In a span of six days, Indianapolis Motor Speedway has seen three cars sustain heavy crashes - with the fourth on Monday involving Canada's James Hinchcliffe. 

Crashes, of course, are part of the sport. But even though Hinchcliffe's car rolled over onto its side and didn't go airborne, the problem with most of these crashes was that the cars were lifted into the air. 

A race car doesn't normally take flight in crashes. In the case of Helio Castroneves, Josef Newgarden and Ed Carpenter recently, flight occurred after the car had crashed and spun backwards. 

The main concern with this is that it's happening when the car is in a state of backward motion.

An IndyCar vehicle moving in forward motion creates enormous amounts of downforce and most of that downforce is generated by the bottom of the race car. It is designed like an upside down airplane wing, so wind flows from the front and out of the back of the car it sucks the car to the race track.

When you turn an open wheel car around, the underground floor can turn into a real airplane wing, and that is what generates that lift off that we saw with Castroneves, Newgarden and Carpenter. 

One of the other big problems is that IndyCar didn't test their new aerodynamic body kits enough before going to Indy - and that's a major problem. 

Being a racing driver means that you need to have confidence in yourself, but also your equipment and team. You're manhandling a giant beast of a machine that's trying to get away from you.

If you haven't tested your car before taking it to its limit, then it becomes very unpredictable and you can really hamper your confidence - something you need when trying to tame the Indy 500.

In Hinchcliffe's incident, a piece of the right-front suspension failed and driver error was not a factor in his accident. One saving grace is the angle that he hit the Turn 3 wall - on the side. If it had of been head on, then it could have been a much worse accident. The chassis on the DW12 and the safer barriers installed around Indianapolis did their jobs and protected James in the right spots. 

And James did his job as well - as soon as he noticed he had lost steering and was a passenger, he quickly removed his hands from the wheel and braced for impact. And that's what you're taught to do when you can't bring the car back from the 'point of no return.' 

The other thing that James did right was maintaining his fitness. Racing drivers are extremely fit athletes. These cars can beat the heck out of you - they are physically and psychologically demanding. The cars themselves are extremely difficult to steer and control, not to mention having to deal with searing heat and stress from your competitors. And that fitness plays a big role - even when going through a crash, an extremely fit racing driver can absorb impact better than a non-fit driver.

IndyCar is one of the leaders in driver safety and they'll be working night and day to sort all of this out before the 500.