Dover - The Good The Bad and the Unacceptable
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I bid
you welcome gentle readers, and a warm welcome goes out as well to our assigned
reader of all things NASCAR or NASCAR related. This effort was going to include
more than it does of the great racing we saw at Dover on Sunday, but as many of
you know, when you get this scribe talking about SAFER barriers, it’s no holds
barred. I enjoyed the race immensely, as it brought back old times and old
races of a better caliber than generally seen today. That is with the exception
of the wreck caused when Jimmie Johnson’s transmission quit on him before the
race was over. What made that worse was that he restarted on the front row,
having fought mightily all afternoon to get there.
There
had been scattered single-car wrecks or spins earlier, but that one rivaled
anything Talladega has offered lately, involving some 18 cars before the
spinning stopped. Then, only a few laps later, slight contact between Kyle
Larson and Carl Edwards sent Edwards careening toward the inside wall. As it
happened, I was silently praying, Oh please, let it be SAFER! Thank God, it was
a SAFER barrier on that wall because Carl hit it head on and the impact bounced
his car into the air and backwards, very reminiscent of Denny Hamlin’s wreck at
Fontana. In Denny’s wreck, the wall wasn’t SAFER and he wound up with a broken
back. SAFER makes all the difference!
After
those two wrecks, what was left of the field continued the race, which evolved
into one of the best 3-car battles of modern times, between Matt Kenseth, Kyle
Larson and rookie sensation Chase Elliott. Sorry Matt, but those two kids ran
so well that in the waning laps I was in “Anyone but Matt” mode. Matt won
anyway and as folks are saying, maybe experience triumphed over youth, but
those youths put on one helluva show out on that
track and this old fan would have been thrilled to see either one take home his
first NASCAR Cup Series win on Sunday.
That
part was awesome! It’s the only word for it. We haven’t seen racing like that
in many years, and it was so refreshing to feel that excitement grip me and
hold my attention for such a long time. Alas, this piece is only a little bit
about the race, but a whole lot about SAFER barriers and the lack thereof.
Let’s
go back to even before the race itself. Qualifying was rained out on Friday, so
the two practices on Saturday became of prime importance. Only a few minutes
into the first one, the #10 car, driven by Danica Patrick, lost a rear-end gear
and all the slippery grease that resides within it. That caused not only
Danica, but the two cars behind her, driven by teammate Tony Stewart and Jamie
McMurray to all impact the hard and unforgiving outer wall where there is NO
SAFER barrier!
Patrick’s
car caught fire from the hot grease as she spun down Dover’s well-known
“self-cleaning” banking to the inside wall. Stewart and McMurray followed suit
but sans the flames. As one might guess, that got some folks talking about the
lack of SAFER barriers at Dover.
McMurray,
who came away with an injured elbow, sore neck and sore ribs had this to offer.
"That's unacceptable in this day and time that
we have a straight-away - especially at a track like Dover on the outside where
we've seen just crazy big hits," McMurray said. "I have no idea why they don't have that. I
assume that we'll have that by the fall. But yeah, it's unacceptable that they
don't have that right now."
Upon
her release from the infield care center, Danica wholly concurred with
McMurray’s thoughts on the lack of SAFER at Dover. “The
ones (crashes) where you hit the wall I think I saw it's about twice the G-load
impact when you hit a non-SAFER barrier," she said. "It
shouldn't even be a question whether or not tracks have SAFER barrier all the
way around. It should be mandatory. It shouldn't be a financial decision."
[Author’s note: In a
conversation a couple of years back I had asked Dr. Dean Sicking for a brief
explanation of how SAFER works. This was his reply:
“The safer barrier functions by separating the
collision into two separate impacts. During the collision with the SAFER
wall, the car accelerates a section of the wall and slows the velocity of the
impacting car. The wall is tuned to move a wall mass that is
approximately the same as the weight of the car. Recall HS physics, when
a moving object strikes a stationary mass of about the same weight in a fully
plastic impact Conservation of Momentum analysis would indicate that the moving
object loses about half of its velocity. In our case the car loses about
½ of its velocity perpendicular to the wall. This impact throws the
driver toward the wall and his belts begin to restrain him. As the foam is
crushed. The driver stretches his belts. Before the foam is fully
crushed, the belts begin to pull the driver back toward his seat. When the
driver is moving back toward his seat, he will not be exposed to the high decal
rates that occur when the steel SAFER wall strikes the concrete barrier.
In essence, we cut the effective impact speed in half and this generally cuts
the risk of serious injury and fatality by a factor of 4.”]
Teammate
and current point leader, Kevin Harvick, backed her up all the way with this
statement. “We put SAFER barriers in the groove
at Darlington and it’s two-and-a-half cars wide.
There’s just no excuse not to have them. We don’t wear our helmets and HANS
devices for the impacts that we are prepared for. We wear those things for the
instances where those one-off things can happen like happened today. So,
there’s no excuse not to have it there in my opinion.”
An
accident in the first Xfinity race of the year 2015 at Daytona in which Kyle
Busch suffered a broken leg and a broken foot spurred tracks and NASCAR to take
another look at the progress of SAFER barrier installations over the
intervening years between initial installations circa 2002-2004 and current
day. It became all too clear to everyone that there had been little if any
improvements made in that time period.
Tracks
had been content and quite complacent with covering only what had been deemed
in the beginning to be “likely” crash spots. Gentle readers, if we’ve learned
anything for certain over the past few years, it is that cars can and have
crashed in what can only be described as the damnedest places. Since Kyle’s
Daytona crash, the cry has been for “SAFER Barriers Everywhere” and that is
exactly where they should be. Anywhere on a track that can be impacted by a car
should, if at all feasible, be covered with lifesaving SAFER barriers.
Immediately
following Busch’s crash at Daytona, statements were issued by both track
president Joie Chitwood III and Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR Executive
Vice-president and Chief Racing Development Officer.
"The Daytona International Speedway did not
live up to its responsibility today," Chitwood said.
"We
should have had a SAFER barrier there, and we did not. We're going to fix that.
We're going to fix that right now."
Track
workers began installing tire packs along the section of wall hit by Busch
Saturday evening, and Chitwood vowed to go further to cover "every
inch" of the speedway with SAFER barriers.
"This is not going to happen again," he said. "We're
going to live up to our responsibility. We're going to fix this, and it starts
right now."
"Come Monday, we're going to start the plan so
we can put SAFER barriers everywhere here," Chitwood said. "Finances don't come into play. That's really
not a question. We're going to get this fixed and we're going to make sure
we're ready for the next event."
O'Donnell
echoed Chitwood's comments:
"What happened tonight should not have
happened," O'Donnell said. "That's on us; we're going to fix it and we're
going to fix it immediately. I think we all know racing is an inherently dangerous
sport, but our priority is safety and we'll continue to put things in place to
make this sport as safe as possible."
By this
year’s Daytona 500, it was done. Daytona is completely protected on every wall
with SAFER barriers. Talladega, Michigan and Bristol have followed suit, with
many others nearing the target of SAFER everywhere.
During either
the pre-race or race, when the practice crashes were brought up in the FOX
broadcast booth, the question was posed, who was in favor of SAFER everywhere a
car can go? To a man we heard Jeff Gordon (Long a proponent of SAFER after
going through some horrendous crashes where only concrete met him), Darrell
Waltrip, Mike Joy and Larry McReynolds (The television equivalent of me, as he
has never relented in the quest for SAFER everywhere) all concurred that SAFER
should be on every wall at every track.
Back in
January of this year, I read an article offered by Sports Illustrated, a
trustworthy source, to be sure, delineating what tracks had done what to
improve their safety with SAFER. When it came to Dover, this is what was said:
Dover:
Changes Made: Additional SAFER barriers have
been added in recent years to make Dover now fully-covered on both the outside
and inside wall areas.
Well
guys and gals, I’m going to draw from that, that someone flat out lied to
someone. As we could plainly see on Sunday, there are several areas of the
Dover track that remain unprotected as of now… not one, but several!
Denis
McGlynn, do you somehow think that Dover is above what other tracks are doing?
Perhaps you think we’re not talking to you? Do you realize that one of the cars
that struck your outer frontstretch concrete wall on Saturday was being
driven by Tony Stewart, who recently underwent back surgery? Yes, the doctors
have cleared him and all that can be done is being done to keep him secure and
unharmed in that driver’s seat, but it’s a shame to tempt fate with your
obvious “We don’t care” attitude.
NASCAR…
Mr. France, Mr. Helton, Mr. O’Donnell, please listen to your drivers. Over the
past couple of years, almost every driver on track today has spoken up for the
SAFER barriers. They are the ones that feel the difference when hitting
concrete as opposed to SAFER, and every one of them wants those SAFER barriers
anywhere they might come in contact with a wall.
(Since
this paragraph was written, Steve O’Donnell has appeared on SiriusXM Radio to
discuss the situation at Dover. He asserted that NASCAR won't be complacent
when it comes to advancements in safety.
"When we looked at SAFER barriers all being in
place for this racing season, the plan had always been at both Dover and
Indianapolis on the front stretch wall to not have that covered," O'Donnell said. "There was some logistics and reasoning behind
that in terms of really narrowing the front stretch lane. SAFER barriers
potentially were going to dump cars back out onto the front stretch and have a
potential T-bone of a driver. And then there were challenges going into Turn 1.
But obviously after we went through this weekend, we've got to look at what
tweaks we can make, be able to install those and maybe look at how the front
stretch could work those in.")
We, the
fans that care, are very proud of some of our tracks for their efforts to
finally make this right, but there are others that seem to think it doesn’t
apply to them and continue to ignore what the “good guys” are doing. Isn’t it
about time that NASCAR got behind Mr. O’Donnell’s words? "What
happened tonight should not have happened," O'Donnell said. "That's on us; we're going to fix it and we're
going to fix it immediately. I think we all know racing is
an inherently dangerous sport, but our priority is safety and we'll
continue to put things in place to make this sport as safe as possible."
Hearing
those words and seeing on Sunday what can happen when folks don’t think it’s
their responsibility, don’t you agree that it’s time for NASCAR to make SAFER
barriers MANDATORY at every track but the road courses? I have always
included the words “where feasible” in my quest for compliance, but that refers
to the road courses and things like the wall behind the pits, where crews have
to come over it to service the cars… the butt ends of outer pit road walls… Dr.
Sicking and I have discussed those, and in order to function properly, SAFER
needs more surface area than can be afforded in that situation. Those are
things seen as not being “feasible.” The track at Indianapolis claiming it is
not feasible to add SAFER there because of the size of the track is a major
cop-out. That track is the same size as Daytona and Pocono, and smaller than
Talladega.
Will we
really have to see another driver die from crash injuries sustained by striking
an unprotected stretch of concrete before anyone listens and takes this
seriously? You can bet the drivers are taking it seriously, and NASCAR needs to
do so as well. We’ll always be left to wonder how many lives might have not
ended so abruptly had the HANS device been mandated following the death of Adam
Petty. Just once, the fans that care would like to see NASCAR step up with a
proactive move and mandate the SAFER barriers. As Joie Chitwood said, “Finances don’t come into play!” If a
track cannot comply, then say, “Bye-bye.” Our drivers’ lives are far more
important than a race track’s profit margin.
Just
before I leave you, I have a bit of a treat for my regular readers. I didn’t
know it was coming, but on the same day as my last column, a good friend had a
column running on the subject addressed in this one… SAFER barriers and the
lack thereof at Dover and other places. If you follow the link, you’ll find a great column by
Matt McLaughlin
and his take on the whole affair. At the end, you’ll find Mama misbehaving a
bit on Matt’s board.
My
happy little banjo says it’s time for our Classic Country Closeout, and I’m
sure he’s right. Since we’ve had no requests for artists this week, I’ll lock
in on a singer, one of whose songs a girlfriend sent me during the past week.
Don Williams has one of those “One in a million” voices that is just pure
delight to listen to, no matter what he’s singing. I’m sure I’d listen even if
he were singing in a Rice Krispies commercial. First up is one I’ve always
loved… and I get to make first choice, so here is “Lay
Down Beside Me.”
Next is
one called “We Should Be Together.” Please enjoy…
This
one is entitled “Good Ol’ Boys Like Me.” I don’t think
this man ever made a bad recording.
This
one was another smash hit for Don. Here is, “‘Til the
Rivers All Run Dry.”
And
finally the one I think might have been his biggest hit, “I Believe in You.”
Be well
gentle readers, and remember to keep smiling. It looks so good on you!
~PattyKay