Dan Wheldon and Brian Herta


PRUETT: Herta on Wheldon's legacy, 5 years later

Marshall Pruett / Images by IMS Photo, LAT

Bryan Herta lost his dear friend, driver and teammate Dan Wheldon five years ago this Sunday in a crash at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and like so many I've spoken to this week, the ordeal has felt incredibly distant and recent at the same time.


"Has it been five years already?" Herta said. "Intellectually, I know it's five years, but it's strange. In some ways it seems like it couldn't be five years already, but in other ways, it seems longer."
It's the inevitable outcome when a vivid character like Wheldon is taken from a sport where lively personalities are increasingly hard to find. The distance – five years – is long enough to have normalized Wheldon's absence, but to those who knew the Briton, or grew to root for him from afar, it's more than likely his presence has remained current and fresh.
Whether it's as an ongoing inspiration or some other motivational force, Wheldon continues to play an important role with many of those he touched during his 33 years. Herta's team, the once-little Bryan Herta Autosport, was catapulted into Victory Lane at the 2011 Indy 500 thanks to Danny Boy, and with the team's increasing prosperity, it remains as one of Wheldon's great legacies.
Five years out from that dark day in Las Vegas, the rise of Herta's IndyCar team – one that is now merged with Andretti Autosport and won the 2016 Indy 500 carrying the same car number – stands as a testament to Wheldon's undeniable influence.
"I still think about him a lot," Herta said. "When we won Indy this year, he was the first person that popped into my head. I think because I associate him with that place so much, and he had such a legacy of competing there – a lot of his contemporaries like Scott Dixon, Tony Kanaan, Dario [Franchitti] talk about his performances there – that when the TV cameras came down when we won, I spontaneously said something about Dan right away.
"As we continued to grow as a team, he believed in us before anyone else. He made us better, told us we could win the Indy 500 when on paper we had no business even thinking we could, so I always try and carry that with me. He believed in us, and we try to live up to that every way."
If Wheldon's dramatic last-lap, last-corner Indy 500 win for Herta in 2011 wasn't enough of a thrill ride in the No. 98 Honda, Alexander Rossi continued the tradition by toppling IndyCar's giants last May to capture the 100th Indy 500 in a shocking manner behind the wheel of the newest No. 98 Honda.


"I think he'd be really happy with the success we've had, as long as he wasn't racing against us," Herta said with a laugh. "If he was racing against us, he might not have been as excited, but I know he'd take satisfaction from the role he played in helping us."
Herta has been on an interesting and fulfilling journey since he and Wheldon were teammates at Michael Andretti's team from 2003-06.