Ruminations on race cars and safety
For those of you who've got me on their friendslists, this is something I wrote a couple months back, in the wake of the latest NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway, regarding the safety of the series there and at Daytona International Speedway. If you're not interested, I'd recommend that you skip over this...
For those linked from RJO, hi, folks! Hope you enjoy reading it...
"JEERS, as always, to the four-hour long heart attack that is restrictor plate racing." Ever since I started commenting on Carol's CHEERS and JEERS columns, I've automatically put that in at the start of my comments on every race at Talladega, because I believe that restrictor plates are as dangerous as the excessive speeds that they are meant to prevent. Now, I think, it's becoming clear to all involved that nothing can be done to fix the problem by changing the cars, and something is going to have to be done to the track itself.
A HISTORY OF HAZARD--THE EARLY YEARS
Safety concerns about the big superspeedway are nothing new--at the very first race there, in 1969, the Professional Drivers Association, a drivers union led by Richard Petty, went on strike immediately before the inaugural Talladega 500, because the Daytona tires that Goodyear and Firestone had brought had proven inadequate for the higher speeds the track generated during practice. Bill France, Sr., not wanting his big new superspeedway to face the embarassment of cancelling the inaugural race, personally ran high-speed laps in a car borrowed from one of the teams; when the PDA refused to go on, he simply invited replacement drivers to run the race, using drivers from the support race held the day before, and, reputedly, even drivers grabbed from the half-mile dirt track across the street from the new track. The young-and-fearless replacement drivers ran, seeing this as their big break (indeed, it was Richard Childress's first Grand National race), with Richard Brickhouse scoring his only Grand National victory.
By the spring race in 1970, the tire companies had developed new tires specifically for Talladega's high speeds, largely setting those fears to rest, but the track remained seen as one of the most dangerous on the Grand National circuit, due to the exceedingly high speeds it generated. The track has seen many bizarre accidents and numerous driver fatalities over the years; the spring race in 1973 saw the first time that "The Big One" reared its ugly head, when a grinding multicar crash on the ninth lap saw no less than 20 cars--a third of the 60-car field--eliminated, with multiple injuries, including those that ended the career of Wendell Scott, the first African-American driver in NASCAR. (As a side note, during this period, NASCAR had adopted restrictor plates for engines of more than 360 cubic inches displacement, to level the playing field between the better- and worse-funded teams as they transitioned to the small-block formula; I haven't found any information as to whether the plates may have contributed to the accident, but given the large field, early stage of the race, and the fact that less than half of the field was running restricted big-blocks, it seems unlikely.)
More bizarre was the "fall" race in 1973, the late-July Talladega 500. Young driver Larry Smith spun his Mercury on lap 14, and slapped the wall in turn one, causing minor damage to his car. His crew started making preparations to fix the car and get him back on the track, only to discover that their driver had been declared dead on arrival at the infield care center, due to head injuries that were apparently caused by his having removed the inner lining from his helmet. It was a single-car crash, but it ended another driver's career: on lap 90, 1970 series champion Bobby Isaac, who had been told of Smith's death, parked his Dodge Charger and withdrew from the race, because, he claimed, he had heard strange voices warning him that if he did not do so immediately, he would be killed. While Isaac didn't plan to retire, this incident made him essentially poison to car owners and sponsors ("We don't want a coward who might just quit during the race driving for us."), and spelled the end of his Winston Cup career.
Further weirdness occured in the 1974 Talladega 500, when an outbreak of unexplained sabotage occured in the garage area. Crews found slashed tires, tampered alignments, and fuel lines plugged with dirt; a number of cars started the race with undetected sabotage, causing at least two early crashes due to oil spilled by sabotaged cars. NASCAR eventually threw several competition cautions to allow teams to inspect their cars for undetected sabotage; Wikipedia doesn't list any information on what, if anything, was found in these, or if the saboteurs were ever caught.
The August 1975 race saw Tiny Lund killed in a seventh-lap crash, while Dick Brooks was involved in a spectacular, tumbling crash down the back stretch. Rumors soon began to surface that the track itself was cursed, having been built on land that was either cursed by a Creek Indian shaman after Andrew Jackson drove the natives out of the valley it was built in, or a Creek burial ground, though there has never been any solid evidence of either theory.
SPEEDS RISE, PLATES APPEAR
The spring race in 1982 saw the Benny Parsons turn the first NASCAR qualifying lap at an average speed of over 200 miles per hour, and speeds would only continue to rise. Both races in 1983 see major multicar pileups, with Phil Parsons taking flight in the spring race and landing on Ricky Rudd's car; the fall race's "Big One," however, can be excused as not related to the track, since Neil Bonnett blew his engine in turn four on the first lap, leaving a huge oil slick that the cars behind hit at full speed.
By the spring of 1986, speeds had risen to alarming levels; at the Winston 500, the entire field of cars qualified faster than Benny Parsons's 1982 pole time. No "Big One" occured at that race--though there was an odd incident before the start where a drunken fan somehow gained access to the pace car and took it for a few hot laps around the track before police and track workers found a way to stop him--but the fall race made up for it, with numerous multicar crashes in the late stages, including a five-car pileup on the final lap that eliminated a number of contenders for the win.
Then came 1987. Bill Elliott turned his famous 212.809 mph lap in qualifying for the spring race, but the race is marred by Bobby Allison's horrific crash on lap 22. Allison blew his engine entering the tri-oval, and debris from it cut one of his rear tires, spinning the car. Aerodynamic forces lifted Allison's Buick, and it flew tail-first into the catchfence, tearing down almost 100 yards of the fencing and sending flying debris into the crowd. A number of fans were injured, with one woman losing an eye to the debris. Though the catchfence did its job and prevented Allison's entire car from entering the grandstands, NASCAR--reputedly under heavy pressure from its insurance company--decided that the cars needed to be slowed at both Daytona and Talladega. After the summer races at both tracks, running with 390 cfm carburetors (instead of the normal 750 cfm carbs), saw the speeds still well above 200 mph, a more radical "temporary" solution was put into place for 1988--the carburetor restrictor plate.
Many drivers, including Richard Petty, publicly predicted disastrous results, as they felt that the plates would cause the cars to bunch up, making what would be a minor wiggle or single-car crash turn into a huge chain-reaction pileup. While Talladega saw no major incidents in 1988, both races at Daytona saw multicar wrecks, most famously on lap 105 of the Daytona 500, when Richard Petty was sent rolling along the catchfence, with four other cars crashing out behind him, and much of the field damaged by flying debris. 1989 was similarly quiet, with only one major wreck in the four "plate" races, late in the spring race at Talladega, though it was a somewhat spectacular one, with Hut Stricklin's car rolling right over Richard Petty's car in the infield.
THE BIG ONE
The 1990 Pepsi 400 saw the first modern "Big One," when Richard Petty and Greg Sacks collided and spun in front of a three-wide pack in the tri-oval on the first lap, collecting 22 more cars. Still, few--other than drivers--thought there was a problem, as it happened so early that the field wouldn't have had a chance to spread out even without the plates, so "it probably would have happened anyway."
However, Talladega's 1991 Winston 500 was harder to ignore. On lap 71, Mark Martin, Ernie Irvan, and Kyle Petty collided on the backstretch, spinning in front of the field. Martin's car got airborne, standing on its nose for a heart-stopping moment before slamming back down onto its wheels. 20 cars were involved, but only the top six cars escaped the incident, as those not collected in the wreck ended up in a sloppy, muddy infield, with many stuck there until a tow truck could extricate them. Kyle Petty suffered a broken leg in the crash, and would miss the rest of the season. Coming so far into the race, people started to talk about whether the drivers were right and the plates really did bunch up the field too much.
The summer's DieHard 500 saw Ernie Irvan apologize for the two wrecks he'd caused that season (in the spring, and at Pocono) during the drivers meeting before the race, but in the later stages, Buddy Baker wrecked him, triggering a 14-car pileup. The "Big One"s continued in 1992, when Irvan, Sterling Marlin, and Bill Elliott collided and spun while racing for the lead on lap 91 of the Daytona 500, collecting 14 cars and damaging many others.
Talladega had an ugly 1993; during the spring's Winston 500, "cars running three-wide crashed out of turn four," eliminating ten cars on lap 130; a rain shower hit the track with six laps to go, and the race was stopped. When it resumed with a two-lap shootout, the cars fanned out four wide on the tri-oval as they came to take the checkers, and Dale Earnhardt ended up spinning Rusty Wallace, whose car got airborne and tumbled violently through the infield in a wreck almost identical to his single-car crash on the back stretch at the Daytona 500 earlier that season. The summer's Sears DieHard 500 saw a smaller "Big One," as Stanley Smith and Jimmy Horton get together in turn one and collect six other cars; Horton's car went up the track and clear over the retaining wall, tumbling down the embankment to come to rest on a dirt access road. While Horton was uninjured, Smith suffered a near-fatal basilar skull fracture, nearly identical to what later killed Neil Bonnett and Dale Earnhardt. While Smith made a full recovery, he would never race again. Later in the race, Bonnett, in his first race since a 1990 injury, flips end-over-end in the tri-oval. Though he was uninjured, and even joined the CBS commentary team for the end of the race, it further showed that the restrictor plates weren't keeping the cars grounded, as intended.
1994 saw NASCAR introduce roof flaps to try and keep the cars on the ground in high-speed wrecks. Despite this, *consecutive* Big Ones marred the spring's Winston Select 500, as Todd Bodine, Greg Sacks, and Jeff Gordon collided on lap 103 and collected eight other cars. Famously, Mark Martin spun into the inield and crashed through a chain-link fence, being stopped from sliding into a spectator area only by a guardrail for the little-used infield road course. When the field bunched up for the restart, Terry Labonte, running 14th, was tapped in the tri-oval before the field even reached the green flag, starting a chain-reaction in the accelerating field that saw a total of 15 cars piled up in turn one.
FRIGHT FLIGHTS
1995 seemed relatively quiet, until Talladega's Sears DieHard 500 saw a 14-car crash on the backstretch with 50 laps to go, with Kenny Schrader rolling eight times through the infield grass as part of it. Talladega troubles continued in 1996, when two serious wrecks happened. Early in the race, a shot to the rear saw Bill Elliott spin on the back straight, with his car pirouetting on its nose in the infield before landing hard on all four wheels; Elliott suffered a broken femur and missed half the season as a result.
The bigger wreck, though, happened when Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin checked up entering turn one on lap 130 of the Winston Select 500, spinning in front of the field. Another 12 cars were collected, with Martin colliding with Ricky Craven, launching Craven off the ground. Craven's car nearly cleared the catchfence, hitting only at the very top, and was torn apart by the impact, including the entire engine and transmission being ripped from the car and thrown down the track. What was left of Craven's car then was thrown across the banking by the fencing, completely clearing three cars and just clipping the roof of Jeff Gordon's car before landing on the apron... where another car proceeded to hit it at speed. Craven was knocked unconscious and transported to a hospital in Birmingham.
The summer's DieHard 500 saw even more carnage, including one of the scariest wrecks to date. On lap 102, John Andretti and Dale Jarrett got together, collecting another 15 cars in the melee, though Andretti's was the only car sidelined as a result. This, however, only made the second Big One that much worse. Fifteen laps later, Sterling Marlin and Dale Earnhardt were battling for the lead in the tri-oval, and Ernie Irvan tapped Marlin's bumper as Marlin attempted an outside pass on Earnhardt. Marlin spun to the inside, collecting Earnhardt, and both cars ended up in the outside wall. As he slid back across the track, Earnhardt's car started to roll, and was hit by multiple cars as he tumbled, including square in the windshield by Robert Pressley, which caved in his roof and resulted in a broken collarbone. The only mercy to the majority of viewers is that, due to a rainstorm before the race, the broadcast is delayed one week by CBS, so Earnhardt's condition was widely known to the public before those not at the track saw the crash. With ten cars destroyed, only six having escaped damage, and the sun rapidly setting, NASCAR holds a final five-lap shootout after completing the cleanup, then ends the race early.
Despite the 1997 Winston 500 being held caution-free, with Mark Martin setting the all-time fastest average race speed in NASCAR history at just under 189 mph, massive pileups remained a fixture of restrictor plate races. The 1997 Pepsi 400 at Daytona saw a late caution create a one-lap shootout finish; cars fanned out five-wide on the back stretch, and discovered the hard way that there wasn't space to stay that way entering turn three, with over a dozen cars piling up. The fall's DieHard 500 at Talladega didn't repeat the spring's clean nature, as Jeff Gordon cut a tire on lap 140, starting a 23-car pileup. The 1998 running of the race saw another massive chain-reaction wreck, this time in the tri-oval, with Bill Elliott's car coming to rest on its side near the start/finish line.
Big Ones would mar the 1999 Daytona 500 (Dale Jarrett spins on lap 135 and rolls over the car of teammate Kenny Irwin, Jr., and they collect at least nine other cars, with Mark Martin, Terry Labonte, Elliott Sadler, Sterling Marlin, Jeff Burton, and Geoff Bodine also unable to continue; Irwin's hood ended up in the grandstands, breaking a spectator's arm), 1999 Sears DieHard 500 (Mike Skinner and Tony Stewart come together on lap 49, collecting at least five other cars), and 2000 Sears DieHard 500 (Robby Gordon taps Scott Pruett on lap 138, turning Michael Waltrip around as Gordon gets turned by Sterling Marlin; Pruett escapes, but Gordon and Waltrip collect "over 10 cars" before the smoke clears), but still NASCAR did nothing to eliminate the plates entirely, instead fooling around with different aerodynamic packages and plate sizes in a vain attempt to stop the problem.
THE RACE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING... ALMOST
Then came the 2001 Daytona 500. NASCAR hoped that the new "out of bounds" yellow line rule, prohibiting cars from using the apron to pass, would spell the end of the Big One, by preventing cars from fanning out too wide to make the corners. It wasn't very effective. While I'm sure I don't need to mention the most infamous wreck of the day, or how it was a product of the tight packs, drafting, and blocking that restrictor plate racing breeds, it wasn't actually the biggest wreck of the race. Dale Earnhardt's fatal last-lap crash causes many to forget that there had been a much bigger one on lap 173, when fourth-place Robby Gordon got into Ward Burton, collecting Tony Stewart. Stewart's Pontiac got airborne, tumbling several times before it came down into the middle of the chain-reaction crash; in the end, 20 cars were caught up, with 15 either destroyed or left limping around to run laps until NASCAR ordered them to park.
NASCAR's new safety initiative following Earnhardt's death gave many drivers and fans hope that something definitive would finally be done to stop the "Big One" and eliminate the "temporary" solution of the restrictor plates that had now been in use for 13 years. Further Big Ones occurred in that year's Pepsi 400 at Daytona (lap 141, Mike Wallace slows off turn four to enter the pits, Mike Skinner checks up to avoid hitting Wallace, Kurt Busch hits Skinner from behind, and 10 cars pile up in the tri-oval) and EA Sports 500 at Talladega (Bobby Labonte blocks Bobby Hamilton in two on the final lap, spins, rolls over, and at least ten more cars pile up behind him).
NASCAR's initial response, on the Nextel Cup side, was to adopt smaller fuel cells on the restrictor plate tracks, on the theory that it would result in more pit stops being made under green, breaking the field up into a number of smaller packs, while the Busch Series adopts an aerodynamic package similar to that used in Winston Cup in the late 90s, which increased drag and allowed a larger restrictor plate opening. Neither solution worked. The 2002 Daytona 500 saw a ten-car pileup on lap 148 when Kevin Harvick spun while trying to block Jeff Gordon.
Worse would follow. The Busch race at Talladega in the spring of 2002 turned into a farce, when Scott Riggs and Johnny Sauter collided on the back straight, sending Sauter rolling in front of the field on lap 15. 27 cars ended up being involved in the crash (the biggest in NASCAR's Modern Era, surpassed only by 1960's Sportsman 250 at Daytona, where 37 of 75 cars crashed in turn four on the first lap), most damaged and uncompetitive to the point that there was little or no drafting in the rest of the race. Only three cars finished on the lead lap, and 22 cars out of the 43 starters did not finish; the only DNF not directly caused by the Big One was Kenny Wallace, who blew an engine, but still placed 9th in the final results.
The very next day, the Aaron's 499 saw the Nextel Cup Series's own "Biggest One." As Wikipedia describes it, "On lap 164 of 188, going into the first turn, Jimmie Johnson shuffled Kyle Petty out of line. Coming on to the backstretch, Petty found a spot in line, but everyone slows up, resulting into a chain reaction crash, when Mike Wallace forces Tony Stewart into the wall [and] all heck breaks loose." The crash collects 24 cars, and is frighteningly reminiscent of the previous day's pileup.
It almost seemed a relief when the Big One in that year's Pepsi 400 saw only about eight cars involved. The fall race at Talladega saw Elliott Sadler roll his car repeatedly in turn three with six laps remaining; the race restarts for a brief shootout, but another multicar wreck occurs following the checkered flag.
There was no Big One during the 2003 Daytona 500. However, that year's Aaron's 499 at Talladega managed to "top" the previous year's event, when Ryan Newman blew a right front tire on lap 4, ending with 27 cars involved (a Cup series record for the Modern Era), and Newman's flat tire bouncing off the hood of Ricky Rudd's car and over the catchfence; thankfully, no spectators were injured by the flying tire.
The Pepsi 400 that year saw a seven-car pileup on the backstretch on lap 75, but many believed that NASCAR's rule change to break up the pack was working at Daytona, as there hadn't been a truly "big" wreck there since the smaller fuel cells were adopted. That belief, however, was shattered on lap 71 of the 2004 Daytona 500, when Johnny Sauter got loose and started a twelve-car pileup that also saw defending race winner Michael Waltrip roll three times in the infield grass. Talladega would claim another ten-car pileup later that spring at the Aaron's 499, the last Big One of the year.
2005 seemed to be Business As Usual for the Big One; a multicar crash during the Daytona 500 sees Scott Wimmer roll violently in the infield to start the season. On lap 132 of the Aaron's 499, Mike Wallace, Jimmie Johnson, and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., get together and start a 25-car wreck; Jeff Hammond estimated the total damage, on the air, at about $8 million. In the fall at Talladega, the UAW-Ford 500 sees a twelve-car wreck in the tri-oval after Casey Mears gets turned, with Scott Riggs rolling at least nine times.
2007's Daytona 500 was marred by the infamous chain-reaction crash at the finish line that saw Clint Bowyer's car cross the finish line on fire and upside-down. The UAW-Ford 500 saw a ten-car pileup due to Bobby Labonte cutting a tire. NASCAR again tinkered with the restrictor plate as the "Car of Tomorrow" failed to slow the cars down as much as the sanctioning body had hoped, but the wrecks continued. The 2008 Aaron's 499 saw ten cars pile up in turn one on the final lap. Daytona's Coke Zero 400 saw a very similar eleven-car pileup, in the same place and also on the final lap. The AMP Energy 500 at Talladega that fall saw a twelve-car pileup in turn three with 16 laps remaining.
THIS YEAR'S TOLL
Every Sprint Cup restrictor plate race this season has seen at least one major chain-reaction crash. On lap 124 of the Daytona 500, with rain rapidly approaching, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., spun Brian Vickers into traffic, collecting eight other cars; Vickers was convinced that it was an intentional crash, due to confusion over the Lucky Dog award for the preceding caution.
The Aaron's 499, seemingly as per tradition, collected over twenty cars in two separate Big Ones, a 14-car crash on lap 7 and an 11-car crash on lap 180, but the one that most frightened NASCAR involved only three cars--Carl Edwards's crash in the tri-oval on the final lap, as he got airborne, hit the catchfence, and sent debris into the grandstands, much like Bobby Allison's 1987 wreck, though mercifully, no spectators were seriously injured this time. The Coke Zero 400 at Daytona also saw two Big Ones, a 13-car pileup on lap 77, and Kyle Busch's flying, tumbling crash just shy of the finish line on the final lap.
And now we get to this past weekend's race. While most people look at the massive chain-reaction crash that saw Mark Martin roll his car as the worst, it was, frankly, not that much different from the "typical" restrictor plate wreck. More worrisome to me was Ryan Newman's spin and "blowover" a few laps earlier. NASCAR got off very, very lucky with that one; while the commentators tried to sell it as being even worse the way it happened, the fact that Newman's rear decklid landed on Kevin Harvick's hood probably saved his life.
That statement may seem counterintuitive, but any engineer--and anyone who's ever seen a Charlotte pre-race show--will tell you that one of the best possible cushions for a falling car to land on is another car; the crushing of the car landed on absorbs much of the impact that would otherwise be taken entirely by the landing car. This is why stunt drivers who jump cars long distances with the full intention of destroying them on landing usually use a bed of "crush cars" as their landing target, particularly if the planned stunt will see the flying car land on its roof. It's like falling off your roof onto a mattress instead of the bare ground--it'll still hurt, but not nearly as much, since you're landing on a cushion that slows your deceleration. (It's also the same principle behind the SAFER barrier, and behind the front and rear "crumple zones" engineered into all modern cars.)
When Newman's rear end landed on Harvick's hood, the entire front end of Harvick's car was visibly crushed down onto the engine and frame, absorbing a significant percentage of the energy Newman's car had. Newman stated in post-crash interviews that, when he hit the ground, his car's roof was crushed down to the point where it was touching his helmet, as the impact was enough to actually bend the roll cage inward. Had Harvick's car not been there, it's quite likely that the harder impact would have been enough to collapse the roll cage at least partially, compressing Newman's spine and breaking his neck. Even if it didn't collapse far enough to kill him, Ryan almost certainly would be paralyzed, perhaps permanently, and even after surgery, would never be able to safely drive a race car again due to the spinal damage.
Newman's car flipped in the first place due to something that drag racers call a "blowover," where aerodynamic forces on the car start to lift the front end (rear in Newman's case, as he was travelling backwards at the time), allowing air to get under the car and push it the rest of the way over; it's the cause of those scary Top Fuel wrecks where a car starts to do a wheelie, then flips straight on over backwards. I don't know what, if anything, could have been done to prevent the blowover itself, though NASCAR clearly didn't do the same amount of wind tunnel testing of the CoT as they did when they first developed the roof flaps--otherwise, some new solution would have been added to the car upon finding this possibility.
THE SOLUTION
The one common factor among all the nasty wrecks this year is that they have all been related to how closely bunched up restrictor plates cause the cars to run. If anyone makes even a slight mistake, they have no chance to recover before hitting another car, and the cars behind them have no chance to avoid it. It's less of an issue at Daytona than at Talladega, because the narrower, bumpier surface and tighter-radius, lower-banked corners put more of a premium on handling, so the cars do string out a bit more. However, at Talladega, where the cars don't have any difficulty with grip, the plates levelling out the engines completely make it impossible for cars to get separated, and any wreck will sweep up just about every car behind it.
Simply removing the restrictor plates is not an option--when Rusty Wallace tested both the then-current car and the CoT at Talladega without plates in 2004, the older car exceeded 230 mph on the straights, and averaged 221 mph for the full lap; the CoT was only about 10 mph slower in both peak and average speeds. Even if NASCAR followed Dale Earnhardt's old recommendation, "Move the stands back another hundred yards, take the damn plates off, and let us race," it's unlikely that they'd be able to get the liability insurance to hold races, due to the danger to both spectators and drivers. Aerodynamic solutions haven't worked--they slow the cars, but they also make the draft so much more effective that the pack remains completely bunched up.
Some have suggested running smaller engines at Daytona and Talladega--perhaps a 305 cid V-8, or a 3.8L V-6, or something along those lines. This wouldn't work any better than the restrictor plates, as both the drag and power numbers would remain the same. It might break up the big pack a little to run a 3.0L V-6 or smaller engine, since it could be run unrestricted and the different engine programs would result in slightly different outputs, but really, if the cars all have 400 horsepower, they'll all run in a big drafting pack, regardless of whether it comes from a restricted 351 V-8, a three-liter V-6, or a battery-powered electric motor.
The only thing that will prevent the Big One from continuing to be a regular event at Daytona and Talladega is making a major change, so that the drivers can't run the tracks at full throttle, but instead have to slow for the corners. There's really only two ways to do this, and one of them is pretty much a non-starter.
The first option would be to "put the stock back in stock cars," by completely eliminating the downforce devices and adopting closer-to-production bodywork, plus tires of the same width as the production versions, at least at Daytona and Talladega. No splitter, no rear wing or rear blade, and narrow tires. It wouldn't be possible to take the turns--or the tri-oval--at over 180 mph any more, forcing the drivers to slow for them. This, however, is a non-starter for two reasons. First off, it eliminates all pretense of being able to run restrictor plate cars at other tracks, and vice-versa, which NASCAR still claims the CoT allows. Instead, teams would have to have completely separate Daytona/Talladega cars, with different bodywork and suspensions from the rest of the season, plus special narrow wheels for the narrower tires--at great cost. Second, and probably more important to NASCAR, there's a good chance that doing so would reduce the drag on the cars to the point where they could easily be topping 250 mph on the straights, and they'd run into the whole insurance issue again.
The second solution is the most drastic, the most expensive, and, frankly, the only truly effective solution to this issue. Shave the banking down at Daytona and Talladega. Reduce the banking in the curves from 33 degrees to 16.5 degrees, and in the tri-oval from 18 degrees to 9 degrees. This would be a major project, of course, and would drastically change the character of the tracks, but it would also force stock cars to slow down for the corners, resulting in average speeds similar to the current ones, and top speeds comparable to those at MIS and Fontana, but would put such a premium on handling that it would break up the packs, spreading the cars out to be able to make mistakes without disaster striking.
Of course, NASCAR and International Speedway Corporation will resist this solution until the very end, claiming that it's because it would "destroy the tradition" of the tracks by changing them from the configuration that Bill France, Sr., laid out for them. (Of course, the real reason is because they don't want to spend the money to reconfigure the tracks--it's far less expensive, for them, to just make changes to the cars to try and slow them down.) However, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
When Big Bill was designing Daytona, he specified that the corners be banked "as high as you can pour asphalt," in emulation of the old board tracks of the 1920s and 1930s, to allow spectators on the front straight to see the cars clearly in the corners. This isn't really much of an issue now, since most fans follow the races on television, and even those at the track tend to watch most of the lap on the big screens, rather than strain to see the cars on the high banks a mile away.
Talladega, however, was built for a very different reason. Big Bill had been a mechanic on an Indy car in the 1930s, and was caught cheating. When he was, he was banned for life from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. France, however, remained somewhat obsessed with Indy for the rest of his life, and many NASCAR traditions come directly from Indianapolis--the use of the rolling start, the tendency towards oval tracks, and the default 500-mile race length, just to name a few. France freely admitted that he built Talladega purely because he felt that Daytona wasn't fast enough, and he wanted to make an even faster track. While I can't find any confirmation of this, it's my suspicion that Big Bill's real motivation for building Talladega was in hopes of being able to hold races that were run even faster than the Indy 500; I wouldn't be surprised if, had he lived longer, he'd continued building larger, higher-banked, and faster superspeedways until NASCAR could surpass Indy as the fastest closed-course racing on the planet.
The results are tracks that are extremely fast, but, despite all the added safety features over the years (concrete walls replacing Armco guardrails, SAFER barriers, catchfences, better paving, paved infields off turns two and four, etc.), are simply not safe in their current configurations. Changes to the cars are like slapping a band-aid on a slashed jugular; they may seem to help, for a little while, but the fundamental problem remains, and it's just going to get worse. The only way to prevent more tragedies is to solve the root problem--and the only way to do that is to make major changes to the tracks.
I just hope that NASCAR and ISC can realize this before a driver--or, worse yet, a fan--is killed by the Big One.
(Richard D. Fox is a racing fan and engineering student from Howell, Michigan, about an hour's drive from Michigan International Speedway. While he watched his first races in the early 1980s, he didn't become a serious fan until the early 90s. Thanks go to Wikipedia for research data.)
For those linked from RJO, hi, folks! Hope you enjoy reading it...
"JEERS, as always, to the four-hour long heart attack that is restrictor plate racing." Ever since I started commenting on Carol's CHEERS and JEERS columns, I've automatically put that in at the start of my comments on every race at Talladega, because I believe that restrictor plates are as dangerous as the excessive speeds that they are meant to prevent. Now, I think, it's becoming clear to all involved that nothing can be done to fix the problem by changing the cars, and something is going to have to be done to the track itself.
A HISTORY OF HAZARD--THE EARLY YEARS
Safety concerns about the big superspeedway are nothing new--at the very first race there, in 1969, the Professional Drivers Association, a drivers union led by Richard Petty, went on strike immediately before the inaugural Talladega 500, because the Daytona tires that Goodyear and Firestone had brought had proven inadequate for the higher speeds the track generated during practice. Bill France, Sr., not wanting his big new superspeedway to face the embarassment of cancelling the inaugural race, personally ran high-speed laps in a car borrowed from one of the teams; when the PDA refused to go on, he simply invited replacement drivers to run the race, using drivers from the support race held the day before, and, reputedly, even drivers grabbed from the half-mile dirt track across the street from the new track. The young-and-fearless replacement drivers ran, seeing this as their big break (indeed, it was Richard Childress's first Grand National race), with Richard Brickhouse scoring his only Grand National victory.
By the spring race in 1970, the tire companies had developed new tires specifically for Talladega's high speeds, largely setting those fears to rest, but the track remained seen as one of the most dangerous on the Grand National circuit, due to the exceedingly high speeds it generated. The track has seen many bizarre accidents and numerous driver fatalities over the years; the spring race in 1973 saw the first time that "The Big One" reared its ugly head, when a grinding multicar crash on the ninth lap saw no less than 20 cars--a third of the 60-car field--eliminated, with multiple injuries, including those that ended the career of Wendell Scott, the first African-American driver in NASCAR. (As a side note, during this period, NASCAR had adopted restrictor plates for engines of more than 360 cubic inches displacement, to level the playing field between the better- and worse-funded teams as they transitioned to the small-block formula; I haven't found any information as to whether the plates may have contributed to the accident, but given the large field, early stage of the race, and the fact that less than half of the field was running restricted big-blocks, it seems unlikely.)
More bizarre was the "fall" race in 1973, the late-July Talladega 500. Young driver Larry Smith spun his Mercury on lap 14, and slapped the wall in turn one, causing minor damage to his car. His crew started making preparations to fix the car and get him back on the track, only to discover that their driver had been declared dead on arrival at the infield care center, due to head injuries that were apparently caused by his having removed the inner lining from his helmet. It was a single-car crash, but it ended another driver's career: on lap 90, 1970 series champion Bobby Isaac, who had been told of Smith's death, parked his Dodge Charger and withdrew from the race, because, he claimed, he had heard strange voices warning him that if he did not do so immediately, he would be killed. While Isaac didn't plan to retire, this incident made him essentially poison to car owners and sponsors ("We don't want a coward who might just quit during the race driving for us."), and spelled the end of his Winston Cup career.
Further weirdness occured in the 1974 Talladega 500, when an outbreak of unexplained sabotage occured in the garage area. Crews found slashed tires, tampered alignments, and fuel lines plugged with dirt; a number of cars started the race with undetected sabotage, causing at least two early crashes due to oil spilled by sabotaged cars. NASCAR eventually threw several competition cautions to allow teams to inspect their cars for undetected sabotage; Wikipedia doesn't list any information on what, if anything, was found in these, or if the saboteurs were ever caught.
The August 1975 race saw Tiny Lund killed in a seventh-lap crash, while Dick Brooks was involved in a spectacular, tumbling crash down the back stretch. Rumors soon began to surface that the track itself was cursed, having been built on land that was either cursed by a Creek Indian shaman after Andrew Jackson drove the natives out of the valley it was built in, or a Creek burial ground, though there has never been any solid evidence of either theory.
SPEEDS RISE, PLATES APPEAR
The spring race in 1982 saw the Benny Parsons turn the first NASCAR qualifying lap at an average speed of over 200 miles per hour, and speeds would only continue to rise. Both races in 1983 see major multicar pileups, with Phil Parsons taking flight in the spring race and landing on Ricky Rudd's car; the fall race's "Big One," however, can be excused as not related to the track, since Neil Bonnett blew his engine in turn four on the first lap, leaving a huge oil slick that the cars behind hit at full speed.
By the spring of 1986, speeds had risen to alarming levels; at the Winston 500, the entire field of cars qualified faster than Benny Parsons's 1982 pole time. No "Big One" occured at that race--though there was an odd incident before the start where a drunken fan somehow gained access to the pace car and took it for a few hot laps around the track before police and track workers found a way to stop him--but the fall race made up for it, with numerous multicar crashes in the late stages, including a five-car pileup on the final lap that eliminated a number of contenders for the win.
Then came 1987. Bill Elliott turned his famous 212.809 mph lap in qualifying for the spring race, but the race is marred by Bobby Allison's horrific crash on lap 22. Allison blew his engine entering the tri-oval, and debris from it cut one of his rear tires, spinning the car. Aerodynamic forces lifted Allison's Buick, and it flew tail-first into the catchfence, tearing down almost 100 yards of the fencing and sending flying debris into the crowd. A number of fans were injured, with one woman losing an eye to the debris. Though the catchfence did its job and prevented Allison's entire car from entering the grandstands, NASCAR--reputedly under heavy pressure from its insurance company--decided that the cars needed to be slowed at both Daytona and Talladega. After the summer races at both tracks, running with 390 cfm carburetors (instead of the normal 750 cfm carbs), saw the speeds still well above 200 mph, a more radical "temporary" solution was put into place for 1988--the carburetor restrictor plate.
Many drivers, including Richard Petty, publicly predicted disastrous results, as they felt that the plates would cause the cars to bunch up, making what would be a minor wiggle or single-car crash turn into a huge chain-reaction pileup. While Talladega saw no major incidents in 1988, both races at Daytona saw multicar wrecks, most famously on lap 105 of the Daytona 500, when Richard Petty was sent rolling along the catchfence, with four other cars crashing out behind him, and much of the field damaged by flying debris. 1989 was similarly quiet, with only one major wreck in the four "plate" races, late in the spring race at Talladega, though it was a somewhat spectacular one, with Hut Stricklin's car rolling right over Richard Petty's car in the infield.
THE BIG ONE
The 1990 Pepsi 400 saw the first modern "Big One," when Richard Petty and Greg Sacks collided and spun in front of a three-wide pack in the tri-oval on the first lap, collecting 22 more cars. Still, few--other than drivers--thought there was a problem, as it happened so early that the field wouldn't have had a chance to spread out even without the plates, so "it probably would have happened anyway."
However, Talladega's 1991 Winston 500 was harder to ignore. On lap 71, Mark Martin, Ernie Irvan, and Kyle Petty collided on the backstretch, spinning in front of the field. Martin's car got airborne, standing on its nose for a heart-stopping moment before slamming back down onto its wheels. 20 cars were involved, but only the top six cars escaped the incident, as those not collected in the wreck ended up in a sloppy, muddy infield, with many stuck there until a tow truck could extricate them. Kyle Petty suffered a broken leg in the crash, and would miss the rest of the season. Coming so far into the race, people started to talk about whether the drivers were right and the plates really did bunch up the field too much.
The summer's DieHard 500 saw Ernie Irvan apologize for the two wrecks he'd caused that season (in the spring, and at Pocono) during the drivers meeting before the race, but in the later stages, Buddy Baker wrecked him, triggering a 14-car pileup. The "Big One"s continued in 1992, when Irvan, Sterling Marlin, and Bill Elliott collided and spun while racing for the lead on lap 91 of the Daytona 500, collecting 14 cars and damaging many others.
Talladega had an ugly 1993; during the spring's Winston 500, "cars running three-wide crashed out of turn four," eliminating ten cars on lap 130; a rain shower hit the track with six laps to go, and the race was stopped. When it resumed with a two-lap shootout, the cars fanned out four wide on the tri-oval as they came to take the checkers, and Dale Earnhardt ended up spinning Rusty Wallace, whose car got airborne and tumbled violently through the infield in a wreck almost identical to his single-car crash on the back stretch at the Daytona 500 earlier that season. The summer's Sears DieHard 500 saw a smaller "Big One," as Stanley Smith and Jimmy Horton get together in turn one and collect six other cars; Horton's car went up the track and clear over the retaining wall, tumbling down the embankment to come to rest on a dirt access road. While Horton was uninjured, Smith suffered a near-fatal basilar skull fracture, nearly identical to what later killed Neil Bonnett and Dale Earnhardt. While Smith made a full recovery, he would never race again. Later in the race, Bonnett, in his first race since a 1990 injury, flips end-over-end in the tri-oval. Though he was uninjured, and even joined the CBS commentary team for the end of the race, it further showed that the restrictor plates weren't keeping the cars grounded, as intended.
1994 saw NASCAR introduce roof flaps to try and keep the cars on the ground in high-speed wrecks. Despite this, *consecutive* Big Ones marred the spring's Winston Select 500, as Todd Bodine, Greg Sacks, and Jeff Gordon collided on lap 103 and collected eight other cars. Famously, Mark Martin spun into the inield and crashed through a chain-link fence, being stopped from sliding into a spectator area only by a guardrail for the little-used infield road course. When the field bunched up for the restart, Terry Labonte, running 14th, was tapped in the tri-oval before the field even reached the green flag, starting a chain-reaction in the accelerating field that saw a total of 15 cars piled up in turn one.
FRIGHT FLIGHTS
1995 seemed relatively quiet, until Talladega's Sears DieHard 500 saw a 14-car crash on the backstretch with 50 laps to go, with Kenny Schrader rolling eight times through the infield grass as part of it. Talladega troubles continued in 1996, when two serious wrecks happened. Early in the race, a shot to the rear saw Bill Elliott spin on the back straight, with his car pirouetting on its nose in the infield before landing hard on all four wheels; Elliott suffered a broken femur and missed half the season as a result.
The bigger wreck, though, happened when Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin checked up entering turn one on lap 130 of the Winston Select 500, spinning in front of the field. Another 12 cars were collected, with Martin colliding with Ricky Craven, launching Craven off the ground. Craven's car nearly cleared the catchfence, hitting only at the very top, and was torn apart by the impact, including the entire engine and transmission being ripped from the car and thrown down the track. What was left of Craven's car then was thrown across the banking by the fencing, completely clearing three cars and just clipping the roof of Jeff Gordon's car before landing on the apron... where another car proceeded to hit it at speed. Craven was knocked unconscious and transported to a hospital in Birmingham.
The summer's DieHard 500 saw even more carnage, including one of the scariest wrecks to date. On lap 102, John Andretti and Dale Jarrett got together, collecting another 15 cars in the melee, though Andretti's was the only car sidelined as a result. This, however, only made the second Big One that much worse. Fifteen laps later, Sterling Marlin and Dale Earnhardt were battling for the lead in the tri-oval, and Ernie Irvan tapped Marlin's bumper as Marlin attempted an outside pass on Earnhardt. Marlin spun to the inside, collecting Earnhardt, and both cars ended up in the outside wall. As he slid back across the track, Earnhardt's car started to roll, and was hit by multiple cars as he tumbled, including square in the windshield by Robert Pressley, which caved in his roof and resulted in a broken collarbone. The only mercy to the majority of viewers is that, due to a rainstorm before the race, the broadcast is delayed one week by CBS, so Earnhardt's condition was widely known to the public before those not at the track saw the crash. With ten cars destroyed, only six having escaped damage, and the sun rapidly setting, NASCAR holds a final five-lap shootout after completing the cleanup, then ends the race early.
Despite the 1997 Winston 500 being held caution-free, with Mark Martin setting the all-time fastest average race speed in NASCAR history at just under 189 mph, massive pileups remained a fixture of restrictor plate races. The 1997 Pepsi 400 at Daytona saw a late caution create a one-lap shootout finish; cars fanned out five-wide on the back stretch, and discovered the hard way that there wasn't space to stay that way entering turn three, with over a dozen cars piling up. The fall's DieHard 500 at Talladega didn't repeat the spring's clean nature, as Jeff Gordon cut a tire on lap 140, starting a 23-car pileup. The 1998 running of the race saw another massive chain-reaction wreck, this time in the tri-oval, with Bill Elliott's car coming to rest on its side near the start/finish line.
Big Ones would mar the 1999 Daytona 500 (Dale Jarrett spins on lap 135 and rolls over the car of teammate Kenny Irwin, Jr., and they collect at least nine other cars, with Mark Martin, Terry Labonte, Elliott Sadler, Sterling Marlin, Jeff Burton, and Geoff Bodine also unable to continue; Irwin's hood ended up in the grandstands, breaking a spectator's arm), 1999 Sears DieHard 500 (Mike Skinner and Tony Stewart come together on lap 49, collecting at least five other cars), and 2000 Sears DieHard 500 (Robby Gordon taps Scott Pruett on lap 138, turning Michael Waltrip around as Gordon gets turned by Sterling Marlin; Pruett escapes, but Gordon and Waltrip collect "over 10 cars" before the smoke clears), but still NASCAR did nothing to eliminate the plates entirely, instead fooling around with different aerodynamic packages and plate sizes in a vain attempt to stop the problem.
THE RACE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING... ALMOST
Then came the 2001 Daytona 500. NASCAR hoped that the new "out of bounds" yellow line rule, prohibiting cars from using the apron to pass, would spell the end of the Big One, by preventing cars from fanning out too wide to make the corners. It wasn't very effective. While I'm sure I don't need to mention the most infamous wreck of the day, or how it was a product of the tight packs, drafting, and blocking that restrictor plate racing breeds, it wasn't actually the biggest wreck of the race. Dale Earnhardt's fatal last-lap crash causes many to forget that there had been a much bigger one on lap 173, when fourth-place Robby Gordon got into Ward Burton, collecting Tony Stewart. Stewart's Pontiac got airborne, tumbling several times before it came down into the middle of the chain-reaction crash; in the end, 20 cars were caught up, with 15 either destroyed or left limping around to run laps until NASCAR ordered them to park.
NASCAR's new safety initiative following Earnhardt's death gave many drivers and fans hope that something definitive would finally be done to stop the "Big One" and eliminate the "temporary" solution of the restrictor plates that had now been in use for 13 years. Further Big Ones occurred in that year's Pepsi 400 at Daytona (lap 141, Mike Wallace slows off turn four to enter the pits, Mike Skinner checks up to avoid hitting Wallace, Kurt Busch hits Skinner from behind, and 10 cars pile up in the tri-oval) and EA Sports 500 at Talladega (Bobby Labonte blocks Bobby Hamilton in two on the final lap, spins, rolls over, and at least ten more cars pile up behind him).
NASCAR's initial response, on the Nextel Cup side, was to adopt smaller fuel cells on the restrictor plate tracks, on the theory that it would result in more pit stops being made under green, breaking the field up into a number of smaller packs, while the Busch Series adopts an aerodynamic package similar to that used in Winston Cup in the late 90s, which increased drag and allowed a larger restrictor plate opening. Neither solution worked. The 2002 Daytona 500 saw a ten-car pileup on lap 148 when Kevin Harvick spun while trying to block Jeff Gordon.
Worse would follow. The Busch race at Talladega in the spring of 2002 turned into a farce, when Scott Riggs and Johnny Sauter collided on the back straight, sending Sauter rolling in front of the field on lap 15. 27 cars ended up being involved in the crash (the biggest in NASCAR's Modern Era, surpassed only by 1960's Sportsman 250 at Daytona, where 37 of 75 cars crashed in turn four on the first lap), most damaged and uncompetitive to the point that there was little or no drafting in the rest of the race. Only three cars finished on the lead lap, and 22 cars out of the 43 starters did not finish; the only DNF not directly caused by the Big One was Kenny Wallace, who blew an engine, but still placed 9th in the final results.
The very next day, the Aaron's 499 saw the Nextel Cup Series's own "Biggest One." As Wikipedia describes it, "On lap 164 of 188, going into the first turn, Jimmie Johnson shuffled Kyle Petty out of line. Coming on to the backstretch, Petty found a spot in line, but everyone slows up, resulting into a chain reaction crash, when Mike Wallace forces Tony Stewart into the wall [and] all heck breaks loose." The crash collects 24 cars, and is frighteningly reminiscent of the previous day's pileup.
It almost seemed a relief when the Big One in that year's Pepsi 400 saw only about eight cars involved. The fall race at Talladega saw Elliott Sadler roll his car repeatedly in turn three with six laps remaining; the race restarts for a brief shootout, but another multicar wreck occurs following the checkered flag.
There was no Big One during the 2003 Daytona 500. However, that year's Aaron's 499 at Talladega managed to "top" the previous year's event, when Ryan Newman blew a right front tire on lap 4, ending with 27 cars involved (a Cup series record for the Modern Era), and Newman's flat tire bouncing off the hood of Ricky Rudd's car and over the catchfence; thankfully, no spectators were injured by the flying tire.
The Pepsi 400 that year saw a seven-car pileup on the backstretch on lap 75, but many believed that NASCAR's rule change to break up the pack was working at Daytona, as there hadn't been a truly "big" wreck there since the smaller fuel cells were adopted. That belief, however, was shattered on lap 71 of the 2004 Daytona 500, when Johnny Sauter got loose and started a twelve-car pileup that also saw defending race winner Michael Waltrip roll three times in the infield grass. Talladega would claim another ten-car pileup later that spring at the Aaron's 499, the last Big One of the year.
2005 seemed to be Business As Usual for the Big One; a multicar crash during the Daytona 500 sees Scott Wimmer roll violently in the infield to start the season. On lap 132 of the Aaron's 499, Mike Wallace, Jimmie Johnson, and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., get together and start a 25-car wreck; Jeff Hammond estimated the total damage, on the air, at about $8 million. In the fall at Talladega, the UAW-Ford 500 sees a twelve-car wreck in the tri-oval after Casey Mears gets turned, with Scott Riggs rolling at least nine times.
2007's Daytona 500 was marred by the infamous chain-reaction crash at the finish line that saw Clint Bowyer's car cross the finish line on fire and upside-down. The UAW-Ford 500 saw a ten-car pileup due to Bobby Labonte cutting a tire. NASCAR again tinkered with the restrictor plate as the "Car of Tomorrow" failed to slow the cars down as much as the sanctioning body had hoped, but the wrecks continued. The 2008 Aaron's 499 saw ten cars pile up in turn one on the final lap. Daytona's Coke Zero 400 saw a very similar eleven-car pileup, in the same place and also on the final lap. The AMP Energy 500 at Talladega that fall saw a twelve-car pileup in turn three with 16 laps remaining.
THIS YEAR'S TOLL
Every Sprint Cup restrictor plate race this season has seen at least one major chain-reaction crash. On lap 124 of the Daytona 500, with rain rapidly approaching, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., spun Brian Vickers into traffic, collecting eight other cars; Vickers was convinced that it was an intentional crash, due to confusion over the Lucky Dog award for the preceding caution.
The Aaron's 499, seemingly as per tradition, collected over twenty cars in two separate Big Ones, a 14-car crash on lap 7 and an 11-car crash on lap 180, but the one that most frightened NASCAR involved only three cars--Carl Edwards's crash in the tri-oval on the final lap, as he got airborne, hit the catchfence, and sent debris into the grandstands, much like Bobby Allison's 1987 wreck, though mercifully, no spectators were seriously injured this time. The Coke Zero 400 at Daytona also saw two Big Ones, a 13-car pileup on lap 77, and Kyle Busch's flying, tumbling crash just shy of the finish line on the final lap.
And now we get to this past weekend's race. While most people look at the massive chain-reaction crash that saw Mark Martin roll his car as the worst, it was, frankly, not that much different from the "typical" restrictor plate wreck. More worrisome to me was Ryan Newman's spin and "blowover" a few laps earlier. NASCAR got off very, very lucky with that one; while the commentators tried to sell it as being even worse the way it happened, the fact that Newman's rear decklid landed on Kevin Harvick's hood probably saved his life.
That statement may seem counterintuitive, but any engineer--and anyone who's ever seen a Charlotte pre-race show--will tell you that one of the best possible cushions for a falling car to land on is another car; the crushing of the car landed on absorbs much of the impact that would otherwise be taken entirely by the landing car. This is why stunt drivers who jump cars long distances with the full intention of destroying them on landing usually use a bed of "crush cars" as their landing target, particularly if the planned stunt will see the flying car land on its roof. It's like falling off your roof onto a mattress instead of the bare ground--it'll still hurt, but not nearly as much, since you're landing on a cushion that slows your deceleration. (It's also the same principle behind the SAFER barrier, and behind the front and rear "crumple zones" engineered into all modern cars.)
When Newman's rear end landed on Harvick's hood, the entire front end of Harvick's car was visibly crushed down onto the engine and frame, absorbing a significant percentage of the energy Newman's car had. Newman stated in post-crash interviews that, when he hit the ground, his car's roof was crushed down to the point where it was touching his helmet, as the impact was enough to actually bend the roll cage inward. Had Harvick's car not been there, it's quite likely that the harder impact would have been enough to collapse the roll cage at least partially, compressing Newman's spine and breaking his neck. Even if it didn't collapse far enough to kill him, Ryan almost certainly would be paralyzed, perhaps permanently, and even after surgery, would never be able to safely drive a race car again due to the spinal damage.
Newman's car flipped in the first place due to something that drag racers call a "blowover," where aerodynamic forces on the car start to lift the front end (rear in Newman's case, as he was travelling backwards at the time), allowing air to get under the car and push it the rest of the way over; it's the cause of those scary Top Fuel wrecks where a car starts to do a wheelie, then flips straight on over backwards. I don't know what, if anything, could have been done to prevent the blowover itself, though NASCAR clearly didn't do the same amount of wind tunnel testing of the CoT as they did when they first developed the roof flaps--otherwise, some new solution would have been added to the car upon finding this possibility.
THE SOLUTION
The one common factor among all the nasty wrecks this year is that they have all been related to how closely bunched up restrictor plates cause the cars to run. If anyone makes even a slight mistake, they have no chance to recover before hitting another car, and the cars behind them have no chance to avoid it. It's less of an issue at Daytona than at Talladega, because the narrower, bumpier surface and tighter-radius, lower-banked corners put more of a premium on handling, so the cars do string out a bit more. However, at Talladega, where the cars don't have any difficulty with grip, the plates levelling out the engines completely make it impossible for cars to get separated, and any wreck will sweep up just about every car behind it.
Simply removing the restrictor plates is not an option--when Rusty Wallace tested both the then-current car and the CoT at Talladega without plates in 2004, the older car exceeded 230 mph on the straights, and averaged 221 mph for the full lap; the CoT was only about 10 mph slower in both peak and average speeds. Even if NASCAR followed Dale Earnhardt's old recommendation, "Move the stands back another hundred yards, take the damn plates off, and let us race," it's unlikely that they'd be able to get the liability insurance to hold races, due to the danger to both spectators and drivers. Aerodynamic solutions haven't worked--they slow the cars, but they also make the draft so much more effective that the pack remains completely bunched up.
Some have suggested running smaller engines at Daytona and Talladega--perhaps a 305 cid V-8, or a 3.8L V-6, or something along those lines. This wouldn't work any better than the restrictor plates, as both the drag and power numbers would remain the same. It might break up the big pack a little to run a 3.0L V-6 or smaller engine, since it could be run unrestricted and the different engine programs would result in slightly different outputs, but really, if the cars all have 400 horsepower, they'll all run in a big drafting pack, regardless of whether it comes from a restricted 351 V-8, a three-liter V-6, or a battery-powered electric motor.
The only thing that will prevent the Big One from continuing to be a regular event at Daytona and Talladega is making a major change, so that the drivers can't run the tracks at full throttle, but instead have to slow for the corners. There's really only two ways to do this, and one of them is pretty much a non-starter.
The first option would be to "put the stock back in stock cars," by completely eliminating the downforce devices and adopting closer-to-production bodywork, plus tires of the same width as the production versions, at least at Daytona and Talladega. No splitter, no rear wing or rear blade, and narrow tires. It wouldn't be possible to take the turns--or the tri-oval--at over 180 mph any more, forcing the drivers to slow for them. This, however, is a non-starter for two reasons. First off, it eliminates all pretense of being able to run restrictor plate cars at other tracks, and vice-versa, which NASCAR still claims the CoT allows. Instead, teams would have to have completely separate Daytona/Talladega cars, with different bodywork and suspensions from the rest of the season, plus special narrow wheels for the narrower tires--at great cost. Second, and probably more important to NASCAR, there's a good chance that doing so would reduce the drag on the cars to the point where they could easily be topping 250 mph on the straights, and they'd run into the whole insurance issue again.
The second solution is the most drastic, the most expensive, and, frankly, the only truly effective solution to this issue. Shave the banking down at Daytona and Talladega. Reduce the banking in the curves from 33 degrees to 16.5 degrees, and in the tri-oval from 18 degrees to 9 degrees. This would be a major project, of course, and would drastically change the character of the tracks, but it would also force stock cars to slow down for the corners, resulting in average speeds similar to the current ones, and top speeds comparable to those at MIS and Fontana, but would put such a premium on handling that it would break up the packs, spreading the cars out to be able to make mistakes without disaster striking.
Of course, NASCAR and International Speedway Corporation will resist this solution until the very end, claiming that it's because it would "destroy the tradition" of the tracks by changing them from the configuration that Bill France, Sr., laid out for them. (Of course, the real reason is because they don't want to spend the money to reconfigure the tracks--it's far less expensive, for them, to just make changes to the cars to try and slow them down.) However, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
When Big Bill was designing Daytona, he specified that the corners be banked "as high as you can pour asphalt," in emulation of the old board tracks of the 1920s and 1930s, to allow spectators on the front straight to see the cars clearly in the corners. This isn't really much of an issue now, since most fans follow the races on television, and even those at the track tend to watch most of the lap on the big screens, rather than strain to see the cars on the high banks a mile away.
Talladega, however, was built for a very different reason. Big Bill had been a mechanic on an Indy car in the 1930s, and was caught cheating. When he was, he was banned for life from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. France, however, remained somewhat obsessed with Indy for the rest of his life, and many NASCAR traditions come directly from Indianapolis--the use of the rolling start, the tendency towards oval tracks, and the default 500-mile race length, just to name a few. France freely admitted that he built Talladega purely because he felt that Daytona wasn't fast enough, and he wanted to make an even faster track. While I can't find any confirmation of this, it's my suspicion that Big Bill's real motivation for building Talladega was in hopes of being able to hold races that were run even faster than the Indy 500; I wouldn't be surprised if, had he lived longer, he'd continued building larger, higher-banked, and faster superspeedways until NASCAR could surpass Indy as the fastest closed-course racing on the planet.
The results are tracks that are extremely fast, but, despite all the added safety features over the years (concrete walls replacing Armco guardrails, SAFER barriers, catchfences, better paving, paved infields off turns two and four, etc.), are simply not safe in their current configurations. Changes to the cars are like slapping a band-aid on a slashed jugular; they may seem to help, for a little while, but the fundamental problem remains, and it's just going to get worse. The only way to prevent more tragedies is to solve the root problem--and the only way to do that is to make major changes to the tracks.
I just hope that NASCAR and ISC can realize this before a driver--or, worse yet, a fan--is killed by the Big One.
(Richard D. Fox is a racing fan and engineering student from Howell, Michigan, about an hour's drive from Michigan International Speedway. While he watched his first races in the early 1980s, he didn't become a serious fan until the early 90s. Thanks go to Wikipedia for research data.)