The sudden, shocking end to Tony Renna's life on Wednesday morning at Indianapolis Motor Speedway has to rank as one of the saddest stories in recent memory, as he was only five laps into his new job with Chip Ganassi's team and one month from his wedding.

Exactly what caused his car to lose traction and then launch into the catch fence in Turn 3 should be revealed soon enough. It's hard to imagine someone as smooth and calculating as Renna, who started eighth and finished seventh last May as an Indianapolis 500 rookie, making a mistake while running 10 mph slower than he qualified.

As callous as it sounds, the likeable 26-year-old from DeLand, Fla., understood the finality of his profession. He didn't want to die in a race car yet he knew the potential consequences.

But death at the racetrack always jars us back to reality.

And the reality is this: Indy cars aren't supposed to fly.

Not like Mario Andretti did last April at the Speedway and not like Renna, who sailed over his main chance for survival -- the revolutionary SAFER Barrier at IMS -- before being killed. Kenny Brack's spectacular flip two weeks ago at Texas was different because he ran over another competitor's wheel, much like Helio Castroneves did earlier this season at Richmond, Va.

Still, as cruel as it was for Renna and as awful as it was for Brack, one of the most troubling aspects of these accidents is the impending danger for spectators -- who don't typically go to races with the knowledge that maybe they could be killed.

Open wheel racing on superspeedways, specifically the Indy Racing League brand, has become a ticking time bomb for the paying customers and that's totally unacceptable for fans to be at such high risk.

True, nothing has happened since 1999 when flying debris from a crash killed three spectators at an IRL race in Charlotte and, in 1998, when three fans were killed at a CART race in Michigan.

However, luck and timing may be the only things preventing more calamity this year in the all-oval IRL.

Andretti's aerial act, caused when he ran over a small piece of debris, set an IMS altitude record as his car took off like an airplane. Fortunately for the 63-year-old legend, the top of the catch fence knocked him back onto the track and he landed rightside up with only a minor cut.

Fortunately for the Speedway, it wasn't qualifying or race day, and the south chute grandstand was empty when it was showered with pieces of carbon fibre bodywork from Andretti's car. Bottom line? He was only a couple feet from landing in the South Vista and nobody wants to envision that during May.

	“	The fans cannot be in the line of fire like they are now and it's only going to take one catastrophe, like 1955 when a car cartwheeled into the crowd at Le Mans and killed 83, to shut everything down. ”
		— Robin Miller

Brack's frightening flight, which ripped his car apart and left the 37-year-old veteran with a broken back, sternum, right leg and two fractured ankles, came during the closing stages of the IRL finale but luckily took place on the backstretch where there were no spectators. The fence was destroyed and there was a report his gearbox and right-rear suspension made it into those empty seats at Texas Motor Speedway.

The aftermath of Renna's devastating ride was captured by local television helicopters and showed how the IMS catch fence, the strongest in all of motorsports, had been decimated. Debris made it to the grandstand walkway in the North Vista, which of course wasn't occupied on this private test day. Track officials are denying that any major pieces made it through the fence.

It certainly appears the IRL cars have a problem when air gets under the nose on flat tracks like Indy. In order to get maximum performance on Indy's long straightaways, the front of the car is raised noticeably to reduce the drag. IRL rules mandate high downforce, which also creates high drag, so raising the nose reduces this drag and increases straightaway speed.

As for the 1.5-mile and 2-mile ovals, where the cars are packed together at more than 215 mph, the big fear is that contact like Brack and Tomas Scheckter had at Texas will catapult a car over the fence and into the crowd.

Which is not to say there's any less trepidation when CART races at California Speedway next month. It's the lone American superspeedway left on the Champ Car schedule, but drivers and teams always hold their breath at the oval which claimed Greg Moore in a 1999 crash.

The best break IRL and CART get at California (both race there) is that there are more people in the infield than the grandstands.

But both series are running way too fast on ovals. Corner speeds at Indy are insane and the old Brickyard certainly wasn't built for 230 mph laps. Texas is always like Russian Roulette and even flat Milwaukee is almost wide-open for CART.

Sanctioning bodies, engineers, manufacturers and Firestone/Bridgestone need to react immediately for the sake of everyone concerned with open wheel racing on ovals.

The fans cannot be in the line of fire like they are now and it's only going to take one catastrophe, like 1955 when a car cartwheeled into the crowd at Le Mans and killed 83, to shut everything down.

After the Le Mans catastrophe -- where driver Pierre Levegh also died after catapulting into the fans -- the Swiss government was so horrified by what happened in France that it banned auto racing completely, and there has not been a Switzerland Grand Prix held in that country since.

In the immediate aftermath of the Le Mans disaster, the governments of France, Mexico, Spain and Switzerland banned auto racing. But eventually all the governments, except for Switzerland, lifted the bans. In France, some Swiss events have found refuge, including the running of the 1982 Swiss G.P. at the Circuit de Dijon-Prenois, about 10 miles outside of Dijon.

If fans were killed on a similar scale in the U.S., it wouldn't take the government to step in and shut things down -- insurance companies would take care of that. If you had a calamity like Le Mans here, between lawsuits and the inability to obtain liability insurance in the future, the facility would effectively be closed.

Some IRL officials act like any criticism directed toward them is unfounded, despite the fact their series has seen 77 drivers suffer significant injuries -- including two fatalities -- in an 87-race span since 1996. But their arrogance can't blind the view and what they should have seen this season is way too many near disasters and now, a fatality.

Usually, The Grim Reaper doesn't give as many warnings as the IRL has received in 2003.

The fact is that Indy cars must be slowed down drastically because nobody cares about track records anymore and qualifying is a non-event everywhere. The IRL can put on a good show at 40 mph less than it's running today and it's also a good opportunity to reduce aerodynamics to make the cars more challenging, if not safer, to drive.

Drivers should be steering race cars, not rockets.

We've got Cape Canaveral for launches, not the famous track at 16th & Georgetown.

Robin Miller covers open wheel racing for ESPN and ESPN.com.