Racing damaged cars is NASCAR's newest safety issue

The Associated Press

After the hood of a car sailed into the grandstand, many in NASCAR began to wonder if damaged vehicles should be allowed to keep racing.

Winston Cup director John Darby has heard the talk caused by Robby Gordon's crash on July 5 at Daytona, and he says everything is being done to keep battered cars from becoming a hazard to fans and other drivers.

But the sanctioning body doesn't want to force cars off the track and deny them a chance to pile up points that result in bonus payments at the end of each season.

"The teams are told that if they're involved in an incident, they get one opportunity to come back to compete in the race," Darby explained. "In that one opportunity they have to maintain a minimum speed."

At Daytona that would be about 175 mph while healthy cars are doing 190.

No one likes to watch cars limp around the track, but with NASCAR scoring all 43 positions in each of 36 races that practice won't change.

"It's frustrating, but I've done it many times," said former Winston Cup champion Bobby Labonte. "I'm out there riding along thinking, 'Hey, if you go eight more laps you'll pick up another position.'

"Everything's falling apart, but you're trying to get that extra position because you know it's worth something at the end of the year."

Few realize that more than four-time series champion Jeff Gordon, who won his first title by 34 points in 1995, lost by 37 the next season and won by 14 in 1997.

"You feel like you have to be out there because the way the rules and point system is right now," he said. "Those three points or five points that you might gain could make the difference."

The IRL also scores all the cars, but CART awards points for only the top 12 finishers and Formula One for only the top eight.

The practice of racing with damaged equipment is as old as NASCAR itself -- more than a half-century -- but is driven more in this era by the emphasis on money.

"The points were created that way because they needed cars out there on the track," Gordon said. "Now we've got very few guys that are having problems staying out there."

But Darby insists that a damaged car can't maintain the minimum speed unless the suspension, chassis and aerodynamics are not too far off.

"The teams know that a quick fix or a patch job, 99 times out of 100, will not be adequate to put the car back on the racetrack and stay within the guidelines of that speed," he said.

Darby said the biggest problem is what isn't visible to NASCAR inspectors who examine the cars.

"Nine times out of 10, if something fails on the car after it's been involved in the incident, it's the unseen thing that failed," he said. "Obviously, if the tire's flat you're going to replace it. If it's got a slow leak, you might not know it."

In the case of Robby Gordon, it was a failure of the tether attaching the hood to the frame of his Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. A woman was slightly injured by the flying hood, and NASCAR responded with a rule that set a minimum size for the bolts attached to either end of the tether.

"We did a tremendous amount of testing last week and made our first reaction to it," Darby said. "And we may not be done with that process."

Seven-time Winston Cup champion Richard Petty, now a team owner, said that potential problems created by a quick fix have worried him for years.

"It's dangerous for the people; it's dangerous for the guys in a hurry trying to get the car back out there," he said.

Petty, who won a record 200 times, acknowledges he often raced in damaged cars. He says crew members usually do a good job to make sure the car can continue to meet the minimum speed requirement and stay together for the rest of the race.

Still, he'd like to see NASCAR come up with a way to limit who can return to the track and who can't.

Perhaps it should be, "'OK, you've got 10 minutes to get the car ready. If you can't get it ready by then, you can't go back out.'"

Jimmy Spencer said letting the cars go back out if they maintain a minimum speed is the right thing to do. But he's concerned about what happened at Daytona.

"I think that the speed you're going, when the hood gets air underneath it, that thing will blow off," he said. "You could put 10 tethers and that thing will still blow off."

There are plenty of other people with ideas, too. Darby said there are many crewmen who stumble across simple fixes.

When they talk, he listens, and passes on many suggestions to NASCAR's research and development division.

"We've been presented a lot of ideas already on things that I can take back to Gary Nelson and his staff and start putting into the testing plan for next week," Darby said, referring to NASCAR's chief of research and development.