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“While rushing to the car, I noticed small splotches of a peculiar gray substance marking a trail on the asphalt leading up to the driver. When I reached the car, I was shocked to see that Smiley's helmet was gone, along with the top of his skull. He had essentially been scalped by the debris fence. The material on the race track was most of his brain. His helmet, due to massive centrifugal force, was literally pulled from his head on impact ... I rode to the care center with the body. On the way in I performed a cursory examination and realized that nearly every bone in his body was shattered. He had a gaping wound in his side that looked as if he had been attacked by a large shark. I had never seen such trauma.” Description of CART medical director Steve Olvey on the accident that killed Gordon Smiley, which happened on this day in 1982. During qualifying, on the second warm-up lap, his March 81C Cosworth began to oversteer on turn 3, causing the car to slightly slide. When Smiley steered right to correct this, the front wheels gained grip suddenly, sending his car directly across the track and into the wall nose-first at nearly 200 mph (320 km/h). He was killed instantly. According to team mate Desiree Wilson, (…) “the biggest piece was a little ball of engine. There was nothing else except shattered bits, a bit of gearbox, a bit of a wheel, not even a seat. It was very ugly.”(…) This was Smiley´s third run at Indy after competing mostly on the US domestic series, but the driver obtained a record overseas that remains to this day. In 1979, Smiley raced in the British Formula One Championship (sometimes called the "Aurora Formula One Championship") that used mostly obsolete F1 cars. Smiley won a race, and to this day, this is the last F1 win by an American driver in a FIA-sanctioned event.