Rapid Response

With this dry but informative documentary, Roger Hinze and Michael William Miles chronicle changing attitudes towards driver safety in Formula One, crafting a companion piece to Paul Crowder's 1 (2013) and Richard Heap's Grand Prix: The Killer Years (2011). The directors here turn their focus on to IndyCar, leaning heavily on archive footage and an eponymous memoir by Dr Stephen Olvey, who transformed auto track medicine in partnership with doctors Thomas Hanna and Terry Trammell. Having witnessed the death of hero Bill Vukovich at the 1955 Indianapolis 500, Olvey abandoned plans to become a driver and dedicated himself to improving trackside care facilities, calling for modifications to car and equipment design. While Hinze and Miles dwell somewhat ghoulishly on the crashes that claimed the lives of Eddie Sachs, Dave MacDonald, Gordon Smiley and Gonzalo Rodríguez, they also commend the remarkable reconstructive surgery that Trammell performed in the 80s on Danny Ongais and Rick Mears, and the swift expertise that saved Chip Ganassi, Roberto Guerrero and Alex Zanardi.