Sports

After this Crash, Helio Castroneves’s Head is Still Attached to His Body, Somehow

Contact is relative.

To some it means the light graze of falling autumn leaf on your be-hoodied shoulder.

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To others it means the soft touch of a mother’s forehead to her newborn’s check.

To Brazilian IndyCar veteran Helio Castroneves it means very nearly getting his head chopped off by another car.

You know… contact.

This clip taught us a few things:

1. IndyCar, a series that Danica Patrick was once in, still exists.

2. Castroneves, at 41, still races in it. And his head remains tethered to his torso, for now at least.

3. IndyCar now seems to run its races on Monday afternoons, on the day after the Olympics ended, no less.

The Pocono 500, which has been run off and on since 1971, but is now called the ABC Supply 500 or something, was won by Will Power on Monday, who has an excellent name for a race car driver. Helio Castroneves, who has an excellent name for anything, did not win, but he got to keep his head, so he kind of did win.

All the same, he left the race with 137 laps left to go—presumably because of the crash, but also quite possibly to avoid the tedium of having to do 137 more laps on the same track. We’re not sure.

Thus concludes VICEsports.com’s IndyCar coverage. We’ll be back with more if something cool happens at the Indy 500. Or if there’s another gnarly crash.