Bad day at Daytona
 

that was a horrific crash. I saw a video from a fan that was a few people away from the person that got hit with the front tire that flew about 10 rows up. sounds like that person and a child were hurt pretty bad. the only good news is that as of last night they were stablized and their condition had been upgraded so with hope they will recover. looks like they need to add a secondary fence on these big restrictor plate tracks.

Can't imagine the force of the blow getting hit with that tire. The velocity had to be huge.... Left me shaking and I was only watching on tv. Tony did such a good job in victory lane. Very surreal.

yea, Tony and all the other drivers really stepped up with a genuine show of concern. they said the wheel and suspension is around 120-140 pounds so it is hard to imagine even surviving a hit like that. they said the person hit had lacerations on his head and arm and had to have surgury so hopefully he will be OK. the one good thing is that they have a lot of emergency assets at the track and the people there are well trained to act quickly.

Interesting read

http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoram...160904090.html

not sure how they work or if it would have made a difference, but F1 and champ use wheel tethers just for this reason.

I was there for this one - as well as the Bodine wreck in 2000 (I believe that was the year).

It was pretty horrific, and I have some buddies who were sitting close to the initial impact zone, but the most of the shrapnel fortunately flew to their right.

As the wife and I were leaving the stands, it upset me that people continued to walk in the path of the 8~10 ambulances that we saw trying to make their way through the crowds to get to that area. As you can imagine, everyone is leaving the stands on the last lap - most half lit - but to not hear the sirens and see the flashing lights, knowing what just happened is moronic. It bothered me enough that I actually yelled at complete strangers to get the f* out of the way.

Nascar invented tethers, my car was last raced in 2001 it had them. The entire front corner of the car was torn off, tethers, A arms and all went up in the stands. The tire came from the 32 in the vid.

Hard to say what to do. You could slow the cars down or increase the height of the catch fence and more curl or "overhang" at the top but look at the countless crashes where the current standards were fine. Regardless of what you do there will always be a "perfect storm'' type of situation where your efforts will come up short.

the problem with safety gear is that you can only design it for what you think can happen. until something worse than invisioned you cant prepare for it. I think NASCAR and other groups have done a good job of trying to stay ahead of it. this was without a doubt one of the worst ever and I am sure that they will learn and make changes. this wreck happened at the crossover gate and I think that was part of the failure. they have already implied that changes at the gates will need to be made.