IndyCar’s Sam Schmidt reflects on death of dirt track star Bryan Clauson

On Monday night, I was reading a compilation of the esteemed sports writer Red Smith’s columns when I came upon the one he wrote on March 27, 1960. It was about the 12 Hours of Sebring sports car race:

“In the dew-drenched grayness of 6 a.m., the doodlebugs screeched down Highway 27, howling like the damned. Roaring and coughing, they made their way through this normally tranquil village and out across the flatlands to the abandoned bomber base that is now a shrine to the sports-car faith, a booming religion whose ritual includes human sacrifice.”

The night before I read that, Bryan Clauson, the best short-track racer in the country, died as a result of a midget-car crash in Kansas.

It might have seemed cold and callous, the way Red Smith alluded to the specter of death at the track as human sacrifice. But it’s a fact, a cruel truth that in the speed sports is held to be self-evident. That a racer as talented as Clauson was killed at age 27 seems almost incomprehensible to racing people.

Sam Schmidt, the IndyCar team owner from Henderson, was among those left shaking his head. Schmidt helped facilitate Bryan Clauson’s dream of driving in the Indianapolis 500.

In 2011, then-IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard approached Schmidt about putting Clauson in one of his Indy Lights cars. Bernard thought it would be good for the sport if there still was a “Road to Indy” for the dirt-track demons, the dusty bullrings being how A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti and assorted Unsers and myriad Bettenhausens had advanced through the ranks.

Schmidt agreed; Bernard said nothing about crash insurance. Schmidt was apprehensive — how much would putting a dirt-track demon behind the wheel cost him in repairs when the dirt-track demon smacked the wall?

He called Mike Hull, managing director for fellow car owner Chip Ganassi, to inquire about the skill of young Clauson, who had driven a stock car for Ganassi in NASCAR’s Xfinity series.

“Mike Hull said there wasn’t any crash damage,” Schmidt said. “He said we should get this guy in our car … nobody is going to work harder to get the job done. Mike’s response about his talent was unequivocal.”

Schmidt remembers the crew setting up the Lights car like a sprint car to suit Clauson’s driving style.

“Like everybody’s been saying about him, he was a true racer — a la Tony Stewart, a la Jeff Gordon — in every sense of the word,” Schmidt said of the many-times champion USAC driver who would race in the Indy 500 three times. This year Clauson finished 23rd — and then, in true racer form, he won a sprint cup race at Kokomo, Indiana, later that night.

Those were two of 200 races Clauson had planned to drive this year before the racing gods intervened.

In the six races Bryan Clauson drove for Schmidt, he finished fifth, fourth, third, seventh, fifth and 13th.

That 13th place was at Las Vegas Motor Speedway — on Oct. 16, 2011. It was the same day Dan Wheldon, the two-time Indy 500 winner, was killed driving one of Sam Schmidt’s Indy cars.

That was another day the sport seemed cold and callous.

GREEN-WHITE-CHECKERED

• One of the benefits about being named to the NASCAR Next watch list, as Las Vegan Noah Gragson was recently, is that media people suddenly want to speak with you about going around in circles at a high rate of speed. It wasn’t long ago the youngster “didn’t respect” NASCAR.

“I thought it was just a bunch of guys going in left-hand circles,” the 17-year-old action sports enthusiast told NBCSports.com. “I didn’t think it was hard.” In his first race at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Bullring, he finished third in a Bandolero car. “I was hooked for life,” said Gragson, who will race in Saturday’s NAPA Auto Parts 150, a NASCAR K&N Series stop in Evergreen, Washington, up in Derrike Cope and Kasey Kahne country.

• Justin Lamb, a local sportsman drag racer, recently won his fourth Super Stock division title at Sonoma, California. “I don’t take these for granted,” Lamb told NHRA National Dragster after winning for the 16th time in 22 final match pairings.

• The temperature has cooled a degree or two, a clear indication the resumption of racing at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Bullring is just around the corner. Action in a multitude of divisions returns Aug. 27.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. His motor sports notebook runs on Friday. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski