Indy 500 driver killed on Desert Road

A veteran US racer meets a tragic end in a country he loved, reports ELEANOR BLACK.

An American who made a career of driving some of the world's fastest cars was killed while driving a borrowed van on the Desert Road.

Retired race driver Stanley Cole Fox, aged 48, died when his vehicle and a campervan collided on State Highway 1 near Waiouru on Monday night.

The name of the veteran Indianapolis 500 driver was made public yesterday, but police refused to discuss the accident, which left the 53-year-old campervan driver, of Christchurch, in hospital with a broken collarbone.

Mr Fox had been in New Zealand visiting friends Warwick and Barbara McKenzie and had planned to watch international speedway racing at Western Springs on Boxing Day.

He had visited New Zealand annually for the past 12 years and spent last New Year's Eve at Pukekohe raceway, making one circuit of the track in a red midget racecar for the first lap of the new millennium.

"He just loved New Zealand. It was like a second home," said lifelong friend Stan Milam, an American journalist who followed Mr Fox's career.

An Indianapolis 500 veteran who qualified eight times and finished in the top 10 twice, Mr Fox also worked in the family motorcycle parts business.

His racing career was cut short on May 28, 1995, when his car slammed into the wall in a crash involving six cars on the first lap of the Indy 500.

He suffered a bad head injury as his car was virtually sheared in half.

Photos from the race show the remains of Mr Fox's car flying through the air, his legs dangling from the wreckage.

He was in a coma for five days before finally regaining consciousness.

By July, he was out of hospital and at an Indianapolis rehab centre. Ten weeks after the crash, he walked out of the centre and went home for outpatient therapy.

But his racing career was over.

Mr Fox started racing in 1972 and made eight starts in nine years at the Indy 500.

He became a star driving the lighter open-wheel midget cars on the Midwest circuit. He won 19 times in 184 starts in a 23-year career.

Mr Fox also won Copper World Midget division races in 1980, 1990 and 1993.

He finished a career-best seventh as a rookie in the 1987 Indy 500.

Mr Fox founded a support group called Friends of the Fox and each May would take groups of head-injury survivors to the Indy 500, leading them on a tour of the pits and introducing them to celebrity drivers.

"The thing about Stanley is that he had an infectious enthusiasm about everything," said Mr Milam.

"It was absolutely impossible to be down in the dumps when he was around."

Mr Milam said the tragedy was a loss to his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, where Mr Fox had been involved in a lot of voluntary work.

Mr McKenzie, a former racecar driver, said: "If people were unkind to him in any way, Stanley's reaction was to buy them a cup of coffee or beer.

"He won people over."

Mr Fox is survived by his daughter, Marie, 16, son Alex, 10, and his former wife, Jean.