Crash at Indy 500 Slips Tire Behind Grandstand Full of Fans: NPR

The car driven by Kyle Kirkwood, above, flipped after a crash in Turn Two during the Indianapolis 500 stock car race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday.

John Maxwell/AP

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John Maxwell/AP

The car driven by Kyle Kirkwood, above, flipped after a crash in Turn Two during the Indianapolis 500 stock car race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday.

John Maxwell/AP

A multi-car crash caused tires to slip past fans during the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, bringing a heart stop to one of the most prominent races in the United States.

video Posted on social media Shows driver Felix Rosenqvist’s collision with Kyle Kirkwood. During impact, one of Kirkwood’s tires comes loose and launches into the air and over the fence separating the track from the runway.

The frame just misses the seats full of spectators and landed on a parked car, ESPN reported. There were no injuries to the driver or the fans.

After the tire flew off, Kirkwood’s car hit the wall, flipped over And it slid down the track as sparks flew.

“It’s all good, just disappointed. I thought we could win today,” he said he said in a tweet.

Auto racing is an extremely popular sport in the United States, but it doesn’t come without risks to drivers, crew members, and fans.

At the Indy 500 in 1987, a fan named Lyle Kurtenbach was killed after a car broke a tire during a collision, flew into the stands and hit him, According to the Indianapolis Star. Kortenbach, 41, was celebrating a family reunion.

The catch fence for the track was subsequently raised from 15 feet to 19 feet eight inches, the newspaper reported.

In the years that followed, so did motor racing fans injured And on rare occasions killing When debris from collisions falls into the spectators’ areas.

In the early 1970s, the Automobile Club of America, which at the time was the sanctioning body for the Indy 500, Make a wide range of changes To improve driver safety after a series of on-track fatalities, such as reducing the volume of a car’s gas tank.