Newest Safety Measures Saved McDowell's Life

April 6, 2008

By Kim Roberson

Kim Roberson

I have seen several hard crashes since I became a fan of NASCAR…one of them led me to become a fan in the first place. I was pretty sure when Jeff Gordon hit the wall in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, that was as hard of a hit as I might ever see a driver take and walk away.

That was, until Friday.

My dad and I had just come back from running errands and sat down to watch qualifying when Michael McDowell got loose in the 00 car on his second lap and went head on into the wall.

When you hear the guys in the booth say things like “Oh no…oh my gosh…..I have never seen anything like that in my life”, “That was an incredibly hard impact”, and “I have never seen one of these COT platforms take a hit like this”, you know you have seen something unusual…and slightly terrifying.

The crowd went suddenly silent as the car, now in what seems like a hundred pieces, smoldered after barrel-rolling somewhere between 8 and 12 times.

McDowell, who was attempting to make only his second Cup race, was seen moving in the car as soon as it came to rest. The fact that he was able to get out of the car and walk away on his own power was something close to a miracle. 20 minutes later, he was all smiles standing outside of the infield care center surrounded by more microphones than he had probably seen since media day back in February.

"I told the guys, 'Man, this thing feels really tight. I'm going to run another lap,'" he explained when asked about his perspective on the crash. "Then I got down in there and it just started to pull right on me. I tried to gather it up and as soon as I turned back to the right, the front tires hooked up and it started rolling down from there. I didn't lose consciousness, so I felt every roll down the hill.

"That's one of the worst wrecks I've seen, for sure, in a while and I'm not excited I had to participate in it."

Amazingly, the driver hadn’t even stopped flipping before he became angry…with himself. "I was just mad…I made some people mad last weekend and I made them mad again for holding up qualifying."

In the end, his thoughts were back with the guys who put the car together, and likely helped save his life. “I hate to make a lot of work for the guys back in the shop. I thank the guys back in the shop. They make these cars extremely safe. They spend the extra time padding everything. For me to walk away from that wreck, right there, is unbelievable. I'm going to count by blessings tonight and thank God for this opportunity to walk away from that wreck."

As Michael dealt with the press, his fellow drivers were watching the replays of the crash.

His boss says everything just stopped until he saw his driver was safe. “"Just from the time it stopped flipping until we saw Michael come out, it seemed like forever," said Michael Waltrip, who watched his youngest driver slam into the SAFER barrier and roll as he waited his own turn to go out and qualify. "That was an amazing crash… I'm very proud that our people build a safe race car. But I'm also so thankful to everyone for all the safety advancements made in racing over the last eight years. I'm thankful for the people who stepped up and said we need to make these cars safer."

NASCAR’s Jim Hunter agreed that it is the teams who make the cars as safe as they are today. “These teams, the way they build these cars and the advancements we have been able to make, it is just absolutely incredible to see a wreck like that and to see Mike walk away from the car laughing…that was a real hard hit.”

“Today was a really good indication of (the safety advancements)…that is the hardest wreck I have ever seen in qualifying.” Jeff Burton said Friday night. Burton, who has been a vocal proponent of making cars and tracks as safe as possible for the drivers and teams, was happy to see the car withstand the major hit. “Just a huge advancement that we have made, and everyone needs to be proud of that. Hopefully we can not have to learn the hard way and we have moved in that direction.”

"I'm real curious to see the data that they logged from that (impact)," added Tony Stewart as he waited to take his turn qualifying on the track. "Because, live, that was the hardest hit I've ever seen anybody take. That was a pretty impressive crash. It was just good to see him get out and walk around. That makes you look at what NASCAR's done and say that they're doing a good job of doing what they're doing with the car and the SAFER barriers…We've got a lot of people to thank today because of the hard work and the hours that we all don't know about, to take an accident like that and watch him get out and walk to the ambulance."

The fact that McDowell hit the SAFER barrier and pushed it at least a foot towards the concrete wall shows just how hard of a hit it was. The fact that has never happened before and a COT has never been sent flipping as the result of a wall impact, shows just how hard of a hit it was. The fact that he was held snug in his "Joie of Seating" seat, and his head was held in place with his HANS device so that he could climb out and walk away, waving to the crowd, and leave the care center suffering from “just a few bumps and bruises” when the same crash less than a decade ago might have left him unconscious…or worse…makes me want to give a big hug to the men and women who work so hard to make these cars safer.

I think we tend to feel a little complacent over the way that drivers are able to walk away from most of the crashes these days. I believe the number of drivers who have actually had to leave the infield to go to a hospital for further testing after a crash in the last five years can be counted on one hand. When we see guys hit the walls hard, like Jeff Gordon or Tony Stewart or Michael McDowell, we expect that they will climb out and wave and walk away. We expect that because the cars are better, the seats are more snug, the heads are held in place, and the walls absorb 180 MPH impacts and dissipate the energy, thus taking the jarring from the drivers body and moving it to the body of the car and the steel and foam of the wall.

Some fans complain that the new cars are ugly, and the crashes aren’t as spectacular because of all of the safety advances that have been made. They miss the old days when cars hit the wall hard and drivers weren’t so constrained.

Apparently they have forgotten names like McDuffie, Allison, Bonnett, Nemechek, Petty, Irvan and Earnhardt. They haven’t seen drivers named Irvan, Park, and Nadeau, who were in comas and near death and are clawing their way back to as much normalcy as possible.

They forget as recently as a year and a half ago, Ricky Rudd had his arm in a sling from a cracked collarbone and dislocated shoulder, and Tony Stewart had a broken shoulder blade. Just a few weeks ago, my blood turned cold when Tony hit the wall in Atlanta, and then came on his radio saying “I’m hurt” and “It’s my legs”.

I don’t know about you, but Friday’s crash reminded me just how dangerous a sport stock car racing can be, and how lucky we are that people have made it their life’s work to find ways to keep the men and women who are out there living their dream as safe as possible. Instead of getting ready to watch Michael McDowell race in his second ever Cup start today, we could be talking about how he was laying in a Texas hospital dealing with injuries he suffered Friday…or worse.

As a fan, I want to say thank you to the inventors of the SAFER barriers and the HANS device; I want to thank men like Randy Lajoie who took their experience as a driver and used it to create a seat that holds the driver in place during a crash; I want to thank the men and women at the shops across the NASCAR world who spend more hours in one week working on building these cars than a lot of us spend behind a desk in two weeks typing on our computers or answering the phone; finally, I want to thank the people who make the rules that require all of the above. Without all of these ingredients, I could be writing about a tragedy instead of a driver who walked away.

And for that, I am truly thankful.

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The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.

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