Spectacular crash overshadows Schmidt team’s title run

“Big crash turn 4 … Charlie … Aleshin.”

It was 7:48 p.m. Friday when my cellphone buzzed. Crumpled race cars still were smoldering in the middle of the track during practice at Fontana, Calif.

The text message was from my pal Tom, the publicity guy for IndyCar driver Ed Carpenter. Tom has been involved in motor sports for a long time. He has seen a lot of crashes. I knew this one had to be serious or he wouldn’t have been texting.

Charlie is Charlie Kimball, the IndyCar driver who races with diabetes. Aleshin is Mikhail Aleshin, a rookie driver from Russia who drives for car owner Sam Schmidt of Henderson.

“Aleshin spun low and went up the track,” Tom texted. “Got over someone and into the fence big time ... cockpit not hit like Dan though.”

Dan was Dan Wheldon, the popular two-time Indy 500 winner who was killed in a crash at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in the last race of the 2011 season.

Dan Wheldon drove for Sam Schmidt, too.

Wheldon’s car also got airborne. It struck the fence driver side up.

Aleshin was lucky. He hit driver side down.

No, he did not walk away, as they say on the auto racing crash videos they show late at night at bars and taverns after the last football game ends. Aleshin was taken from the track on a stretcher. He has a multitude of injuries: concussion, fractured ribs, broken clavicle, chest injuries.

His condition has been upgraded from serious to stable. He’s expected to recover.

“We were sitting there watching it live; we saw the replays. He’s a very lucky guy,” Schmidt said Monday morning when we talked. He was on his way to visit Aleshin at Loma Linda Medical Center in California where the driver was said to be resting comfortably, which is amazing.

“I couldn’t look,” said Marco Andretti, who spun his car to avoid the carnage. “I hope he’s all right.”

“That was a terrible accident,” Graham Rahal wrote on Twitter. “Gotta try and clear our heads and do the job tomorrow.”

So the story, at least until the race started, became about Mikhail Aleshin surviving that horrible crash.

The story, or one of them, was supposed to be about Sam Schmidt’s other driver, Simon Pagenaud of France, challenging the Penske Panzers of Will Power and Helio Castroneves for the series championship on a fraction of their budget.

The story in USA Today leading up to the IndyCar season finale was about Schmidt turning his and partner Rick Peterson’s shoestring operation, at least relatively speaking, into a dark horse championship contender with Pagenaud behind the wheel.

Only three drivers were in championship contention when the green flag dropped at Fontana: Power, Castroneves, Pagenaud.

Sam Schmidt’s guy would have had to win the race, and Power and Castroneves would have had to finish somewhere near Rancho Cucamonga, for the Schmidt-Peterson race team to leave the banquet with the trophy and champagne in their eyes.

It didn’t happen.

Power finished high enough to get the necessary points. Castroneves wound up second. Pagenaud ran a distant 20th in the race, fifth in final points. He was the one who finished in Rancho Cucamonga.

His car just wouldn’t handle on those treacherous high banks. An ill-handling car is not what you want when zipping around the oval at more than 215 mph. Ask Mikhail Aleshin.

“We blew it,” Schmidt said.

He said Pagenaud was fast in practice before brushing the wall. In layman’s terms, that messed up the car’s setup, and the crew guys never were able to get it back.

Schmidt was disappointed with fifth overall after finishing third last year. Still, it was another awesome accomplishment for a group on a limited budget mostly known for dominating the Indy Lights feeder series.

The team didn’t start running for the IndyCar championship until 2012, a year after Las Vegas resident Alex Tagliani put Sam Schmidt’s car on the pole at the Indy 500.

That was pretty big, too.

“Yeah, looking back, we had some great moments,” Schmidt said, giving 2014 a cursory glance in the rear-view mirror. “Winning the first Indy Grand Prix, the 1-2 at Houston. A lot of high spots. We just didn’t end the season how we would have wanted.”

The 30-year-old Pagenaud won two races, including the inaugural Grand Prix of Indianapolis. He is now a free agent. The big-dollar teams are said to have their eye on him. Schmidt said he’ll make Pagenaud an offer during the next two weeks that will probably seem like a lot of money. It probably won’t be enough.

Aleshin, 27, did not win during his rookie season, but he finished second to Pagenaud in the second race at Houston. Aleshin said he’s a pretty big deal back in Moscow, that they now show IndyCar races on Russian TV, on the top channel.

I was surprised to learn that Nickelodeon also is available in Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Moldova and Turkmenistan.

One hopes that when Mikhail Aleshin’s car got airborne Friday night the Russian people were watching SpongeBob SquarePants reruns, because that was one frightening crash.

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