There is but one common culprit in all five on-track driver fatalities in NASCAR’s Winston Cup and Busch series since 1992–and in at least three of the five Indy-car fatalities and the death of Formula One’s best driver ever during the same time span.
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The cause of death, ultimately, is nothing so subtle nor merely suspect as stuck throttle linkage, driver error, tire failure, broken suspension parts or inadequate onboard safety equipment.
It is–so simply, so blatantly–the concrete retaining wall.
Forget what did or didn’t go wrong with the cars of Kenny Irwin last Friday and Adam Petty on May 12. It matters only that they would not have died if their cars hadn’t smashed so hard into immovable, inflexible, totally unforgiving concrete walls.
Irwin and Petty were but the latest victims–and New Hampshire International Speedway the latest venue–of a villain that has been allowed to kill and maim for nearly a century. There is not enough space here to detail all of the motor-racing deaths against concrete walls down through the decades.
But the fatalities since ’92 are particularly vexing in that they have occurred since there has been an outcry for safer alternatives. In 1991, self-taught racing engineer Henry “Smokey” Yunick of Daytona Beach was shown Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s new concrete walls–thickened and heightened in preparation for the coming of NASCAR racing to the old track. All Indy had done, Yunick opined, was build a wall capable of “killing drivers deader, quicker.”
He developed “moveable barriers”–stacks of used racing tires connected into modules that would give upon impact, dissipating energy away from drivers’ bodies. He was roundly ignored.
Since ’92, concrete walls–though they may have had accomplices–have been guilty beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt in the following cases:
Jovy Marcello, Indy cars, killed, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 1992.
Clifford Allison, Busch series, killed, Michigan Speedway, 1992.
Neil Bonnett, Winston Cup, killed, Daytona International Speedway, 1994.
Rodney Orr, Winston Cup, killed, Daytona, 1994.
Ayrton Senna, Formula One, killed, Imola, Italy, 1994.
Ernie Irvan, Winston Cup, very nearly killed, career ruined, Michigan, 1994.
Scott Brayton, Indy cars, killed, Indianapolis, 1996.
Greg Moore, CART, killed, California Speedway, 1999.
Adam Petty, Busch series, killed, New Hampshire International Speedway, 2000.
Kenny Irwin, Winston Cup, killed, New Hampshire International Speedway, 2000.
Further, the deaths of six spectators–three at a CART race at Michigan in 1998 and three at an IRL race at Charlotte in 1999–came because of flying fragments from crashes that began with cars slamming into concrete walls.
At last, in the wake of the Petty and Irwin deaths, NASCAR deems improvement upon concrete walls “certainly an issue that we have to take a hard look at,” says the sanctioning body’s chief operating officer, Mike Helton.
CART, on its oval at Rio de Janeiro, uses a moveable barrier of tire modules similar to Yunick’s system.
On the road course at Watkins Glen, N.Y., four-foot-thick blocks of Styrofoam allowed Busch driver Jimmie Johnson to walk away from a horrific crash earlier this summer.
At Indianapolis in 1998, Arie Luyendyk walked away from a hard crash in an IROC car against a segment of concrete wall covered with an experimental layer of “P.E.D.S”–Polyurethane Energy Dissipation System. The barrier flew into hundreds of fragments, causing skeptics to turn thumbs down on the project. But Indy engineers continue development on the P.E.D.S.–which, at only about a foot thick and made of heavy-duty plastic tubing covered with plastic sheeting–could become the answer at all tracks with concrete walls.
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Helton says NASCAR will be methodical in its changes because “it must be done correctly.”
You don’t get any more incorrect than two more young drivers dying against concrete. So clearly now, if motor racing organizers and track operators care about their drivers as much as they say, the alternatives that are so close to reality will be developed with all deliberate speed.
Hot laps: With 18 races down in their grueling 34-race season, Winston Cup drivers get their biggest breather of the summer during the next three weeks. They’re off this weekend, then go to Pocono for the Pennsylvania 500 on July 23, then get another weekend off before the Aug. 5 Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis. . . . The anticipated return of two-time champion Alex Zanardi to CART racing apparently will not materialize in Sunday’s Molson Indy at Toronto. After fueling speculation by testing with car owner Mo Nunn at Sebring last week, Zanardi maintained he was merely giving Nunn feedback on car behavior. . . . Going into Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix, speculation continues to surge that Jacques Villeneuve will move to Benetton next season, but smart money says he stays at British American Racing with his longtime business manager, Craig Pollock. . . . British driver Johnny Herbert says he’s resigned to leaving Formula One’s Jaguar team after this season. Most fair-to-middlin’ retired F1 drivers head for new careers in CART. . . . Chicago Motor Speedway in Cicero hosts the ASA stock car series’ USAMeats.com 200 Sunday. Gates open at 11 a.m. and the green flag drops at 2:11 p.m.
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Ed Hinton can be reached at [email protected]