2021 Daytona 500
- Thread starter bdcardinal
- Start date
AZjeff
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Good race if you like flying metal and mud and flames!! Pretty cool that an underdog (Arizona!) driver and team won, not so cool that it almost looked like he pushed the 2 into the 22 and started the wreck.
From what's been reported, it was not a good scene.
I just remember Schrader telling everybody; "I'm no doctor, but it don't look good."
...So sad.
I have the one or two hour long NASCAR investigation on VHS or DVD somewhere. Dale was out of the seat and his body was stuffed into the footwell. If you remember his lap belts failed because of some kind of installation problem. I remember them showing closeup pictures of his seat. The bottom of it was vinyl and it had partially melted because of the force of his butt shooting forward out of it. But the crash didn't even look serious.
I also remember them showing an in car shot of Johnny Benson. It was an ARCA race or something. He blew a tire or something and hit the outside wall. A minor impact, or so it seemed. But then Helton showed showed the in car shot. Benson had an open faced helmet. Upon impact his glasses flew off his face and his head nearly tore sideways off his body. I remember the audience at the investigation gasping at the sight. It was a graphic illustration on how violent even minor looking impacts can be.
Scott
I also remember them showing an in car shot of Johnny Benson. It was an ARCA race or something. He blew a tire or something and hit the outside wall. A minor impact, or so it seemed. But then Helton showed showed the in car shot. Benson had an open faced helmet. Upon impact his glasses flew off his face and his head nearly tore sideways off his body. I remember the audience at the investigation gasping at the sight. It was a graphic illustration on how violent even minor looking impacts can be.
Scott
Blunt force stopping is way, way, way worse than a car cart wheeling down the back stretch of a superspeedway. . . It's not really close... The car flipping 8 or 10 or 12 times disperses a whole, whole lot of the kinetic energy. Which is then not being applied all at once to a human body.
The G force applied to a person's body going from 160 mph to 0 in less than a tenth of a second is exceptionally high. A basilar skull fracture is a very likely possibility in an event like Dale's or Stanley Smith's. The HANs device addresses the weakest part of a driver's body in regards to a blunt force accident. Interestingly the HANs device actually was talked about and in use at a race in Rockingham all the way back in 96 I believe... I watched that old race and was quite surprised it was in development that early and one of the drivers in the field that day actually was using one.
Darrell Waltrips cart wheeling down the back stretch at Daytona was nothing... Compared to his massive high speed blunt impact into the old dirt berm wall coming off turn 4 in that Daytona 500. Thank goodness Cale Yarborough missed Darrel's car has it went back into the track in the tri oval. Darrell said he did not remember anything for the next few weeks.
And right after Dale's accident DW mentioned that "those are the types of crashes that hurt people." He knew that from his own experiences.
The G force applied to a person's body going from 160 mph to 0 in less than a tenth of a second is exceptionally high. A basilar skull fracture is a very likely possibility in an event like Dale's or Stanley Smith's. The HANs device addresses the weakest part of a driver's body in regards to a blunt force accident. Interestingly the HANs device actually was talked about and in use at a race in Rockingham all the way back in 96 I believe... I watched that old race and was quite surprised it was in development that early and one of the drivers in the field that day actually was using one.
Darrell Waltrips cart wheeling down the back stretch at Daytona was nothing... Compared to his massive high speed blunt impact into the old dirt berm wall coming off turn 4 in that Daytona 500. Thank goodness Cale Yarborough missed Darrel's car has it went back into the track in the tri oval. Darrell said he did not remember anything for the next few weeks.
And right after Dale's accident DW mentioned that "those are the types of crashes that hurt people." He knew that from his own experiences.
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