Briscoe coming back from scary crash
A year ago, Ryan Briscoe was laid up recovering from one of the most visually spectacular racing accidents in memory. Given the fiery images that were captured of that frightening Indy Racing League wreck at Chicagoland Speedway, it's amazing that the 24-year-old Australian raced at all in 2006, much less competed in four disparate forms of motorsports.
Make that five, because it was confirmed Tuesday that Briscoe will finish the 2006 campaign in the Champ Car World Series. He'll step in for the injured Cristiano da Matta at RuSPORT Racing for the last two Champ Car races of the season at Surfers Paradise, Australia and Mexico City.
The No. 10 RuSPORT car was not entered in the three Champ Car races since da Matta's early August test crash at Road America. Last week, RuSPORT ran a test at Sebring International Raceway for Briscoe along with Ronnie Bremer and Adam Carroll, with Briscoe getting the nod as the Champ Car series heads to his home country.
Maybe it's poetic justice that a driver on the comeback trail is stepping in for da Matta, who faces a long road back from the closed head injuries he suffered when his car struck a deer. In the 2005 Chicagoland IRL accident, Briscoe suffered two broken collarbones, a bruised lung, a fractured bone in his right foot and contusions to his arms, legs and back when his car exploded in a ball of flame in the catch fence.
The slender Sydney native -- who resembles Tommy on the old "Eight is Enough" TV series with his thatch of curly blonde hair -- was hospitalized for nine days, but he was back in a Grand-Am sports car four months later for the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Settled in Charlotte but without a full-time ride for 2006, Briscoe has taken what he could get: Four races in the IRL for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing in the IRL IndyCar Series and a couple of starts for the Australian team in the A1GP open-wheel series before returning home to contest a pair of endurance races in the popular V-8 Supercar series at Sandown and Bathurst.
The icing on the cake is making his Champ Car debut on the streets of the Gold Coast.
"I haven't raced in Australia since I left here at the age of 15 to race go-karts," Briscoe recalled. "Just recently, with the two endurance touring car races I had this past month and a half, all of a sudden I've been able to have family and friends come to the track. So it's been something new and different for me and very exciting."
After learning that being a Formula One test driver is a dead-end job, Briscoe turned his attention to America and was fast but erratic in his 2005 IRL campaign for Ganassi Racing. He targeted Champ Car this year, testing for PKV Racing prior to the season and running the Mi-Jack/Conquest Racing car in the open test at Portland in April.
"It's been my goal since the beginning of the year to race in Champ Car, and I'm with a top team, so it's a really exciting opportunity for me," Briscoe said. "It's definitely a chance for us to get to know each other, but for the time being we're just focusing a hundred percent on trying to do a good job here. Then for whatever plans down the road, we'll talk about that."
It has been a turbulent and difficult year for RuSPORT, the Champ Car team owned by Carl Russo and managed by former sports car racer Jeremy Dale. RuSPORT was expected to compete with Newman/Haas Racing for the Champ Car title, but after a slow start to the season, driver A.J. Allmendinger was fired and replaced by da Matta.
Although Justin Wilson won for RuSPORT at Edmonton, in general results remained disappointing -- and then came the crushing blow of da Matta's freak accident.
Meanwhile, with Allmendinger winning races and suddenly blossoming into the series' hottest star at Forsythe Championship Racing, it's no wonder that Russo and Dale took some time to regroup.
"It did take us a little while, and that's really mostly centered around our desire to not just fill a gap and not just throw someone in the car but put someone in the car that we felt was going to make a real contribution to our team and in addition be a great teammate for Justin," Dale said. "It took us a few extra weeks just to keep it all moving forward and do what we thought was right for the team. We recognized that the best way to do that was to go out and do some testing, and that's what we did.
"Ryan only had one day in the car, but he did a very solid job. We decided pretty quickly at the end of the test that he was the right guy for us."
It's a timely opportunity for Briscoe, to get a foothold in Champ Car as the series prepares for an expected expansion in 2007 with the introduction of a new car.
"It's definitely going to be a challenge going into Surfers Paradise, sort of coming in at the tail end of the championship," Briscoe said. "But with the support of RuSPORT and everyone getting behind me, I've got a good feeling about it. So hopefully we'll be good right out of the box."
John Oreovicz covers open-wheel racing for National Speed Sport News and ESPN.com.
