Saturday’s IndyCar race had so much crash damage, only six of its 22 cars finished on the lead lap. Wrecks racked up an estimated $1.8 million in damage across the field, per Racer—and that’s a conservative estimate. That works out to about 180 gently used Spec 944s, or five beige McMansions in the Ft. Worth suburbs—except in car damage. Yikes.
This weekend’s IndyCar race at Texas Motor Speedway was one of the most insane things I’ve ever watched. One giant wreck crashed three whole teams at once, leaving only 11 of 22 starters running at the restart. Another four-car crash at the end whittled the field down to only nine cars running, with only six of those left on the lead lap. Such is the problem with tight packs in racing: it can get downright crash-diculous really fast.
The cost of all those broken cars—which sustained damage ranging from from tub damage to busted electrical components to a shattered gearbox—adds up fast, per Racer:
Dallara sells an underwing for $9,500; the front and rear main planes (wings) go for $7,000 but with all the additional widgets hanging off it that comes to $25,000; uprights run $5,000 apiece; radiator inlet ducts cost $2,700; and wishbones (upper and lower) are $2,500 apiece. Honda and Chevy sell sidepods, end plates and wheel guards – basically the aero kit is $80,000 if bought complete but more expensive if pieced together. An Xtrac gearbox could be as much as $80,000 if backed into the wall and destroyed but not quite that costly if some of the internal parts can be salvaged.
The electrical system is roughly $100,000, with harnesses going for $25,000; Cosworth sells them but Honda is thought to try and repair damaged ones for its teams.
I still can’t get over that $1.8 million estimate, though. We did the math on some of the stuff you could buy if we had $1.8 million to crumple up and light on fire, and the list of stuff a cool $1.8 mil can buy is insane:
- 64,285.7 gallons of Amy’s Shiner Bock ice cream
- Adoption fees for 18,000 shelter cats (per The Cat Site)
- A small cuddly army of 32,733 Gulf blue Puffalump bunnies (via eBay)
- 225,000 gross avocado toasts (using The Kitchn’s $8/toast figure)
- Approximately 9,000 trackdays (bro)—one trackday per day for 24.6 years
- 3,302 terribly awkward looking Aston Martin-branded shoes
- 451,127.8 20-packs of Tim Hortons Timbits (U.S. pricing)
- 3,600 hella sweet $500 1984 Toyota Celica crapcan racers
- 9,473 tickets to The Gathering of the Juggalos
- Around 1.8 full seasons running an IMSA Prototype Challenge car
- 30,005 Texas-shaped waffle irons from the Buc-ee’s across the street
- 1,434 Most Glorious 1989 Trabant 601 de Luxes
- About 3.6 3/8-mile dirt oval tracks (using a figure of $500,000 per track based on recent listings on RacingJunk)
As for this weekend’s IndyCar race, we couldn’t agree more with Racer’s assessment of the real winners there:
So besides Will Power, the real winners on Saturday night were Dallara, Xtrac, Aerodine Composites, Cosworth, Honda and Chevrolet because they will sell all the replacement parts to the IndyCar teams.
Goodness knows it’s not Dale Coyne Racing’s budget.