Fans injured in NASCAR Nationwide Daytona race
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The Nationwide race at Daytona ahead of tomorrow’s Daytona 500 ended with an appalling crash in which 17 fans were injured, two severely, according to this report on ESPN.
Kyle Larson’s car was launched into the catch fencing after the last-lap crash in which 12 cars were involved.
Speed has ongoing live coverage, for those who can get it. They’re currently reporting that six patients have been admitted to a nearby hospital with trauma — all are in stable condition, but one is in critical condition.
[Edit: Meanwhile, the hospital spokesperson is saying something different: https://twitter.com/jeff_gluck . Best to wait for more definitive information, probably.]
I was watching the race and I got that same sick feeling I felt at Indy Car Vegas 2011. Thoughts with the fans, a truly shocking crash.
Worst accident I have seen in a while. Whatever happens on the track, spectator safety has to be the top priority.
Thought are with those injured, hope they all make a full recovery.
Apparently they have increased the seriously injured count to 12. Its terrible that things like this happen in sport today, but actually the crash is pretty ironic. The (outdated) “Safety Fence”, or “Catch Fence” did it’s job at keeping the car back, but it was the post (the same one that killed Dan Wheldon in Las Vegas two years ago) that did the real damage, tearing the engine off the car and tossing it into the stands.
I think if they want to continue racing like this, they need to rethink the catch fence. This design has been around since the mid-90s, and I think that we have advanced a little since then. Almost every other sport has, but oval racing seems to be stuck in the past.
I hope the fans are okay. Oval racing is dangerous, and sitting on the outside of a corner next to the catch fence is just a bad idea.
What do you suggest we replace the catch fence with then?
I can’t think of anything strong enough to stop a car which does not have support posts.The fence did the most important thing and stopped the car and the engine from hitting the fans.
A press conference on the crash is going on now, live updates here:
http://espn.go.com/rpm/nascar/notebook/_/page/130222RacingLiveNationwideDaytona/nationwide
There is a spectator video taken from the grandstand at the bottom of this web page… warning it doesn’t look good and it shows the injuries to spectators in the video…
http://www.buzzfeed.com/summeranne/enormous-crash-at-the-nascar-nationwide-drive4copd-race-in-d
Time to upgrade those catchfences… cars flying around have been happening way to often in recent years :S hope everyone gets okay, this is truly terryfing !
It’s difficult to say what exactly should be done because the catch fence actually did its job and kept the car from going into the stands. That being said, the car did tear a large whole in the fence and debris still got through which has always been a problem (same thing happened with Carl Edwards at Talladega in 2009).
I personally don’t have an answer right now on how to improve this safety feature. Spectator safety should be the top priority of every sporting event and many people were saved today by that catch fence being there, but I don’t know how to resolve this secondary issue.
Hope everyone is alright.
About time they looked at doing away with the pack racing, There may be fans out there who love it but I’ve heard many comments from drivers over the years which suggests that none of them do.
When you have a situation where you have 30+ cars all stuck in a big pack running side-by-side at 200mph, Your just waiting for the crash to happen & it always does because if someone at the front makes a mistake then everyone behind is left with nowhere to go. Also with all this bump drafting & 2-car tandem drafts your just making it more likely to happen as your encouraging drivers to make contact to push one another.
Regarding the catch fencing, Not much can really be done, Its been improved several times over the years, made stronger & higher with the top’s angled to try & defect debris back down towards the track.
However when you have a race car go into it at 150+mph there isn’t a lot you can do to ensure the fence remains in-tact & I actually think the fence held up about as well as you could expect.Been an Indycar fan I know that they looked at alternatives to catch fencing after Davey Hamilton’s crash at Texas in 2001 & Kenny Bracks accident at the same track in 2003. They looked at plexiglass & different constructions of the existing fencing & were never able to find anything better.
The plexiglass caused difficulties in terms of fans behind it been able to see through it & also generated glare from the sun which would have caused problems for both fans & drivers.@xbx-117 an easy solution would be two fences, one after the other, so it creates a corridor between the two and it makes the combo double strong… that way if something tears up the first fence, it’ll most likely stop in the second fence, which would not need to be as strong as the first one…
Well, that’s what we have here in Autodromo Oscar y Juan Galvez… I’m amaized they are just getting away with only 1 fence in Daytona, specially as it’s an oval and this sort of thing tends to happen a lot.
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