Sage Karam returns to Pocono for 1st time since fatal wreck
Sage Karam planned to keep it simple, just a bike ride this week through the first turn at Pocono Raceway. An easy outing, no reporters around to ask questions, no fans wondering how he’s feeling in his return to his hometown track.
Seven years ago, Karam triggered a wreck at the tri-oval track that killed IndyCar driver Justin Wilson and sunk Karam so deep into a depression that he doubted he would compete again. On his last visit to the track, his friend Robert Wickens was paralyzed in another IndyCar accident.
Pocono conjures memories of tragedy for the 27-year-old Karam. He wanted to go alone to remember -- but also reflect on his own, challenging journey.
“I’ve taken the necessary time I needed to take before I could properly go there,” Karam said. “If I had the opportunity to race there before, I don’t know that I would have been ready. If I’m not ready, I’m not going to do it. I don’t want to put myself at harm or put anybody else at harm. I feel like now I’m able to maturely go there and do it.”
Karam was a rising star in IndyCar and considered a potential face of the series when a seemingly simple spin as he led the August 2015 race shot his car into the wall. Wilson was struck in the head by a piece of debris from Karam’s car that had bounced along the raceway surface. The 37-year-old British driver died a day later at a nearby hospital.
Karam was 20 years old and blamed himself for the freak accident. Riddled by guilt, Karam moped around his house. He couldn’t sleep or eat and soon lost his ride driving for Chip Ganassi.
He not only couldn’t shake the fatality, Karam’s career never reached the heights expected after that race. He made sporadic starts in IndyCar and took the wheel for rallycross and sports cars races. He eventually landed in NASCAR in 2021 and raced in the Xfinity and Truck series. He’ll make his fifth start of the season Saturday in NASCAR’s second-tier series race at Pocono.
It’s still his hometown track. The Nazareth, Pennsylvania, native, who now lives with his wife in nearby Easton, has prepped himself for an emotional return. And he has backup.
“Everybody that I need around me will be there,” Karam said. “Everybody that’s been my biggest support group from these last seven years is going to be at this race because it’s in our backyard.”
His father, Jody, helped Sage reconnect with a sports psychologist and got the former high school wrestler back involved in the sport as a coach. Karam eventually found the right marketing agency that offered emotional comfort and landed him a NASCAR ride with Alpha Prime Racing.
“My son took on way too much responsibility for that accident,” Jody Karam said. “He self-imposed a lot of pain on himself and blame. I admire the way he matured and worked through it. He didn’t do it alone.”
Slowly, Karam got his life in order.
“What I’ve realized is what we do is a very dangerous sport,” he said. “It was a freak thing. A complete accident. I’ve just realized that. When you’re young, you don’t realize those things right away. You don’t realize there was nothing you could have done.”
Karam will race the Indy road course later this month while the rest of his NASCAR schedule is undetermined. Karam knows the scouting report on a full-time move to stock cars is grim: Danica Patrick, Dario Franchitti and Sam Hornish Jr. are among the open-wheel winners over the last 25 years who failed to find steady success in the bump-and-run world of NASCAR.
Born to race open wheel, Karam said the transition from IndyCar to stock cars “wasn’t as massive as I thought it was going to be.” But that comes with a caveat, as Karam only made 25 career starts in IndyCar, and six times his lone start each season was the Indianapolis 500 (he finished 23rd in May). Karam made a career-high 12 starts in 2015 and never again received a serious offer for a full-time ride.
“There’s nothing like driving an Indy car,” Karam said. “The speed of an Indy car, the grip of an Indy car. Every time I go to the Speedway and get there every May, I come in and I always take my helmet off and I look at my wife, I’ll just be like, yeah. Nothing comes close to that feeling of driving an Indy car around Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But what I love about the NASCAR stuff is just the actual racing aspect of it. I really do enjoy the aggression, that style of racing. More the pureness of it. Not really a lot of technology. There’s no buttons and stuff.”
The Alpha Prime team, owned by Tommy Joe Martins, has churned through a slew of drivers this season, from Karam to Kaz Grala to Rajah Caruth. Karam got dragged into the NASCAR rivalry muck following a major dust-up with Xfinity driver Noah Gragson at Road America. NASCAR fined Gragson $35,000 for intentionally wrecking Karam last month.
Karam has enjoyed stock cars so much, he now says he wants to race in the Cup Series.
“My No. 1 goal in life is to win the Indianapolis 500,” he said. “But my focus has completely shifted to stock cars.”
Karam found inspiration in perseverance from his father. Jody Karam, the wrestling coach at Easton High School, has suddenly developed a knack for trying to help save lives. His assistant wrestling coach collapsed in April during a jump-rope drill and stopped breathing.
“He’s laying there, dead. No pulse, nothing,” Jody said. “I start giving him CPR for four or five minutes, he started breathing again just as first responders arrived on the scene.”
He saved one life, and may save another. Jody is set to donate a kidney to help a friend and early champion of Sage’s karting days who helped fund his early racing career. Jody Karam, who declined to name the man, citing privacy, should undergo the procedure within two months.
His son celebrated his one-year wedding anniversary Saturday with his wife, Abby, and the relationship has steadied a young man who once dubbed himself SK$, had a “prom” at IMS and was an easy prank target inside IMS by his veteran teammates. Karam met his future wife, a kindergarten teacher, in the years following the 2015 accident.
“She’s seen the aftermath of what happened and what I was dealing with,” he said. “She kind of saw the growth and the positives that came from me growing up and maturing. Recently, I’ve been more open to talking about it and she’s been around for those conversations that I’ve had. I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t meet her when I did.”
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1d3f8176gMuhW7EBc7-64qhc4bnwUDL5h
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1mTBVqCpUqKqh8nhgVCens00U1mdXLdZi
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1f__YldT9QY7huWou8u2uIRYzi9tRIo46
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/15rcbbFz6yuXolpJtDoRv67-fGZ9BHBKJ
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1mhrQ11_6YccqVukbqYp5k6Ra1MQg2t8m
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1r5rnLD4m2RdqC8I7y-qhFzHv0DV6KI7u
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1VmFlwKYVE0dlnqT57djgCkyLUpbdBC5X
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1M78ua094reqguOtBNkWaWvyXDNnFoUvR
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1skA6tNzyL7aOv_I7GKG_p5dv1IWxx9K3
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/19ttiW9zMc3y5AEhVGhwMP9_rg093iJ9q
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/19UuS1j8KmL2h3F3TxfRdaAAu3UqD9MJ9
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1xkChEmCLOB1hi00VFb7wn86iJsJYrwvD
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/10fxMRWOv-4H-0zNT_0ddIsr-Z6XotL40
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1fM22IWdJ-dkZgHnil85PJX1Xf8c19D75
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1XIookXvCDjbv11ROriEFJk_OgWMpqO93
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1fHnJvQL6obrSlW2XllSzpDnjFrl8MWil
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/16tlm4BOPlDG8Sl2gVbFcvAy0jvgZxmlR
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1jJ0bILeHPI8rVOZ0j3PJiWlyAA84sotx
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1YJZ2xHT3UAvAY9gyWGmuYlGTvLbZt1Pg
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/18fOLWXT4Aco9OPRRrUAHWQh1ujARXPZW
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1O_X9wrTMLpPial34ohJEW9kHigMCMc36
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1Y7VfxJTx07fHHS7FCVdoeSqZOhuJiT3N
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1nkw1kC9IO12H06Uagncpz3mP4ja4jZIQ
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/14HhVmp2QihaVw4SI_l9qDU-3VOZXjfTt
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1KLENz2oVFDpjDNMzZcbYlCjzBoQb0YyU
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1OfX8pqbtnOMpEuxLwcYzrgBvLcpkwq79
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/14hdoR4IWYxAE3-moGE_NKZCvCWy354gP
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1gu4nSKBFENwSHp2upxkHDh_GC774WT6Z
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1-cRuBCyWUWUDiwCGFip4l9tWzgtCU-Vu
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1p31FJZ7-XdvD8Ob5DHOavc85wMyhlhpN
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1KtZ73_q1h0Hl_ZyBSsLLSUKN_8QMLN6d
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/15Mbg63eaSt7PtxwUf24Mtko4dKTn4AcX
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1IDzt-dIiM6XSmbKyq9343zcgLTC0YItC
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/11KPmHZN5Oq3rVdoZc0y6heLCKKzAbZdu
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1y9x37laCbMcPb0dHFVyvSR3JXSmjK0Hv
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1myesBGAViCrEkUbwd_reB-x0hVnC-70h
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1vLymTxgAYP2PQNnqkJXl7LUaMyBg7gHC
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1AsGbyvvNtzjslGM7F6b9sSIbgHVg2g9n
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/13nwrY-G5tGgGylG5jSg-VcMiejbozD4Z
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1hLxxTqnV_98P2WQDc5vVkGgI7yKp8pI3
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/10oirKULQcJNRegB58n0UpWmyOsFbadu4
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/18MofnBIqQLbu5ZFvSA6nYlmrx8bwThYf
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/13Digecq5GdfuBLn9liKcW0DR1lk8aLga
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1gY8xUHVfFwMK5kJIsjA9sfU1vd3hM5CV
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1ZoT1MHoP5Rffw--A2YW71PPiauIm2IKi
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1FBMYKcGk28m61VV_Za-FolweRKoTSlGp
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/12DU-jtkX3xYrTJ-c07cWLny_j7lFYWm9
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1t5DqO9SJ2OJ5oV9H9UXzPTdcS7_4C1Qf
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1K0J6PfUgYY3c2ESUzpiyz7Jz8A1J3P58
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/18_kGc499nw8Lg0s2JjHIjjToRN-Jlq9Z
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1J40AouGOtCL7sUtcQJCUJpTkPqvpt0h3
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1viyez8RWK9TM2-BkiHPEdY9LCFTk-tsF
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1cVzDLNsRF7ckpc2ZKim-D3JzV6X-6hyD
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1yhLgvYauDHRVWMMZyVoVJagX4Tu4Wf2B
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/13RQMTOsP_ZDDFgr9jGFxJxUdwVsUb32l
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1njwmAPiD5BNgINtfkvDF4YeQ-CpEf96Q
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1Pq-bBL7AZI9UTLpweUcHMX8gc1mI7p8E
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1S256Bbkzst9k5sXUqqbt0877QZ1PZnpz
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1hO58Fbl0NLrAcfq7nmmJmQEeq8LJysVS
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1PEMreM7ABlxjxH_Af-tpo0MgV8MkJQ1u
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1tgXx1Nu2dRQ9dGuV3gZhp55E8NYEuvNL
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1sIZ7AtG5084mQE8fBKbIBcgd2fxDMHaW
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1WefhtbIo7yyzN7jmT3GSDVZAqrVy5WqN
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1tErGAOSF_EvkuQmjNkVwAZFqvGmlqv8B
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/191CbcUBtpCKL6GAIwm_3_OoEaoeFufxR
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1HeuqSIwmo1zInf9dTYdvrSS6rqqstfL8
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1d_3yafdKaQplY-STFqlFzjb4Ug-4xU-e
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1P8yGReNQDOQEkUvkmliIsK8AKH8ky3f3
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1d1VrYoIsRQ-KAsqnil4_m9AO4kMjLDY-
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1RkX77-nySzUzx4-14Fr0FHhKgoXL1Rc8
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/16C0nId6d3ggj32qxi8gVbSB-7U_jbQ_v
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1eZhJJw-qOP6-RjFht5nOzaxTOPHjNtF1
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1f_ZJXYt5nvuso-g8ym0d5ua39CnjoPhj
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1zHMoD12NdEQ_3EGtRTq5hAGLH90HeH0Z
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1fLpHJhMN4XVN7hPFe8rWdel6en1Oc3bg
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1KEbWCRrdxxViWo_AKzSUVq_gaHZoGtxn
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1fySFS65SjJpYldpxC0AUKLVX7xVKQe52
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1P3_18gfZm8fNz7igJI3WSiaVuHjD4bWe
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1ANKX5SXV_iF_R9nM4ICK6fNdrqeOnA9b
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1jcm6NYpnT0sgNi2mMuw26QvRiKGxHb0v
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1Xkd77gXS_KvPLNGGEKhdQmvJuDxOZsma
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1xsIuDj1KtzcN9l_KOH8ZgTS0NsiYy9nv
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1cIJxA11nDDhaIACdjttyeKVPgz3B0IIy
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1JergQsYmN9Ae_0rTaheq18Mq2JVZ0KJl
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1PaFsANZW0emrCHbJcacywogVfCjpkKu0
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1j7Q9pPpLLOQ-scYHu2vZ2gv483n8z7TM
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/14maOu31u38f0OpOQQ2PSCo2XYLkoI5qe
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1nJ6GAeO7sXG_Wef--r0DMhSZJDCkB8Uh
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1iRW13HxoUM8kPIrOT-ULRAdxiUrmgTn6
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/16aR_2w01Kp71eeR_70WAIib60w4Gb_UZ
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1tXmBvtaqHgpsOaw2qhQUnCqK-_Oxk9tn
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1WR5vKdoNjdV1q9J0T5Ms4V8jvUP0qK2G
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/130JV-wVLkZLEu7QeD8iVvciKsNNeSvwL
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1VH2PbfFjxUQrZ9nMRHZCvzB60bjcdRJD
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1zmCd51QBaiQGWZT1LQiv5h9tlbyd_j9i
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1BLoDjseM0JhrxjIEFzrJdaZWhInWgyDG
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1TXJtCXzJaKSKG0h8ImNzP13tH1Zyh_5r
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1LsBO-TlJR9nDO9XCMxTmwz57kdzSmTtU
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1FB9qdS5UpDioGJ3hombWFVPxLR6sSRdk
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1_o6ChhMDSyZ5PuB-b2FRmUqWJKZGtN2N
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1SbNturNECV20J9q00qpfiRorYvpDazYy
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1-2HJxrzBtk-O6JeEpVBoJ9x8A1lg2wUN
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/12BFtSOawqt4A5gPgw-CPdycOkSj0UCUv
http://phillipsservices.net/UserProfile/tabid/43/userId/157937/Default.aspx
https://datamodelinginstitute.com/community/profile/natalyakorchuk/
https://leyes.co/user/3952.htm
https://writeonwall.com/sage-karam-returns-to-pocono-for-1st-time-since-fatal-wreck/
https://writeonwall.com/question/jan-6-panel-probes-trumps-187-minutes-as-capitol-attacked-2/
https://ourclass.mn.co/posts/sage-karam-returns-to-pocono-for-1st-time-since-fatal-wreck-25332589
She was the shoulder to lean on Karam needed to push through.
Karam has met Wilson’s young daughters and has remained friendly with the late driver’s brother, IndyCar driver Stefan Wilson, all of which has helped him forgive himself.
Karam has long said he needed to conquer Pocono to make peace with the track and truly move on from that awful weekend. At last, he gets that chance.