2009 NASCAR running thread

From what I've read the belts tore upon impact, and Simpson did tell them prior that they were not properly mounted.

 

I'm not sure the guy you spoke to knew what he was talking about. ...
When the wreck happened, DW was going color for FOX and was immediately, genuinely concered about Dale Sr., because the car hit the barrier almost head on. At what a 180 miles an hour?
If I recall correctly he left the booth a few minutes after the wreck 'cause he knew something was bad wrong.
Seatbelt or not the human body don't react well to a sudden stop after travelling at 180 mph.
Plenty of dead men have been unbuckled from car wrecks, going a lot slower.

 

The NASCAR report said he was going 157-16O mph.

I was at Daytona in February 1994. Same turn.

 

How are the ants treating you, Dale?

 

Don't matter. Try hitting a concrete barrier head on at 160 with or wthout retraints ... the end result is the same... ... ... scrambled eggs for brains.

 

I thought what he wrote today was even more interesting:<blockquote>Forty years ago, their notoriously tougher predecessors had walked out on the inaugural race at the track that opened as a white elephant and remains so today. They call it a "boycott" now, but they struck at Talladega, showing Big Bill France he couldn't assume they were all damn fools who would run on tires sure to come apart.

Apparently there is no one left in all of NASCAR's administration who absorbed that lesson. So it is in the process of being retaught -- although not nearly as formally or forcefully as it was taught the first France generation by Richard Petty, the Allisons, Cale Yarborough, LeeRoy Yarbrough, et al.

But this group strikes a lot more smoothly. They don't vacate the factory and leave it wide open for The Man to bring in nonunion labor. They use the old 1920s tactic of sitting down right there on the job, right in the factory, occupying the premises without producing for The Man.

{}snip{}

Two years ago, after a similar sit-down strike over NASCAR's mandate of the COT at Talladega for the first time, I heard from deep inside NASCAR that officials knew the drivers were riding around and around that day, and that there wasn't a damn thing NASCAR could do to stop it.

Word, I heard, had gone surreptitiously around the motor coach compound on Saturday night: ride around.

On Sunday, after the meeting with NASCAR officials that so outraged the drivers, this demonstration was much more blatant. They didn't even pretend to make a show of it. They rode around single file. It was a picket line, missing only the hand-painted signs. . . .

Call them spoiled if you will. Call them wealthy beyond any reason to complain. But 40 years and many millions of dollars can't change the human instinct to resent being treated like damn fools.</blockquote>http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=4618817&name=hinton_ed

 

What doesn't matter?

Not being a jerk, I don't get what you're saying.

 

Great column from the master.

 

ESPN: The Magazine's Ryan McGee has learned that Danica Patrick will sign a two-year deal to race for JR Motorsports while continuing to drive full-time for Andretti Racing in the IRL. She will apparently make her debut in the ARCA race at Daytona in February.

http://sports.espn.go.com/rpm/nascar/news/story?num=0&id=4622687

 

Were you meaning to use the blue font here?