.robertwickens is on pole for today's IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge TCR race at Lime Rock – here's the amazing full story of his return to the cockpit following his devastating IndyCar crash injuries that put him in a wheelchair 👇
Last month Robert Wickens became a race winner again, defying his paralysis by using hand controls to score victory at Watkins Glen’s IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge event with Hyundai. On the same day at Goodwood’s Festival of Speed, disabled MotoGP world champion Wayne Rainey rode his Yamaha YZR500 again and quadriplegic Sam Schmidt – Robert’s IndyCar team boss during his Pocono horror crash – drove a McLaren 720S using head movements to guide the car.
Wickens’ world changed forever on the first racing lap of the 500-mile event at Pocono as he vied for fourth position with Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay approaching the fastest corner of the tri-oval. Perhaps the best description of what happened next was via live TV commentator Paul Tracy: “That’s going to be tight through there…oh my God!”
“When you have a spinal cord injury you have to forcefully learn human anatomy,” says Wickens, in the same matter-of-fact style he’s always had when talking about his racing. “Sam and I, although we’re both paralysed, they are entirely different injuries. “But with my injury, there was no prognosis, so they couldn’t tell me anything. You are shooting in the dark and try to have faith and positivity… It’s so tough. Doctors can’t tell you that you’ll never walk again, well some did – a lot did, actually! Because I was so optimistic, I thought they were just trying to bring me back down.
“I didn’t have any feeling in the beginning after my accident,” he reveals. “I lost all motor and sensory skills below my point of injury, but through my neuro recovery, I was able to gain back a lot of sensation. I have a lot of sensation for touch, but I struggle with pain receptors, with hot and cold. For me, hot feels like that icy muscle-rub hot – it’s cold but hot, you know that feeling? Hot feels cold and cold feels cold. So that’s weird, and I’ve had to learn my new normals.
“Staying sharp is the best way to put it,” he says of his role. “Using your brain to find opportunities to improve the car, looking at onboard videos and competitor analysis, keeping in that mindset with a high-level team. I feel like I bring a lot to the table, having raced at an elite level since 2011. I’ve learned a lot of things along the way!
“Of course, it takes a financial undertaking, we had to adapt the car to hand controls that are safe and reliable. I saw Michael Johnson [paralysed as a youngster in a motorbike racing crash] had joined Bryan Herta Autosport and I put those two pieces together. Sure enough, Bryan called me three months later and asked ‘Are you busy on May 4? Let’s go to Mid-Ohio and do a track day. You can get behind the wheel again’.
“It didn’t quite feel business as usual until the pre-grid,” he says. “They had the grid walk going on, but it wasn’t until I got my helmet on and they strapped me into the car – that’s when it clicked. I remember thinking, ‘This is cool – I’ve missed this!’ “I got the car into podium contention and Mark brought it home, fighting his ass off to keep us on the podium.”
Robert explains how his part works: “The brake system is a one-to-one system: I pull the ring and then linkages push down the physical brake pedal. But then I have a brake booster that helps me generate more pressure. I can get to about 50-60 bar on a peak hit, but that’s not sustainable for an hour or two-hour stint, because I’m pulling with the force of 120 pounds every time. So the booster helps me get that final 20-30 bar of pressure that I need. It relieves 50 percent of the weight.
“We’ve had the same system since the start of the season and there’s definitely limitations to it in terms of the brake feeling. For zero to 20 percent brake application, I’m kind of 20 percent or nothing. Anything we can do to help that would be a huge gain, for finesse. In long corners, like at Laguna Seca, you need a little bit of brake in it to keep the nose down, but it’s either over-the-top or not enough; it’s a hard balance.
“There are lots of different things out there but it’s what you’re willing to give up to try to get better. I was fortunate to regain quite a bit of function, by no means can I walk freely, I’ll need a wheelchair probably for the duration of my life. But I can stand for a short period of time. “The best way it was described to me was imagine you’re drinking through a straw, and that straw is your spinal cord. Everything flows through it just fine. If you pinch that straw, everything gets super-constricted. In my case, the injury was spinal contusion. The straw is pinched and the amount of nerves that make it through is heavily compromised.
With less than half a season remaining in IMSA’s second tier series, and his winning streak putting him in title contention, thoughts will soon turn to next year’s program. Now he feels he’s reestablished himself with the BHA Hyundai TCR squad, Wickens wants to make further progress in the longer term.
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