Daytona 500

[flyer85]

I follow the sport. I really enjoy the "feud of the week". As enterntainment it has moved way beyond just racing.

[Danny Serafini]

Of course it counts to those who knew him, like his family but it still doesn't mean it happened during a race. My point is simple, if NASCAR didn't care about safety, or whatever it is that you are saying, there would be more deaths than one in the last 16 years and I'd gladly make this point to Kyle Petty if you want to produce him.

Wow. I'm almost speechless. I can't believe you're actually trying to make such a stupid argument as to say because multiple drivers die in practice but only one was in a race that it makes the safety problems less severe. Do you understand just how ridiculous you sound? Seriously. Do you not realize that an accident during a practice session is just as dangerous as during a race? That the hit is no different? It's OK to allow drivers on the track with substandard safety equipment and with a fixable flaw in the cars because most of the tragedies happen on Saturday instead of Sunday? The problem is not the race, it's the car and the safety equipment, and that accounted for more than one death.

These massive packs are usually a result of caution flags. There is no way around this. You have late race cautions, you are going to have bunched up drivers who want to win. Smaller engines that go faster are not going to solve this.

Sure the cars are bunched right after a yellow. The problem with restrictor plates is that the cars are still bunched 25 laps later because no one can drive away. The cars don't stay bunched like that at any other tracks. Obviously the problem is the plate. Remove the plate, remove the problem. And I'm not saying the cars have to go 210. Put a smaller, more responsive engine that goes 185, same speeds as today, and you wouldn't have the massive glob of cars. The drivers would actually be able to race, instead of just get stuck in a pack and need five guys lined up behind him to try and make a pass.

Since this is a baseball board, I'm curious as to what rule changes you would expect baseball to make if a couple of coaches were killed during batting practice after being drilled in the head while tossing BP?

Would you expect Selig to order nets placed in front of the pitchers during actual games so as to not compromise safety?

This isn't even worth a response. Now you're just being absurd for the sake of being absurd. You're taking an outlandish theoretical that's never come anywhere near happening and trying to make some sort of bizarre parallel with an actual situation.

How is this safer? Going 25 MPH higher is safer?

Maybe you reduce the risk of wrecks but what happens when wrecks do occur and the top speed has been increased by 25 MPH?

You can't tell me that would be, SAFER?

Sure I can. Breaking the cars out of those packs would greatly reduce the chances of a major accident, and therefore reduce the chance of injury for the drivers. I don't know how long you've been watching, but if you were watching in the mid-'80s you saw exactly what I'm talking about. The cars were getting up to 210 then, and the massive accidents that are commonplace today were rare then. And drivers weren't getting hurt at an abnormal rate in crashes back then. You're safer to get in an accident at 210 in a car that's designed to absorb a hit at 210 than you are to hit at 185 in a car that isn't designed to absorb a hit at 185.

[MaineRed]

You might have less accidents but you still are going to have accidents and when those accidents occur they are going to be uglier because of the increased speed.

You're safer to get in an accident at 210 in a car that's designed to absorb a hit at 210 than you are to hit at 185 in a car that isn't designed to absorb a hit at 185.

If they can't design a car that in your opinion is not up to snuff going 185, what is going to magically make them safer going 210?

I really don't get all this discussion about massive accidents. The Daytona was pretty clean and the cars were not all bunched up like you are talking about. When Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch wrecked there was hardly anyone else around as they had pulled away, just the kind of racing that you claim is impossible at Daytona due to the restrictor plates.

Regardless of the track you have these bunch up after cautions and your typical NASCAR race has a lot of cautions. This keeps the field tight, restrictor plates or not. If you like two or three cars zooming a quarter of a mile out in front of everyone else on every restart, this is probably not your kind of racing. I can bore myself to sleep watching the Indy 500 for that.

the massive glob of cars. The drivers would actually be able to race, instead of just get stuck in a pack and need five guys lined up behind him to try and make a pass.

When you have 43 guys bunched up and they all want to get to the front what do you expect to happen? Seems you want some guys to just disapear into thin air so others can get by. I just don't get what you are trying to say. If your car is faster than the guy in front of you, you can get by him. Period.

Tony Stewart fell to the rear of the field and then weaved his way up through traffic without the aid of five guys lined up. Dale Junior fell to 34th and then got as high as 5th without the aid of a big long line of cars. When Kevin Harvick came from nowhere to pass Mark Martin he did so with the aid of one car, Matt Kenseth, not the five you say is required to make a pass.

[Danny Serafini]

If they can't design a car that in your opinion is not up to snuff going 185, what is going to magically make them safer going 210?

It does seem counterintuitive to think a car built in 1985 would be better suited for an accident than one built in 2000. The difference is that the chassis itself has been made stiffer and stiffer over the years. It's logical to do that, the stiffer you can make it the less the cars will flex, they'll hold their setup more consistently, the car grips better and it's faster. The problem is that the cars became so stiff that they lost the give that's necessary in an accident. You have to have the car absorb some of the impact, that's why some parts are made to crumple the way they do. Every bit of force the car absorbs is that much less that gets transfered to the driver. With the cars becoming so stiff they weren't crumpling enough and absorbing enough energy, so it got sent through to the driver. It was a problem that could've been fixed with a rules change, but NASCAR refused to acknowledge it. They wanted to take the focus away from the cars, which they believed they could be held liable for.

Now, I will give NASCAR some credit for the next part. By trying to shift the blame away from their cars, they decided to move it to the tracks and the concrete walls. That's how the SAFER barrier started coming about, as the moved the crumple zone from the car to the wall. And that has turned into a good thing, so I'll give them credit for the work they did there. But it still would've been cheaper and quicker to fix the cars, and they still could've worked on walls in the meantime as a future fix.

It's not like this problem had never come up before either. In the '80s the NASCAR Modified Division had a terrible stretch where something like 8 drivers were killed in a 2 or 3 year span. Eventually they figured out that they were building the chassis too stiff. There were accidents where the car needed nothing but minor repair and could've been back in action that day, but the driver was dead. It turned out the cars were such tanks that they absorbed hardly any energy at all. I'm not going to get on the car builders' case, because at the time they just didn't know. They learned from it and made the cars better. But in the late '90s and early '00s when injuries and deaths were popping up because of the same problem, NASCAR did know and turned its head. That my issue.

I really don't get all this discussion about massive accidents. The Daytona was pretty clean and the cars were not all bunched up like you are talking about.

It started pretty clean, but it turned into a slopfest towards the end. Before that last wreck there was the one with McMurray that was a perfect example of the problems of plate racing. Would that wreck have been anywhere near as large if the cars weren't forced to run in a giant pack? Of course not. And they were lucky they didn't get one in that mess that eventually ended in Blaney pulling that crazy move that took out Schrader. The main point is, how often do you see a restrictor plate race that doesn't have a 15 car accident? Now how often do you see a non plate race that does have a 15 car accident?

When Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch wrecked there was hardly anyone else around as they had pulled away, just the kind of racing that you claim is impossible at Daytona due to the restrictor plates.

Maybe not impossible, but unlikely. What usually happens when a car tries to pull away? It gets a couple of car lengths out, and then the pack swallows it back up.

When you have 43 guys bunched up and they all want to get to the front what do you expect to happen? Seems you want some guys to just disapear into thin air so others can get by. I just don't get what you are trying to say. If your car is faster than the guy in front of you, you can get by him. Period.

Tony Stewart fell to the rear of the field and then weaved his way up through traffic without the aid of five guys lined up. Dale Junior fell to 34th and then got as high as 5th without the aid of a big long line of cars. When Kevin Harvick came from nowhere to pass Mark Martin he did so with the aid of one car, Matt Kenseth, not the five you say is required to make a pass.

They absolutely had the aid of a string of other cars coming up through the pack. If they would've pulled out to pass and no one went with them they would've fell straight to the back like a stone. You simply don't see a car pull out and pass without another car pushing behind. Guys like Earnhardt are able to move up partly because they are faster, but partly because people will work with them more. If someone back in 30th saw Earnhardt working with one lane of traffic and Tony Raines working the other he's going to draft Earnhardt because it gives him a better chance to get up front. If everyone made a conscious effort not to draft with Earnhardt he'd run 30th all day, because it doesn't matter how fast you are if no one works with you. You can not just pull out and pass a car by yourself.

[Sean_CaseyRules]

Go Toyota!

First season in Nascar. Seems like this is the one sport you dont get a break in.

Michael Waltrip is my favorite driver!