Bill Elliott's new book has come out recently, and a lengthy excerpt attacking NASCAR's safety record got published recently. Soon after the excerpt's publication, Elliott failed to qualify for the National 500 at Charlotte; cynics might snicker about the coincidence.
It is of course a coincidence. As for Elliott's excerpt, it deserves some analysis, because the major area of concern in the piece is NASCAR's continuing refusal to build a traveling medical staff for its races. NASCAR uses in-house track medical teams for its races and this is a sore spot with Elliott, who gives the strong impression to the reader that drivers are almost in as much danger from track medical teams as they are in actual crashes.
Elliott relates how his wife Cindy led an effort to form a traveling medical team and mobile trauma unit for NASCAR in 1996-7, an effort rejected by NASCAR. The more one delves into this issue, though, the less impressive becomes the argument for a traveling medical staff.
Elliott relates "you end up with a well-intentioned hodegpodge of local paramedics who have little knowledge of the specific safety and health issues that arise (in racing crashes) and little personal knowledge of the drivers and their records." Elliott cites an incident in the last few years at an unnamed Winston Cup race "where so many track workers crowded the car that EMTs could barely get to the driver."
In the case of medical people with little knowledge of the drivers and their records, a few years back a medical worker with a Winston Cup track (requesting anonymity) related to me that one big reason for this is that the drivers didn't even bother to meet the medical people or provide them with records; with race weekends becoming preposterously shorter the drivers are taking less and less time to meet the medical staffs at racetracks.
Elliott relates the story of Alex Zanadri's September 2001 crash in Germany where his legs were sliced off and Steve Olvey of CART's medical team saved his life. But can anyone seriously argue that the in-house medical staff of a Winston Cup track would somehow botch such an effort? Having lived through such near-disasters as Bobby Allison's 1988 Pocono crash and Stanley Smith's near-fatal melee at Talladega in 1993, I cannot for the life of me believe that a Winston Cup track would not have saved Zanardi's life as well as Doctor Olvey and his team.
Citing Indycar racing's traveling medical unit and their safety record ignores that Indycar racing endured a bloody period in the 1990s and early portion of the 2000 decade where drivers and spectators were getting killed almost every year, from Jovy Marcelo to Scott Brayton, to the near-fatal skyborne melee involving Alessandro Zampedri at Indianapolis in 1996, to Jeff Krosnoff and Gary Avrin's deaths at CART's Toronto GP, to Emerson Fittipaldi's near-paralyizing and career-ending crash at Michigan, to the deaths of spectators some 25 rows up the grandstands by flying wheel assemblies at Michigan and in IRL's aborted 1999 Charlotte race, to Greg Moore's death at Fontana, to Sam Schmicht's accident, to Zanardi's crash, and to Kenny Brack's near-fatal tumble at Texas. If you cite open wheel racing's safety record, don't be so smug as to assume it's really that much better than NASCAR's.
The Elliott excerpt at times becomes almost an infomercial for the Car Of Tomorrow as he argues for roomier cockpits - I'm still puzzled about that whole issue because I've never heard of an incident where a driver was trapped in a car specifically because the roofline was too small. He then goes off on the tired old rant about restrictor plates and how they supposedly cause more accidents because fields are more congested. Elliott forgets the fields were not congested in the 1970s restrictor plate era even though lead changes skyrocketed, and he also forgets that the fields in the first five or six years of the modern plate era weren't particularly congested. And as for the safety argument, it never worked because it has never been the "big one" melees that have caused injury - it's always been the "smaller" wrecks in more strung-out circumstances at other tracks; if anything the drivers are safer in those packs at Talladega than they are strung out at places like Atlanta and Charlotte, which have seen many a wreck in which being strung out merely gave a car a running start before impact - such as the wreck that all but ended Tina Gordon's career in 2004, Micky Hudspeth's severe melee at Atlanta in 1996, and many others.
Elliott says that NASCAR's use of restrictor plates "(is) using the cover of safety to manipulate the field into three-wide racing and closer finishes.....(the result is that) NASCAR (looks) more and more like hockey." Establishing a competitive parameter that maximizes the number of cars battling for the win - uh, isn't that part of what race sanctioning bodies are supposed to do? And looking more and more like hockey? That's a compliment, because competition at its best looks a lot like hockey - hockey is about coast to coast puck movement, hard checking, lots of shots on the goal, and goals. In racing, that kind of intensity is supposed to be the norm, and then some.
What transpired at Talladega with 63 lead changes among 23 drivers is the template for what great racing is supposed to be - this race makes all the other races not run at Talladega or Daytona this decade look dull. How can one not prefer this kind of racing?
Elliott thus misses the overlooked key element of the safety debate - the cars are some 25 MPH too fast almost everywhere they race. Why does NASCAR racing need 180-plus MPH speeds at Charlotte or Chicagoland? Why isn't 150 at a place like Pocono fast enough? Reducing speeds may not be foolproof - nothing is - but can it really not be more effective than the safety changes that have already been implemented?
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Elliott also gets to Dale Earnhardt and the breakage of his seatbelt in his fatal crash. Some mythology needs to be cleared up here - my understanding is that Earnhardt's belt was properly installed. The story goes that he was using a pull-up belt, where the adjuster is underneath the driver, as opposed to more common pull-down belts; Earnhardt switched to pull-up belts after he tumbled in his Busch car during 1989 Speedweeks practice and the adjuster cut into his chest.
And in noting NASCAR's reactive record on safety, Elliott inadvertantly cuts to a real heart of the matter in noting how NASCAR did not take action on pit safety until the death of Elliott's crewman Mike Rich in 1990. This actually shows where NASCAR often gets it wrong. In examining what to change in the wake of Rich's death, virtually no one noticed the effect brought on by NASCAR's then-still-new rule closing pit road when a caution flies. Before 1989 drivers often dove into the pits before taking a yellow, and pit crowding was far less frequent than today. The rule closing pit road led to far greater pit crowding and several scary pit crashes ensued - Jimmy Spencer rammed into the air by Darrell Waltrip at Talladega in 1989; Stanley Smith hit by Jim Sauter and plowing into Tracy Leslie's pit crew with Leslie's car on the jack at Talladega in 1990; several pit collisions during 1990 previous to the fateful November 1990 Dixie 500. Pit collisions have continued, most notoriously at Homestead in 2001 that led to the requirement for pit crews to wear helmets.
Elliott has missed the point that this all illustrates the absurd approach NASCAR has often used - instead of attacking the core problem (here the pit closure rule), it attacks symptoms. It's as if NASCAR does not want to admit they were wrong to implement the pit closure rule to begin with, and this myopic approach has colored a lot of NASCAR's management of the sport since the early 1990s - the field freeze and lucky dog rules, both ostensibly related to safety but which provide ample opportunity to manipulate the racing, are further graphic examples - both came because of Dale Jarrett's crash at NHIS in September 2003 where the leaders, alerted to the wreck, slowed down only to see Michael Waltrip suddenly bull forward to lap a car and thus nearly cause another problem; it was blame the rule instead of the actual guilty party (here Michael Waltrip).
NASCAR also suffers from the NASA Syndrome - NASA is notorious for taking a simple solution and complicating it up beyond all reason and all recognition. For NASCAR the COT is the prime example. It is meant to improve the racing by reducing aero-dependency, but the use of the simple, inexpensive bolt-on roof spoiler package with a larger rear spoiler with wicker, will achieve the same results but with far greater effectivensss due to vastly increased drafting power. But simple solutions do not seem to be anyone's forte anymore.
The Bill Elliott excerpt ultimately provides another example of the reality that being outspoken is one thing, but not necessarily being right when being outspoken makes the act of being outspoken a liability more than an asset.
Ultimately, methinks Bill Elliott doeth protest too much.
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