A wedding dance, a baby and race wins: The remarkable revival of Robert Wickens

Robbie Wickens and Mark Wilkins celebrate after winning the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park near Bowmanville, Ont. in June, 2022.Richard Dole/Handout

At home these days, Robert Wickens is a family man with a wife and a healthy baby boy. At work this summer, he’s in the fast lane, first across the finish line as one of the most promising Canadian car racers since Jacques Villeneuve.

Dancing at his wedding, welcoming a newborn, winning races – these all seemed difficult to imagine four years ago, when everything in Wickens’ life changed in a split-second on Aug. 19, 2018.

It was his debut season as an IndyCar driver, after working his way up for 13 years through the various professional racing series. He’d already been named Rookie of the Year and the 29-year-old from Guelph, Ont., was in sixth place in the championship standings.

And then, on just the second corner of the race at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania, his Honda touched wheels with another car and he was launched into the air at more than 340 kilometers an hour. When what was left of his racecar landed in a ball of flame, he suffered acute injuries to his spinal cord, legs and hands. He was paralyzed from the chest down.

Wickens stands beside his race car.Chris Owens/IMS Photo 2017/Handout

Wickens, in car #6, crashes into the wall at Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pa on Aug. 19, 2018.Todd Dziadosz

Months of hospitalization and intensive physical therapy followed – six hours of rehab a day, six days a week. He refused to accept that he might never walk or race again. But less than a year after the crash, he drove a modified car for a parade lap at the Honda Indy in Toronto. Karli Woods, a cosplay performer and his fiancé at the time, was a passenger, and when he married her that September, the couple danced at their wedding.

Robbie Wickens and wife Karli share a dance at their wedding.handouts

Wickens did not make a miraculous recovery. He still uses a wheelchair and can stand for only brief periods. “There are a lot of physical setbacks that I have,” he says from his home in Indianapolis. “I have minimal abdominal strength, so I can’t really support my upper body with my core – I need to use my arms. When I’m standing and trying to walk, the failing point is actually my core. My core isn’t stable enough, so my trunk becomes unstable and I lose my balance.”

None of this, however, means he can’t sit in a racing seat and race. And when he races, he likes to win.

This year, he resumed competitive racing in the International Motor Sports Association’s Michelin Pilot Challenge, a second-tier championship series that runs Grand Sport and Touring cars for 10 races on North American tracks. Each car has two drivers who share the two-hour and four-hour races equally, and Wickens’ co-driver is fellow Canadian Mark Wilkins, from Mulmur, Ont. Out of 49 drivers in the series, with two races left to go (including one in Virginia this weekend), Wickens sits in third place.

They drive a Hyundai Elantra N race car for the Bryan Herta Autosport team, and it’s been modified to allow Wickens to use a special steering wheel that includes all the pedal functions that co-driver Wilkins still uses. It has rings attached to it that control the throttle, brakes and clutch.

The brake ring works with a pneumatic actuator that adds force to the application. “Every day in a manual wheelchair, your grip strength tends to get pretty good,” says Wickens. “But it’s not even my forearms – it’s my hands that ache and cramp. I’m probably pulling the brake ring with 80 to 100 pounds of force. Mark’s using his leg, but it’s just humanly impossible to replicate that much force with your grip to what you can do with your leg. You lose finesse.”

Wickens works out at a rehab facility in Denver on April 16, 2019.DAVIDGOLDMAN/The Globe and Mail

Wickens relearns how to walk in rehab.DavidGoldman.c/The Globe and Mail

Robbie Wickens hold his son Wesley shortly after birth.handouts

To get a feel for what Wickens has to contend with behind the wheel, his partner Wilkins gave the modified steering wheel setup a try.

“It certainly doesn’t feel like anything natural,” he says. “To go for the brake ring instead of the brake pedal just feels completely wrong. It’s a challenge thinking through all of that, but then also hand clutch, hand throttle, shift with the other finger, grab the brake ring – it’s everything with your hands, and it seemed extraordinarily busy to me.”

Wickens says that once he was released from the hospital and began his rehabilitation, he practiced with an e-sports simulator at home so the operation of the wheel could become second nature.

“It was understanding that my hands are my tools now, and how to almost get the neuro-cognitive strength to have finger dexterity to use the throttle and shift gears, and do things all with my hands. Driving a race car is a lot more than just throttle, brake and changing gears.”

His home was modified for the wheelchair and he began driving a modified minivan.

He was encouraged by team owner Bryan Herta, who tried him out in 2021 and, with help from Hyundai, set him up with Wilkins this year. There have been glitches and the driver swaps take longer than for other teams, but they won in June at Watkins Glen in New York and then came north to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park near Bowmanville, Ont., formerly known as Mosport.

Wickens, however, did not stick around for the practice. Karli went into labor two weeks early in Indianapolis. He drove home in time for the birth of Wesley on the Friday, Canada Day, and then flew back to Bowmanville on Saturday morning.

Other drivers had been getting the feel of the track and setting up their cars, but Wickens arrived too late for that. The car wasn’t even qualified for the race and so it started at the back of the 15-car pack.

His sole practice was the two formation laps before the start of the race itself. He’d not driven at that track since 2009.

“Ironically, starting at the back helped me learn everything a lot quicker,” he says. “I was judging everyone by their brake lights ahead of me, looking at where they were applying their brakes, and then judging how hard I’d need to brake for the corner coming up.”

Robbie Wickens, Mark Wilkins and team celebrate after winning the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park near Bowmanville, Ont. in June, 2022.handouts

It took Wickens 10 minutes to move up to ninth place, and 40 minutes to move up to third. After about an hour, his track partner Wilkins took over the drive and brought the car home to win the race.

It was a triumphant and emotional return to his sport in front of his home crowd, and Wickens flew back to Indianapolis that night to celebrate with Karli and Wesley. Even so, he knows he’s got a long way still to go.

“I think the future is very optimistic,” he says. “Right now, the best way to prove that we’re ready for something else is to go out and win the championship this year, with Bryan Herta Autosport and Hyundai, in the Mission Pilot Challenge. I need people to know that I’m ready for next steps if next steps are possible, and the only way to do that is by winning where you currently are. You have to prove your worth.”

But more than that, he wants to try to help ordinary drivers with physical challenges. It frustrates him that regular cars modified for hand controls are inconsistent and not the best they can be.

“On road cars right now, you basically have this lever off the steering wheel that you pull toward you for gas and you push it away for brake, and you drive constantly with one hand,” he says. “Down the road, in the future, I would love the opportunity to try to revolutionize hand controls to improve road safety. The only reason why motorsport ever exists is to evolve and innovate for road cars and for road safety, so if we can continue plugging away with hand controls and make a system that clearly is competitive, and safe, reliable and easy to use, hopefully one day we can push that into road cars.”

Wickens says his long-term prognosis is unclear. Nobody can tell him for certain what he will be able to achieve if he keeps at it. Of course, this also means nobody can tell him what he can’t achieve.

“All I was ever told is try to remain positive and see what your body will allow you to do, and when it allows you to do it,” he says. “A lot of people like the idea of ​​getting behind me, to be a part of the journey, but it takes a select few, like Bryan Herta and everyone at Bryan Herta Autosports and Hyundai, to actually act on their words and to give me the opportunity.”

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