Sting Ray Robb Tells Us What It’s Like to Fly an IndyCar
Sting Ray Robb (yes, that’s his real name—his parents were fans of the Corvette Stingray) doesn’t have a pilot’s license, but in Sunday’s HyVee OneStep 250 at Iowa Speedway, his IndyCar gained way more altitude than he wanted.
On the last lap of the race, Alexander Rossi’s car slowed dramatically heading to the finish line, and Robb, coming at full speed, couldn’t dodge him. He ran over the left rear tire of Rossi’s car, launching Robb into the air, flipping upside-down and sliding down the speedway on the car’s roll hoop.
Miraculously, Robb was alright, and Tuesday afternoon he was medically cleared to race this weekend in Toronto. Robb, a deeply religious 22-year-old who drives for the team owned by the legendary A.J. Foyt, spoke to the media on a Zoom call shortly thereafter.
And actually, it was pretty funny. Asked how the best-in-the-business AMR Safety Team did, he answered: “Literally, as I came to a rest, there was someone ducking under the halo to say, ‘Dude, are you alright? What’s hurting? Can you breathe?’ I’ll be honest, at that point adrenaline was going, so I didn’t handle that as good as I’d like to. I was a little upset. I was like, ‘Of course I’m hurt! Did you just see what happened to me?'”
They asked, “Can you breathe?”
“Yes, I can breathe, but not very good! I’m hanging upside down in an IndyCar!”
“When they flipped me over, I don’t know how many guys were there, 10-plus members of the crew supporting me. When I passed out, I could feel two guys holding onto my arms, two guys behind me. They were fully in support of me and I was fully reliant on them in that moment. They did everything to make me safe and it shows.”
Robb said that while he did pass out for a little while as the safety team pulled him from the car, he woke up on the stretcher. “Once I was down on the stretcher, I felt great. I was seeing clearly. They hooked me up to an IV,” he said, and “Immediately I could feel the energy come back and I was ready to go.” They loaded him into an ambulance, then a helicopter, and delivered him to the local hospital. He really didn’t need to be helicoptered out, but the safety team thought that after a crash of that magnitude, something had to be broken.
But the only injury he sustained was a blister on his right index fingertip, Robb said, holding it up to the camera. The roll bar assembly above IndyCar drivers’ heads, called a “halo,” is made of titanium. “I touched the halo getting out of the car. It turns out when you take titanium and scrape it across the ground for a few hundred feet, it gets hot. Don’t recommend. Lesson learned. You’ll get a blister from touching hot titanium there.”
Seriously, though, Robb knows how bad it could have, even should have, been. “As I was up in the air, I could see the top of the catch fence almost at my level. At that moment I realized I was in some trouble there,” he said. “On the way down I had time to think about accidents that I’ve seen in recent history where guys, they’ve gone flying through the air like that. Think about [James] Hinchcliffe, [Scott] Dixon at the Speedway. Even Simon Pagenaud last year.” Pagenaud, who crashed on July 1, 2023, at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, suffered from head injuries due to the accident. The veteran driver has not raced an IndyCar since. That crash was measured at 112Gs. “I was at 109Gs,” Robb said.
“The fact of the matter is I should be more hurt than I am. I don’t know why I’m okay. I’m giving the glory to God for that. When I came down, I felt the impact, but it didn’t knock the wind out of me. I didn’t feel any of that piercing through my legs or any sort of damage there. A couple light bruises when the bulkhead hit my knees. Skidding on the ground. I was very, very surprised that I was okay as I was.”
There isn’t much IndyCar can do to prevent the sort of crash that he had, Robb said. “We’re doing 170, 180 miles an hour on that track. You do anything at that speed, it’s going to get liftoff in some way, shape or form.”
Although IndyCar’s Dallara chassis has been around since 2012, it still works. “I wouldn’t change a thing about this car,” Robb said. “I think that IndyCar has done a great job of looking at and analyzing past crashes, and adapting to make cars even stronger or better for the future. I’m sure they’ll do the same here. I’m sure there will be a little things here and there that they could find. From my perspective, everything worked as it should have, and I’m safe because of that.”
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My guy Sting Ray, from my wife’s hometown, was indeed lucky – but he gives credit to where it’s due: the car designers and builders as well as the safety crews. I think his youth and conditioning certainly contributed.
This one will join the pantheon of clips of spectacular crashes that will be replayed ad nauseum on future telecasts and likely in some YouTube compendium.
Dub- I respectfully disagree. While… not bad.. he didn’t quite stick the landing and come down on all four wheels. That will keep him from medaling. His comments have a certain joie de vivre but not quite as much as Webber talking about what it’s like to be suddenly ” looking at the sky ” at Le Mans ( 1999 ) in the Mercedes at nearly 200 and not so much to sway the judges. While Webbers team mate, Peter Dumbreck…that was a perfect 10 that I cant imagine ever being matched and the gold standard.
I was at that Le Mans. Scary.
Paul – I guess at this time of the Olympics being imminent, we tend to measure everything by “sticking the landing”, eh? 😉 Okay, okay, ya got me there, it was definitely cobbled. Might not make the podium, but I still say it’ll make the highlight reels!
(ps) I think one of the most poignant comments regarding these accidents I’ve ever heard came from Richard Petty’s wife Linda. Petty had told her – “I’ll quit when it stops being fun”. After his massive end over end crash at Daytona in 88 she came in to his hospital room, visibly shaken, and said – “Are we still having fun?”
Well he got his learners permit to fly at the minimum there. Still has a bit of humor on what happened.
Kids who grew up in rural areas, probably jumping irrigation canals on souped-up dirt bikes, riding homemade go-karts through the cow patties, and taking Grandpa’s pick-up on a hill climb tend to shrug off things like this with a grin. Sting Ray’s still in the “hold my beer” stage of life (although I doubt he drinks – but at his age, nothing seems too dangerous to try). Most grow out of it, but racecar drivers and Evel Knievel – not-so-much! 😜
“It’s all fun and games until somebody ends up in a cone.” (Some pet owner humor there)….Though my eyes glaze over at the sophistication of F cars that enables them to perform the way they do, I’m completely overwhelmed that they additionally protect their drivers so well when they cease being cars and become projectiles.
Not to mention the SAFER walls and catch fences of today vs. the past. This past race in Toronto proved yet again that both the cars and tracks are really marvels when we see wrecks that would’ve likely killed drivers and/or spectators in “the good ol’ days”.
Not to mention the flight he had at Toronto last weekend!
I’m reminded of Dario Franchiti in 2007, who also got upside down twice in two races.
The strength of these cars amazes me. Drivers still take terrible chances, but it’s clear they love what they’re doing.