OK, I’m no engineer. I type words onto digital paper for a living. With that said, however, I’ve followed this sports league long enough to know this isn’t the first time something like this happened.
Ten years ago, Denny Hamlin broke his back in a head-on collision with an unprotected inside wall at Auto Club Speedway.
The injury sidelined him for five races.
2015, Kyle Busch suffered a compound fracture, after he hit an unprotected inside wall at Daytona International Speedway.
He missed 11 races.
The very next week, Jeff Gordon hit the inside wall head-on at Atlanta Motor Speedway, just after where the SAFER barrier ended.
Lucky for him, he didn’t miss a race, because of it.
And those are just the incidents after the use of SAFER barriers. That doesn’t include Jerry Nadaeu’s career-ending wreck at Richmond Raceway in 2003, either of Ernie Irvan’s near-fatal wrecks at Michigan International Speedway in the 1990s or that four NASCAR drivers died in the span of a few months in 2000 and 2001, due to hits on unprotected walls.
Yes, I know the walls weren’t the only factor in the deaths of Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin Jr., Tony Roper and Dale Earnhardt (and if we’re including ARCA, Blaise Alexander), but unprotected walls compounded the matter.
We shouldn’t even need to talk about this. This should be a thing of the past. Alas, NASCAR dropped the ball and didn’t line the inside walls at Nashville with SAFER barriers.
The best time to do this was years ago. The second best time to rectify this is now!
Yes, I know I’m spending other people’s money with this, but human life is more important than the number in a bank account.
Come 2024, no oval should have a single unprotected wall. And if there is, well…we’ll cross that bridge, if we get there.
That’s my view, for what it’s worth.