the effectiveness of the IndyCar aeroscreen.
