2008 NASCAR running thread

The SAFER was big there, but I suspect the HANS device has a lot to do with the lack of obits in tomorrow's NASCAR coverage. I am convinced that hit was significantly harder than the one that killed Earnhardt. Might have been up there with the hits that killed Kenny Irwin, J.D. McDuffie and Adam Petty.

The new car definitely helped --- no close-in rollcage to get tangled up in --- and the SAFER barrier helped break up some of the impact, but the HANS would have kept McDowell's head from violently flopping around and causing a cervical fracture like the one that killed Earnhardt.

 

That's absolutely right.

90 degrees at 185 mph... and he walks away?????

 

No doubt. That was one helluva hit.

 

He didn't hit the wall as flush as Earnhardt did, but McDowell was going a lot faster -- a) he was qualifying on a clear track, and b) no restrictor plate.

 

What does "no restrictor plate" have to do with the crash?

 

Because of the restrictor plate, Earnhardt was not going as fast as McDowell when each hit the wall, which makes McDowell's survival even more amazing.

 

I hope the board's NASCAR people will forgive my ignorance. After watching the footage of Michael McDowell's crash yesterday, I wondered if NASCAR writers may have become desensitized to the crashes.

 

How so? From something you read? or where are you basing that question?

 

The restrictor-plate had nothing - repeat nothing - to do with the speed of Earnhardt's crash.

Earnhardt lifted when he went sideways and then was hit by Ken Schrader. At no point did the fact that he had a restrictor-plate on his car affect what happened.

The plate would have factored into it only if Earnhardt had caught the car, straightened it out and then got back into the throttle before impact.

That didn't happen.

The reason McDowell hit so much harder is that he crashed at the start of turn one at Texas, where the cars enter the corner at 200 mph or so, while Earnhardt crashed in the middle of turn four at Daytona, where the speed was probably 30 mph less. Also, the impact from Schrader's car deflected Earnhardt's car sideways, which scrubbed off a little speed, too.

 

I might be completely offbase--it wouldn't be the first time, either. I guess crashes are fairly commonplace in NASCAR. I was wondering if after routinely seeing crashes if the writers become desensitized to them.

I'm not going to hockey-jack the thread, but I could draw a correlation with the Ryan Hollweg-Chris Simon incident last year. NYC area hockey writers at the game really didn't focus much of their stories on the Simon cross check. But it became a national story because it was continuously replayed on television. Is it the same sort of thing here? Perhaps the NASCAR writers see a wreck and think nothing of it, only for it to become a national story?

 

No. Not in this case. In some cases, sure. Someone driving a 3400-pound car into a wall happens sometimes hourly here. So those, sure, we assume everyone's OK, they'll pull out a backup and keep going.

But like yesterday? There were audible gasps, a mob at the infield care center when he came out, and Aumann posted earlier he had to rewrite his sidebar. Drivers commented on the wreck, sometimes without prompting, including this from Junior:

"I guess we're all real happy that Michael was able to get out of the car after the crash he had today. That was a scary incident. We all held our breath for a few seconds there because it looked pretty bad."

Used to wrecks? Sure. Desensitized to something like yesterday? I don't think so.