Wreck puts focus on safety
Officials eye answers after Dillon’s crash
Daytona Beach, Fla. — Riding bumper-to-bumper at nearly 200 mph, Austin Dillon was smack in the middle of a pack of cars headed to the checkered flag when he was suddenly sent on the ride of his life.
A wreck that began three rows ahead of him sent cars spinning all over the track. When one turned into him, the force of the hit flipped his car up and over two others. Dillon sailed nearly upside down into the Daytona International Speedway catchfence with such a hard hit that it nearly brought his 3,500-pound car to a sudden stop.
The fence acted like a slingshot, sending the sheared race car back onto the track, where it landed on its roof and was hit again while the engine block smoldered nearby. Left behind were a handful of fans who received only minor injuries from the debris, and a gaping hole in the fence, the mesh torn away. And Dillon? Nearly everyone in NASCAR feared the worst looking at what remained of his car. Instead, he was helped out by rival crews and he gave the “I’m OK” two-handed wave used by late bullrider Frost Lane to the stunned crowd.
“It happened so quick,” said Dillon, the grandson of car owner Richard Childress and the first driver entrusted to drive the famed No. 3 that had been out of use since Dale Earnhardt’s fatal 2001 crash at Daytona.
“You’re just holding on and praying that you get through it, get to race again,” he said. “I just wanted to get out of there and let the fans know that I was OK.”
Dale Earnhardt Jr. was near tears as he pulled into victory lane early Monday after watching the last-lap wreck in his rear view mirror. Runner-up Jimmie Johnson said Dillon was lucky to be alive.
That Dillon walked away with only a sore arm and tailbone, and only five fans suffered minor injuries, was a testament to NASCAR’s evolving safety improvements. Although Kyle Larson walked away from a similar accident in a 2013 race at Daytona, his car hit the fence wheels-first instead of roof-first as Dillon’s did. The fence also was shredded, and the debris field injured 28 fans.
Daytona has since reinforced its fencing, and part of the track’s ongoing $400 million renovation project has moved seating back a bit from the fence.
NASCAR Chairman Brian France said Monday that series engineers began examining the accident just five hours after Dillon’s crash in the rain-delayed race.
“This is auto racing. We are going to have challenges and we are going to have hard crashes,” France said. “You learn from every single one of these things. The real good news for us is this is what we do: We have an entire group of people who woke up today trying to figure out how to make things better.”
But no solution will likely ever be perfect. Although Johnson agreed with Dillon that slower speeds might help, “there’s no guarantees.”