Indy Lights: Horror crash for Pippa Mann in Iowa

By Andy Darley

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

British Indy Lights driver Pippa Mann escaped unscathed from the Miller Lite 100 at the Iowa Speedway despite a high-speed crash in which her car was sent into the wall at speed, went airborne and finally skidded down the track on its roof.

Sparks fly from Pippa Mann's car. Screengrab: IRL / Versus

Mann had been struggling all race with an evil-handling car that had deteriorated badly since she had qualified it in seventh place. A half-spin on lap 53 left her several laps down and she was hit by James Davison while being lapped on the penultimate lap of the race.

She said: “I was just riding it out, but it was difficult since we were so off the pace. I was doing my best to stay out of the way, and I don’t know what happened then.

“I just know I got hit, and I saw the wall coming, and I said – I won’t tell you what I said. It is not printable, but it was something like, ‘Oh crap!’ I said that repeatedly, and then I was upside down.

“I could smell the sparks, and by the time the car stopped I had my belts off and hands on the ground and ripped out my ear phones trying to get out since I wanted to get out as quickly as I could because of the smell of the sparks.

“That was my first time upside down.”

The next morning, writing on Twitter, she was philosophical: “Bit stiff and sore this morning. For some strange reason feel like got dragged along a race track on my head last night…”

Mann was running in her first floodlit race

Her crash meant the race finished under caution, with Brazil’s Ana Beatriz taking victory from Wade Cunningham and James Hinchcliffe in a 1-2-3 for Sam Schmidt Motorsports.

It was the best possible return for Beatriz, who was forced to miss the previous race in Milwaukee as she recovered from a heavy crash at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and struggled with sponsorship difficulties.

She said: “At the finish, I was thinking it was just unbelievable. I nearly crashed there at the end right there around the flipped car.

“This team deserves it. I really want to celebrate with them tonight. The last couple of weeks have been tough missing out on sponsorship and then finding a way to come back.”

Mann’s team-mate at Panther Racing, Martin Plowman, finished eighth. He said: “I’m very happy with this eighth place today. I know it’s not a great result but it was the best we could get out of the car today.

“At one point a lapped car chopped me and made me fall back to tenth position but I was able to pick up two spots at the end. I kept digging deep and brought the car back with the second Top Ten of the year.”

The pair were the only Brits running in the race as RLR/Andersen’s Ali Jackson could not arrange the international travel documents he needed to re-enter the United States from his Belfast home.

11 min 38 sec video. Pippa Mann’s crash is from 10.15.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 at 8:31 pm and is filed under Firestone Indy Lights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Author: Andy Darley. Ex-journalist, fan of David Coulthard and anyone who ever drove or tested for Minardi and didn't say rude things about the team afterwards. Owns a Triumph Spitfire and hopes that, one day, it'll be on the road again. Andy has written 606 articles for us.

4 Responses to “Indy Lights: Horror crash for Pippa Mann in Iowa”

Comments

1

Keith Collantine says:

June 21, 2009 at 10:36 pm

Good thing she wasn’t struck by that green car – that could have been horrific. Glad she’s OK.
2

Andy says:

June 21, 2009 at 11:20 pm

Good reactions by Bia (Beatriz, in the green car) despite being focussed on trying to protect her win on the final lap of the race. I tell you, she’s a breakout star of the future.
3

Boo Boo says:

June 26, 2009 at 2:31 am

A better reaction by Bia would have been to lift when the caution flag came out. She stayed on it for quite a while after the flag came out—not sure just how long, but plenty of time to lift her foot off the throttle. She was reprimanded by the league.

Pippa Mann panicked. She admits that by the time the car stopped she had her belts off. That’s just SO wrong. You could see her hanging half out of the car, unbelted, frantically struggling, as Bia went ripping by. If she’d been hit, she would certainly have been injured or killed without her belts on. She smelled sparks from the roll bar and freaked, apparently.
4

Andy says:

June 26, 2009 at 9:00 am

Last lap, end of race just 20 seconds or so away – I guess Bia just focused on finishing the thing. You can see in the video above that she slows immediately after she passes Pippa. You’re right, she should have lifted immediately and a slap on the wrist was appropriate, but we’re not talking Sean Guthrie territory here and it would be wrong to suggest otherwise.

And what you describe Pippa doing bears absolutely no resemblance to what the video above shows – although, in fairness, nor does what she describes herself as having done. The car is clearly stopped and Bia well past by the time her hands come out. Her Twitter feed shows a lot of dry self-deprecating English humour about the incident, and that’s the light in which her post-race quotes should be viewed.

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