THE INSPIRING MAN BEHIND M cLAREN’S INDYCAR EFFORT
With his big personality and even bigger sideburns, it’s unsurprising that Sam Schmidt earned himself the nickname‘Elvis’. His character has served him well – 20 years since the accident that left him paralysed from the neck down, the Arrow SPM team of which he is figurehead is collaborating with famed Formula 1 squad McLaren under the new guise of Arrow McLaren SP for an attack on the IndyCar Series.
On 26 September 1999, Nebraska-born Schmidt took his first career win in the Indy Racing League at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, near his adopted home, and savoured every moment. Just over three months later, on 6 January 2000, Schmidt was pre-season testing at the Disney World oval in Orlando. He lost control of his Treadway Racing G-Force, and suffered a high-speed, rearward impact with the retaining wall, shattering his C3/C4 neck vertebrae. Resuscitated by the safety crews on site, he was airlifted to hospital where his family was given devastating news – Schmidt was paralysed and would, at best, be in a nursing home on a ventilator for the rest of his life.
“It’s fortunate I was out of it those first few weeks in the ICU,” says Schmidt. “They weren’t very positive about the future in
