Last lap of today’s Nation Wide Race? What happened to the engine and suspension tethers? Also thought the fence was reinforced after the Geoff Bodine accident:mad::mad::mad:!!
The whole frount frame was in the fence. Teather to the seat??
The tire went overthe fence.
At 200 mph this is what can happen. Auto racing is a dangers sport for the drivers and fans.
I am not a nascar fan but they have done a great job with safty.
Look at there track record for the last 12 years.
I hope every one is praying for the fans that were hurt.
Don62
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Hey Chapman learn how tho spell “accident” before you try and start some B.S. conspiracy crap.
You are a moron…
Crossover gates need to be eliminated from all NASCAR tracks. All they do is create horrific crashes every blue moon that someone hits one. Remember Mike Harmon at Bristol, before that Michael Waltrip at Bristol and Don MacTavish at Daytona on the backstretch years ago (he wasn’t lucky enough to survive). I was looking at the gate off of turn two on Tuesday that we walked through to enter the “Debacle at the Beach” and wondered “what would happen if a Cup car hit that at the right angle?” The next step in NASCAR safety for the drivers (and now the fans) is to get rid of these things. Let’s just hope and pray that the two fans critically injured (one a child) and one with life threatening injuries, are fortunate enough to be ok. Driver’s sign on to the risks of the sport, not the fans. 
[QUOTE=Don Nerone;121563]The whole front frame was in the fence. Tether to the seat??
The tire went over the fence.[/QUOTE]The tireS, wheels, engine, suspension, and chassis - the WHOLE front clip - went THROUGH the fence - not “over” it.
The car caught a post at a gate, which is what sheared everything off. the car never really got upside down; just kind of spun around in the air after getting hit by the 31.
After the week that Larson’s had (wrecking to win the Late Model race; getting wrecked in the Modified race, etc.), he better be glad he could walk away from this one.
The crossover gate is the weakest link in the fence. No catch cables and lighter post. The front of the car had a direct hit to the gate with maybe only a chain and lock to secure it. At the speeds they run nothing would protect you at the gate. Wonder why the restrictor plate now?? Track insurance says the fencing and retainers are only good for 200mph. If faster speeds are allowed, then the seating on the bottom has to be moved back 50 feet. (as per a report I read a few years ago in a magazine)
I hope everone will be OK after this crash today…
-JIM-
There are cables enen behind the crossover gate. When the gate is closed the cables are pulled tight and hooked onto large hooks with locks. It’s just a weak link that needs to be removed.
If they need these crossover gates they could be designed with an overlap. Something similar to the walls where emergency vehicles park and respond from.
20/20 hindsight is great. I’m glad to hear there are no fatalities, and it’s lucky there wasn’t, but I really hope they all recover fully. These are fans like us.
Now image what would happen at some of our short track that have that "chicken wire"type fencing. Some of these tracks the bottom row of stands isn’t ten feet from the track. What a mess that would be.
That’s where I predict this story is going. I heard about the accident while I as sitting at a local short track and it flashed through my mind, “what if” a car got into that fence? Wihin days, news crews are gonna be snooping around looking for stories.
Damned if you do damned if you don’t. If you make the support poles stiff enough to keep a car out of the stands you create a knife blade strong enough to cut through the car which is what we witnessed. When one considers the amount of energy created by 3600 lbs @200 mph it appears that we were fortunate to not have a bigger debris field. The picture in our sports section showed the most fortunate aspect. The seats in the picture were 80% empty. Perhaps lower attendance is not all bad. Who filed the first suit, one treated at the track or one who was hospitalized. It was neither it was someone who was traumatized by what they saw on TV.
When we were at NSS last weekend my friend commented on the fact that there was just about nothing protecting the fans from the cars. What looks like exhaust tubing for poles, chicken wire for fencing, and very small diameter cable held in place by very rusty muffler clamps. Yep, muffler clamps.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see some reporting on the safety aspects of local short tracks.
It pains me to agree with Don (haha!) but he is correct. The tire that ended up in the stands never touched the fence, if you watch the replay from the infield looking towards the trioval, it cleared the damn fence by a good 20 feet. The OTHER front wheel/tire assembly was still attached to the rest of the clip and engine assembly that was sitting in a pile of parts tangled up in the catch fence that never made it 5 feet past the wall/fence.
If you ask me, the catch fence did it’s job as intended - how much does a front clip assembly WITH an engine weigh? How much force does that weight have when there is an impact with the fence at about 175mph? With the exception of the tire/wheel that cleared the fence and some small debris that a fence will not catch, I was very impressed with the fencing.
Edit: after watching it on HD and where you can slow it down and go frame-by-frame, the tire that landed in the stands definitely was ripped off the car and launched up and away from the car, but it is hard to tell if it cleared the top of the fence or went through the rip in the fence created by the impact…
On one drak night way back when at CCMP…
We had two of the Cowboy Caddy’s (steal body stock pick up trucks) hit the front wall and started climbing the fence. It bent 9 poles that where 3 1/2 " x .90 wall steel pipe. It destroyed the flag stand that Greg R was Flagging from. The 3/8’ metal grate wire was destroyed. Afterwards we added 4 more cables 5/8’ thick the length of the front stretch. We were very lucky that the MAN upstairs was looking down. We also had a couple of Sprint Car touch wheels and flew over the 4" concrete wall hitting the shitter. Thank GOD no one was using it. Every time the green flag drops anything can happen. All you can do is your best to have the foresight.
Daytona is one of the BEST Tracks in the World when it comes to Fan SAFETY!!!
HD TV, it went through the fence not over.
I totally agree…at some point it’s just the reality of “things happen”. Maybe the fans do need to be moved back some. We’ve all seen hundreds of big crashes between nascar, indycar, local tracks, etc… and in any one of them a random bolt could have been launched into the stands and killed someone. I don’t say that to devalue the injuries that happened but people are hurt at sporting events sometimes. Balls, bats, and pucks all find their way into the seats. People fall and die from stadium stairs seemingly every year. I can’t villify NASCAR for the job they’ve done at all.
At Indy about 1987, a fan in the top row, the last seat at the end was hit by a wheel came from Bettenhausen’s car, then was punted in the air by Guererro and the fan was killed. No matter what you do, when your number is called, that’s it…
The fences are fine. If you are really worried, just eliminate to first 10 rows of seating.
There are pictures in the bar at NSS as you walk in on the right. They are of Tom Fenn (?)'s X3 that landed in the first three rows or so after an impact with the flagstand, etc. They have improved the fencing and stands since then.
I have seen a racecar get into the grandstands on a short track (1/2 mile asphalt track). The results were devastating. 4 people lost their lives, and another 18 injured enough to be hospitalized, and un-tolled cuts and bruises.
In this case, the entire car landed in a grandstand full of people. It cleared the guardrail and 2 fences, with nothing slowing down the momentum.
It was the most tragic thing I’ve ever witnessed, and 42 years later, I can still picture the scene like it was yesterday.
Larsons car almost got completely through the fence, which would’ve killed several hundred people. As bad as this deal was, it’s a miracle that it wasn’t a LOT worse. There is no such thing as a ‘safe’ place to sit at any racetrack, and all the planning and engineering in the world cannot eliminate the possibility of injury or death to either drivers or fans.