Any NASCAR fans out there?

[Big-t-2538]

It was late afternoon when the crash happened. Mikey had just crossed the finish line and you could hear the excitment in DW's voice as he called the finish. Soon after you heard the previously elated man in the booth wondering if his former bud, Dale was alright. The camera showed Ken Schrader charging towards what was left of the #3 goodwrench chevy. Emphatically he waved over the emergency crew as if something had gone seriously wrong. None of the post race interviews sounded promising...the last thing I remember seeing was JR. bee-lining across the infield to meet with the emergency crew who now had his father out of the mangled race car. Nothing more was said...nothing more was shown.

I spent the next three hours on the internet trying to find out what happened to the living legend known to all as the intimidator. Nothing...not one productive article or report outside of the fact the earnhardt was involved in a crash on the final lap of the DAYTONS 500. I was giving up. I went back upstairs to watch something else on TV...I fliped through CNN, and something caught my eye. The bottom line ticker told me all I needed to know. "Earnhardt dies in crash at DAYTONA" MY heart sank....this was a driver I rooted against for years...a fierce competitor who never backed away from anyone or anything...he was primed to win his 8th winston cup title and earn his own place in the record book, severing the tie he has with the king. What now...he's gone...how will the sport change...

That was all I could think about...the loss of a legend...turly one of the sadest days in motorsports history.

 

[ScubaTexan]

I was working that Sunday at our newspaper office and we had watched the end of the race and seen the crash. It didn't look all that devestating to me, so I didn't think much of it. I left to go get something to eat and when I returned, one of my fellow sportswriters told me that Earnhardt had been killed. I though he was joking because it had not looked that serious to me. I immediately called my cousin to tell her because I knew she was a HUGE Earnhardt fan and I didn't want her hearing from some other source. I wasn't an Earnhardt fan -- in fact, his racing style was more akin to road rage, which there is no place for at 200 mph. I was just surprised that he had perished in what seemed like such incidental contact. To be quite frank, I thought Ryan Newman's crash last Sunday was worse than Earnhardt's, and he walked away from it.

 

[Big-t-2538]

Unfortunately every wreck has a different set of dynamics...no two wrecks (especially at 200mph) are identical. The problem with Earnhardt's wreck was a combination of seatbelt failure, critical angle of impact, and speed. More than likely had one of those three factors not been the same...we would still see the man in black as a force to be rekoned with on the track. I watched the 90 minute crash analysis that was given approx. 4 months after the crash. The guy who presented that knew his stuff inside and out. The combined set of dynamics in that crash is what caused the fatality. The car did not absorb much of the impact...a vast majority of it was transferred to the driver.

This brings me to my favorite safety point of soft walls. This has been a long debated issue, but in my mind would solve the problem. There are soft walls out there that absorb more than 50% of a direct head on collision at over 150mph. Currently a concrete wall absorbs around 5 (if my memory serves me correctly from the article I read 2 and a half years ago) Yeah, the best soft wall out there is expensive (approx. 2.5 mil to install at either Daytona or Talladega) and it would take approx 20 minutes to repair sections of the wall damaged during a race, but wouldn't that be worth it? Don't tell me NASCAR or any one of these tracks that they run at don't have the $$$ to install it.

Alright...I'm going to get back to work...more of my theories for a perfect racing community are on the table.