"We will address it and find a solution," said Scotsman Dario Franchitti, who won his third consecutive IndyCar season title when the race was aborted.
Wheldon, whose final victory came last May at Indy after rookie leader J.R. Hildebrand crashed on the last turn, did not have a full-season ride and had been testing new safety features for a revamped 2012 IndyCar chassis.
Changes include greater aerodynamic downforce to slow cars, bigger cockpits for better driver protection and bodywork over the rear wheels to prevent cars from becoming airborne as Wheldon's car did, leading to his fatal head injury.
"A lot of things that happened in this race they are hoping would not happen with these changes," said former F1 and IndyCar racer Eddie Cheever.
He called the incident the most horrible he had seen in 30 years of racing, telling ESPN that IndyCar officials need to heed driver worries in blending race thrills with safety needs.
"Maybe the scale has tipped a little bit too far to make it more entertaining," Cheever said. "They would serve themselves well if they listened to the drivers a little bit more ... and the concerns they voiced."
Intense drivers in packs of cars racing three abreast at speeds near 300km/h on a tightly banked oval were a recipe for disaster.
"A lot of us thought something might happen. We knew there was going to be some trouble," said English racer Alex Lloyd.
"We all had a bad feeling about this race," Spanish driver Oriol Servia said. "We had too much banking in this track. We were too close together. We knew what could happen."
IndyCar chief executive Randy Bernard had made Wheldon the showpiece of a US$5 million ($6.3 million) bonus promotion, where Wheldon and an IndyCar fan would split the money if Wheldon, who started last in a field of 34, could win.
Wheldon, who was to join former IndyCar and F1 racer Michael Andretti's team next season, had moved up 10 places in the largest IndyCar field outside Indianapolis when the chain-reaction crash took place on lap 11.
"It's unfortunate that early on in the race they've got to be racing so close," veteran race team owner Roger Penske said. "You always worry about those at these mile-and-a-halfs [ovals] at this speed and with this many cars."
The race was the first for IndyCars in 11 years at the Las Vegas speedway.
"There are tracks that they don't need to race at," US stock car racer and former IndyCar driver A.J. Allmendinger told Fox News.
"There needs to be action. There doesn't need to be 34 cars.
"It's a ticking time bomb. With the new car coming in, it needs to be safer."
Road courses offer tyre barriers, run-off areas and gravel escape zones and US stock cars have restrictor plates to curtail speeds on some ovals, while IndyCar's key oval safety feature is the SAFER barrier, an energy-absorbing wall between cars and concrete.
Wheldon became the seventh IndyCar driver to die since 1996, when Indy 500 pole winner Scott Brayton was killed in a practice session, and the first since 2006, when Paul Dana was killed in pre-race practice at Miami.
- AAP
