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Nascar and Racing

New Car Is Safe, Now It's Time to Make it Race Better

Posted Aug 14, 2009 5:25PM By Holly Cain (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Car of Tomorrow

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It was a familiar, slightly sick feeling watching the frightening collision in Monday's race at Watkins Glen, N.Y. when Sam Hornish Jr.'s Dodge crashed into a wall, spun violently back on course, hit Jeff Gordon's Chevy sending it head-on into a steel barrier with four other cars bouncing off in a frightening melee.

The difference between it happening this week and it happening five or 10 year ago, however, was that all the drivers climbed out of their cars on their own Monday. Other than bumps, bruises and being very sore, they were okay.

The safety innovations of NASCAR's current car, the COT, make it one of the most significant evolutions in the sport's history. Now Dale Earnhardt Jr. is urging NASCAR to raise the car's performance level to match its improved safety standards.

"I feel like in a way we are holding ourselves back," Earnhardt told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Thursday. "We're short-changing ourselves."

"We have the technology and the people to build a car that will make for exciting racing, dramatic, side-by-side racing, that will sell tickets, excite fans and thrill people, but we have yet to pursue and try to obtain that."

Earnhardt continued to strongly voice his opinion Friday from Michigan International Speedway, telling reporters, "I think we need to open our eyes a little bit. Everyone."

Then he added, "I'm not trying to start a crusade against nobody or cause nobody any problems.

"I think the drivers, myself included, we would all work together with NASCAR to do this. I'm just trying to remind everyone the optimal goal and prize for us is to have better racing.

"When things are good, we shouldn't rest on any success we may be having. We're not really where we want to be, I don't think, as a sport.

"We need to do things to excite corporate America and excite the fans. We need to be proactive immediately to make that happen.''

Earnhardt agreed the double file re-starts instituted by NASCAR this summer have certainly spiced up the action. Prior to their implementation he said, "It was frustrating because 95 percent of the race wasn't worth the price of the ticket.''

As for tweaking the design of the car to better the racing: there are as many suggestions as their are drivers and crew chiefs.

"It's going to take time to develop it,'' Gordon said Friday. "There's no just one thing that's going to fix the issues that everybody's talking about. So, it's really comes down to whether NASCAR and the team owners really commit to wanting to make a change and what those changes would be."

NASCAR rules do not allow teams to alter the bodies. But most in the NASCAR garage agree that if put to task, engineers could come up with slight, easy modifications that would increase side-by-side racing and generate more passes on track instead of in the pits.

"I feel like, I just remember how the other cars drove," said Earnhardt, who is ranked 25th in the standings.

"I liked how they drove and I like how this car is safe but I want to be able to race it like we raced the other cars."

That's the heart of NASCAR's predicament with bringing out a new car design. It needs to be safe and sporty. And frankly, it got the priority right.

Racing cars at close-quarters at high speeds will be innately dangerous and, let's face it, that's part of the allure for spectator and competitor.

Since NASCAR introduced the COT to full-time Sprint Cup competition there have been no serious injuries to drivers despite head-on collisions and spectacular wrecks at places like Talladega, Ala. and Watkins Glen that have tested the limits of the COT's safety features.

The "soft wall" technology has been a key complementing element of this safer new era. But Monday at Watkins Glen, N.Y. it was all COT. There aren't any soft walls or SAFER barriers installed on this road course and many have asked, "why not?'' after the Hornish-Gordon wreck and a similar one the day before.

That we can expect drivers to survive frightening crashes is a new and welcome reality.

Even those of us who have had to interview family members, friends and fellow racers in the hours after a fatality or serious injury can especially appreciate this.

I still remember vividly rushing into the office at my former newspaper the evening of Aug. 20, 1994 sadly preparing to write an obituary for Ernie Irvan after he suffered life-threatening injuries at the two-mile Michigan Speedway. Irvan was given only a 10 percent chance to survive massive head injuries, but he did.

And in a sad irony, he triumphantly returned to racing only to be seriously injured again in a Busch Series practice at Michigan in 1999. He retired two weeks after that crash.

And we know the tragedies thereafter, including the fatal accident in the 2001 Daytona 500 that claimed Earnhardt's father, Dale Sr., a seven-time Cup champion.

Thankfully, after a renewed focus and years of development, the new car has drastically lessened the chances of serious injury.

Not only was Carl Edwards not seriously hurt after his car launched into the air and flipped into the retaining fence on the last lap at Talladega in April, he had the state of mind to climb from what was left of his mangled Ford and run across the finish line in a nod to the racing satire movie, Talladega Nights.

NASCAR has gotten the safety part of the equation right.

Now for the other half.

"NASCAR could probably be a little more urgent in improving our product, where the ultimate result is great, exciting racing that the fans will enjoy, that the drivers enjoy, so everyone is happy," Earnhardt said.

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