Kyle Larson Daytona Nationwide Crash

[expaddockrunner]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports...ytona/1941529/

[Fiorentina 1]

This is pure stupidity! Of course there was going to be an accident during the finnish. Nascar stopped the race with 5 laps to go, to make sure the race finishes under green and basically setting the scenario up for another crash. Then you have guys (Cup Drivers) who are not going for points and really don't care if they wreck or finish second in the mix as well. The Cup drivers treat the last 5 laps of the Nationwide race at Daytona like what we used to treat the indoor kart track races. Keselowski just turned Smith around on purpose trying to get by him.

[JHamilton]

Thoughts are with those that have been injured. The latest is that 15 have been taken to local area hospitals with one currently in emergency surgery. Hopeful for a full and speedy recovery.

[ascarmarshal]

I saw the accident on Motors TV and immediately my heart into my mouth. They way they were racing in those last two laps a wreck was going to happen. I hope and pray that the injured are not seriously hurt. My thoughts are with all those involved, drivers, fans, officials and emergency services.

[FIRE]

Very nasty crash. Hopefully everybody is ok.

[MiniMadness]

Amazing scenes on CNN. I saw something fly over the fence didn't realise it was a wheel that landed in the stands.

The engine and another wheel stuck in the fence.

[chernaudi]

That's what pack racing does in NASCAR. It bunches people up, everyone goes at the same speed, and it makes the block that Smith had to pull to defend his position and Brad's dive bomb move a "necessary evil" (that shouldn't have to be one) to win such a race.

It took Dan Weldon dying at Vegas and Beaux Barfield being poached from the ALMS to the Indy Car series for that series to wake up and realize that if they could make it so that the cars were more of a handful in the corners that it would break up the packs, slow down the cars, and, due to things being more in the drivers' hands and them being able to drive the cars, it would put on a better show and produce better (and actual) racing.

Robin Miller said it for years about Indy Car racing, that pack racing isn't a game of skill, it's a game of chance.

That's why I'm an advocate of taking the plates off the cars. But wouldn't that make them insanely fast? Not if you take downforce off of them and take away some mechanical grip too. One has to remember that in the mid '80s, the drivers had to brake and let off the throttle to take the corners at Daytona and Talledega. With the plates limiting engine power, and the cars having so much grip, that doesn't happen.

If NASCAR has been serious about the packs being broken up, you'd think that they'd have had a solution to this--and they've had 25 years to think up one. But the fans like the pack racing, and you'll be surprised at how many fans like the big wrecks. So one can put it down to NASCAR listening to the fans, or at least the ones who like the big 20 car pile ups, instead of the ones who want a good race, not some wreckfest where a race is little more than a side show.

It does make me wonder what some of the fans really want. To echo the words of Lance Macklin after the '55 Le Mans disaster "Well, if that's what you came here for, to see a 'good' accident, well then, you got yourself a good one." Granted, those comments were made out of cynicism as much as anything, but racing was a blood sport then, and LM '55 started to change that after 82 spectators died because of safety standards that were lax, even for those times. And it's a tick off for me that there are still people of my generation who think that way, that racing is a blood sport--there's not many, thankfully, but they tend to be vocal. They equate action with accidents, not close racing.

I hope that today is a major wake up call for NASCAR when it comes to the plate races. I'm not gonna blame Regan or Brad for what happened--they were doing what they needed to do to try and win, what they expect to do, what we should expect them to do, and what their team owners and sponsors expect them to do, which is why they race, why they get paid, and why most fans pay to see the races at the track. However, I do blame NASCAR for putting Regan and Brad in that position of using desperation moves to achieve their goals that we rarely see anywhere outside of Daytona or Talledega. To me, an ultra-expensive demo derby isn't a race, it's an ultra-expensive demo derby where the drivers' fate is largely taken out of their hands.

Wanna see a good race, come up with a formula where the freakin' plates go bye-bye for ever, and have the cars have to brake for corners and put things back into the drivers' hands and those who's job it is to prepare the cars, too.

It shouldn't have to come down to what happened today--or worse--for that message to sink into the armor-plated skull of Brian France and his cadre of yes-men.

[HJJ]

Video of the wreck.

http://deadspin.com/5986464/?utm_cam...ium=socialflow

[HJJ]

I'm watching speed's coverage and I'm alarmed that local police are not taking control of the situation and letting Nascar go about fixing things. Shouldn't it be treated like an accident scene?

[HJJ]

02/23/13 Violent crash injures 12, two critically, at end of Daytona Nationwide race A violent 12-car crash at the end of the DRIVE4COPD 300 sent a tire and other debris flying over the grandstand fence at Daytona International Speedway, injuring at least 12 bystanders, some critically, among the crowds watching the race from the grandstands.

A Halifax Health Medical Center official confirmed just before 6 p.m. that 11 spectators are being treated in the hospital's emergency room and two of them are critically injured. Four others are on trauma alert and five are being treated as non-trauma cases, the official said.

Volusia County spokesman Dave Byron said he understood 12 patients were taken to Halifax. Additional spectators may also have been injured, but not taken to the hospital.

Dozens of safety workers went into the stands and carried several people out on stretchers to a line of at least eight ambulances waiting below and behind the stands. Safety workers appeared to carry patients from at least two sections of the grandstands on the upper deck and from a section of the lower deck.

At 5:30 p.m., NASCAR spokesman Kerry Tharp said "we are continuing to assess the situation, taking care of those involved."

An eyewitness to the scene outside the grandstands shortly after the crash said people were "in hysterics" and saying there were "multiple injuries."

The wreck happened in front of the Heintz brothers, who were looking at classic cars parked in the FanZone.

“I’ve been to 12 500s, at least as many 400s, and I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Clayton Heintz of Daytona Beach. “It’s always in the back of my mind that something like that could happen.” News Journal Online

.

[mountainstar]

Fox News alluded to the possibility of there being changes to the status of some of the patients. Hopefully there are no fatalities.

We've warned about this pack racing nonsense for a while, but they don't listen or care.

[Paradise City]

Originally Posted by HJJ

Video of the wreck.

http://deadspin.com/5986464/?utm_cam...ium=socialflow

Even quite aside from the fence being torn with a huge hole, that perspective distinctly shows the wheel fly up and hit into the middle of the crowd.

Some of that wreckage was extraordinary. Not simply twisted metal but the front end vanished. Could've been far worse. Far worse.

[gossie]

Dreadful crash...I hate it when crashes occur.

But as said, some people just go to motor racing events to see it happen, and I've been there when it does and the way these lunatics cheer.

[Starfish Primer]

I agree with chernaudi, pack racing is a major safety risk and should be minimized. I see another problem, the car took flight, a racing car airborne is nearly unstoppable, they´ll have to review again the flaps to reduce the flight chances.

[Beetle]

Originally Posted by gossie

Dreadful crash...I hate it when crashes occur.

But as said, some people just go to motor racing events to see it happen, and I've been there when it does and the way these lunatics cheer.

I really hate it when people cheer like that when I big crash like this happens... shame on them, someone could've been killed.

I haven't seen any of the race except this part, and I don't care to. NASCAR really needs to find a way to sneak in about 10 more road course races and get rid of some of these ridiculously dangerous tracks like Daytona and 'Dega. Of course, you can't get rid of those two because of their history... it would be an uproar. But maybe quit them for Nationwide... that's where all of these mindless, idiotic wrecks happen because of rookie mistakes. In my opinion, Nationwide should become a mostly road racing business. But I'm a mostly road racing guy.

[Salamus]

Its just going to keep getting worse and worse. Sooner or later an absolute terrible event will happen that could cripple NASCAR's image. But, NASCAR knows this form of "entertainment", pack racing, will attract people.

It took a death to make the cars safer. It may take a death to somehow make the whole show safer.

Hopefully everyone is doing well.

[JHamilton]

Racing is dangerous and spectating has its inherent risk. Accidents happen in all forms of motorsport and this won't be the last.

Several have been killed or injured at IRL races over the years, McNish narrowly missed the crowd at Le Mans a couple years ago, and Sharps wreck at PLM a few years ago send all kinds of debris into the infield. All you can do is try to make facilities safer, but frankly living is dangerous. This was no ones fault.

[skycafe]

News now is that two are in critical condition, one a child. My hopes and prayers to the fans injured.

[Salamus]

I understand that motorsport is dangerous. There is potential risk in everything. But there is a difference (at least to me) between a racing incident and a crash fest. Everyone knows the dangers of pack racing and yet NASCAR continues to allow this. Like I said before, it's going to take a serious misfortune for things to change.

[fieldodreams79]

At this time, I just hope that the fans, who went to the track today for a good time and would have probably returned tomorrow, that may or may not be fighting for their lives, all pull through and recovery quickly.

[fieldodreams79]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports...edway/1941869/

[Scooter185]

Originally Posted by Beetle

I really hate it when people cheer like that when I big crash like this happens... shame on them, someone could've been killed.

I haven't seen any of the race except this part, and I don't care to. NASCAR really needs to find a way to sneak in about 10 more road course races and get rid of some of these ridiculously dangerous tracks like Daytona and 'Dega. Of course, you can't get rid of those two because of their history... it would be an uproar. But maybe quit them for Nationwide... that's where all of these mindless, idiotic wrecks happen because of rookie mistakes. In my opinion, Nationwide should become a mostly road racing business. But I'm a mostly road racing guy.

Run the 500 on the infield road course. Best of both worlds!

[Purist]

Regan pulled a block, and admitted as much. Brad stayed in it, though given how close he was, contact was still quite likely. Also, if Brad did back out, it was very likely someone behind him would run him over, and cause a melee anyway.

We have seen ugly, large-scale, multi-car wrecks at a number of ovals that NASCAR runs on. They can happen on an oval at speeds of as little as 100-mph, as in the turns at Bristol. The thing is, there, the energy involved is MUCH lower (due to the lower speeds), and so the chances of something really bad happening there are quite a bit less. (I also think they run too many cars on the track at one time at Bristol and Martinsville, but that's just my opinion.)

The key is, these wrecks are the product of the PROXIMITY of the cars to one another, NOT the speed at which they are traveling. Admittedly, the short tracks often lead to constant traffic, but again, the speeds are MUCH lower. The problem is, the cars at these two massive superspeedways (Daytona and Talladega) are being heavily, artificially restricted.

Inherent risk of a task is one thing, but this IS different! These cars are INTENTIONALLY and KNOWINGLY being brought back into absurdly close proximity to one another, but at speeds roughly double to those at the short tracks (meaning approximately FOUR TIMES the energy, per car, is involved). In other words, the hazard level at these tracks is being PURPOSEFULLY raised simply to "improve entertainment value".

And guess what, the restrictor plates FAILED at their primary purposes.
1. There are now other tracks that are just as fast, because the cars don't run the plates at them. The plates are pointless at those tracks, because the cars would then run flat-out in the turns, and average nearly the same speeds anyway.
2. The plates were supposed to STOP the airborne cars, like Bobby Allison at the 1987 Winston 500. This did NOT work, immediately out of the box! Geoff Bodine had his wheels leave the deck in the 1987 Firecracker 400. The following February, Richard Petty got up, went into a series of rolls, and had the tail-end of his car shredded against the debris fence in the 1988 Daytona 500.

Frankly, the plates were a band-aid when first introduced, and not a very good one at that. While the speeds would be somewhat higher without them, the greater separation between the cars, and the drivers having some control over their destinies, would MASSIVELY reduce the number of these incidents.

I might add, the entertainment argument is a FALSEHOOD. The racing prior to the introduction of the pales was INCREDIBLE. Those "good ole boys" still jockeyed for position, and had to be mindful of the draft, but in most cases, you could get out of a bad situation, BEFORE it escalated beyond the point of no return. You might have had 15 cars within 2.0 seconds of one another, instead of 35 cars within 1.5 seconds of each other, but the racing was good, hard, and pretty damn clean! You RARELY had those massive accidents, whereas now, you just about CAN'T get through a plate race without a real "Big One".

[Purist]

As to the crash today, it not only illustrates a problem with the technical format of the racing, but also with the racing culture itself.

Various and dangerous shennanigans are more or less encouraged ("boys have at it"), whether that means getting into fist fights, or taking out another guy's car. There is now almost a heinous disregard for the well-being of others out there, at least by some. Kevin Harvick got out to have a talk with Kyle Busch at the end of a Darlington race, and instead of meeting Harvick with words, or even a gloved fist, Busch backed up, hit the car, and pushed it into the wall, on a HEAVILY occupied pit lane by that point. (If pit crewmen had been crushed between the car and the wall, I wonder what the consequences would have been.)

The tactics, especially in the plate races, have become painfully, and disturbingly, predictable (same story, just different names). Practically speaking, it has become acceptable to take a guy out, including causing an incident that puts him, or somebody else, up into the debris fencing. Hell, they didn't even suspend Carl Edwards for a single race after he, while running 156 laps down, took out Brad Keselowski, who was running 4th or 5th, in the closing laps at Atlanta a few years ago!

I understand that minor, incidental contact occurs from time to time, but this has gone MILES beyond innocent brushes of that sort!

As to the mechanics of Kyle Larson's crash, it kind of looked like he got hooked onto that other white car, and as they spun, it flung Larson's car out and up, right into the debris fence. As to those wondering about the roof flaps, they work great, with a car IN ISOLATION. However, when a car is being hit/pushed/tipped by other cars, or by the wall, all bets are off!

[Salamus]

Originally Posted by Purist

Inherent risk of a task is one thing, but this IS different! These cars are INTENTIONALLY and KNOWINGLY being brought back into absurdly close proximity to one another, but at speeds roughly double to those at the short tracks (meaning approximately FOUR TIMES the energy, per car, is involved). In other words, the hazard level at these tracks is being PURPOSEFULLY raised simply to "improve entertainment value".

This is exactly the point I was trying to make.