Paralyzed Racer Robert Wickens Tries a New Challenge

When we last visited with racecar driver Robert Wickens, it was October of 2023 at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, where he and Bryan Herta Autosport teammate Harry Gottsacker had just won the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge season championship in the very competitive TCR class. The Pilot Challenge series is the opening act for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, which includes the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.

Winning a championship in the Michelin Challenge would be a triumph for any professional racer, but it was especially poignant for Wickens. On August 19, 2018, Wickens was racing in the IndyCar series at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania when his car touched wheels with another, launching him up into the catch fence and ripping off all four wheels before Wickens, still belted in to what was left of his Dallara, smashed back down to the pavement, spinning 14 times before finally coming to rest.

He would recover from the neck fracture, tibia and fibula fractures to both legs, fractures in both hands, a broken right forearm, a broken elbow, four broken ribs, and a pulmonary contusion. But the damage to his spine, paralyzing him from the waist down, was a lifetime sentence to a wheelchair.

It was not, however, the end of his racing career. Through sheer will and determination, he recovered to the point when, on May 4, 2021, he was able to test a Hyundai racecar that had been fitted with hand controls to suit Michael Johnson, a fellow driver who had been paralyzed in a racing crash. While Johnson’s controls weren’t ideal for Wickens, he did well enough to earn an invitation the next year to drive one of Herta’s Hyundais in the IMSA series.

Herta, a winning IndyCar driver himself and fielder of two Indianapolis 500-winning teams—as well as being the father of current IndyCar racer Colton Herta—had joined with Hyundai in 2018, and immediately began fielding a string of championship-winning cars. Having a factory-backed ride was a dream come true for Wickens, now 35 and married with a son. He’s continued his success, too—after last year’s championship, he currently sits in third place in the series.

But Wickens is a dreamer, and he’s been dreaming of going faster than his Hyundai Elantra N racecar can carry him. He loved IndyCar, and wanted dearly to make it back to a single-seat formula car. Recently, Wickens got his wish—securing his first drive in an open-wheel formula car since that life-changing day in 2018—in an all-electric 535-hp, 170-mph FIA Formula E series car ahead of the doubleheader weekend June 29 and 30 at Portland International Raceway.

In a Zoom interview Monday afternoon promoting the upcoming IMSA weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, Wickens said that the 11 laps he turned on the two-mile Portland road course “felt great. I’m very grateful for the opportunity.”

Wickens had met with the CEO of Formula E, Jeff Dodds, last year and “shared my ambitions with him about how I would love to explore Formula E as a career opportunity,” Wickens said. He knew that adapting hand controls to an electric car would be easier than a gas-powered one, and it helped that Formula E cars use brake-by-wire, rather than the mechanical braking that his Hyundai has, requiring Wickens to press down hard on a lever with his hand.

Dodds “took that to heart,” Wickens said, and the series was able to adapt their third-generation Formula E platform to match what Wickens had asked for. The drive was publicized by Formula E with a rather awkward press release that started with this ill-advised sentence: “Canadian racer Robert Wickens will jump behind the wheel of Formula E’s adapted race car this weekend…”

But it went on to quote Wickens as saying, “What’s amazing about Formula E is that for years it’s been making things work that people said can’t be done. It’s always doing things that people didn’t think possible and that’s another reason it’s been high on my list of series to try. I knew I’d be welcomed here with open arms because people aren’t afraid to go against the grain here.”

Wickens said that there was “room for improvement” in the Formula E hand controls, but for a first test, “I think it was a great success, and it was awesome to get on track and just feel what one of those cars is all about.”

As far as racing in Formula E: “In terms of my ambitions, I’ve always made it pretty clear that I just want to return to an elite level of motorsports. I’m loving my time in the Michelin Challenge—I love racing with Hyundai—but my heart is still driving me towards the WeatherTech series,” he said. “I’d love to find a place there in the future. I’d be a very happy man if I can make it onto the WeatherTech grid.”

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