September 8, 2007

by Ron Felix

Ricky Rudd was lucky and unlucky at the California Speedway last week when he crashed with 71 laps to go in the Sharp Aquos 500. Rudd, unlucky in a chain-reaction wreck where he hit the outside frontstretch wall in an area where there was no SAFER barrier, but lucky that the damage to him wasn't more severe.

It's beyond me why there aren't SAFER barriers on every inch of every race track that NASCAR races on -- but the NASCAR requirement for the SAFER barriers are mainly in the turns and coming out of the turns. Many tracks, some described as self-cleaning, still don't have the safety device attached to the inside walls. This is particularly bad at Dover where even a single car accident pulls the car toward the inside.

The driver could lose control on any part of the race track, and hit the wall hard enough to do some serious damage to the driver. Rudd's accident illustrated the need for another look at where the SAFER walls are placed.

"It could be a severe head injury considering the way the wreck was and the way these current cars are built and designed," said Rudd. "They’ve got one major inherent design flaw and that’s that the driver sits way too close to the left side of the car. His head is very vulnerable in an accident like that, so all the safety devices and everything worked great. I think I had one little problem with the seat and head rest combination that probably messed my shoulder up. Had it not been for that, I’d still be here 100 percent today."

The new cars, the Car of Tomorrow, will run all the races in 2008 and will alleviate that problem somewhat with the driver sitting further away from the left side door. But that still doesn't address the SAFER barrier problem.

"The wreck actually started sort of behind me," Rudd said. "It was like a chain-reaction on an interstate highway. I think Jeff (Gordon) hit the guy in front of him and he hit the guy in front of him. The wreck actually started three or four cars behind me and worked its way forward. I never saw what hit me. All I know is the car made an immediate right-hand turn.

"I happened to be on the front straightaway and we were running two or three wide at the time, so my car turned immediately right and I was in the fence as quick as you snapped your fingers. As far as where I hit, as far as I know, most tracks – not just California – the soft wall generally ends at the exit of the corner. What I hit was pretty solid. It was a pretty hard hit. It was a pretty hard impact."

Rudd was transported to a local hospital and left the speedway with a separated shoulder. There were reports that he had been knocked-out but that was never confirmed.

Safety measures have come a long way in the last ten years.

“I think as far as racing goes they’ve (NASCAR) done an excellent job. It’s a shame it took the death of Earnhardt," Rudd said. "I’ll be honest with you, before that I never considered our cars unsafe. We ran them for many, many years and really didn’t have many injuries until we started to see the fatalities with Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin and then Dale Earnhardt. A lot of safety innovations have taken place since that time. It’s unfortunate we couldn’t have had them earlier on, but I’m convinced that all three of those guys I mentioned would still be here today.

"We never thought of the cars being unsafe. Again, I ran for many, many years without any kind of left side protection to hold you in the car. There was no head rest, no left side rib support, no left side hip support, the leg extension braces we have on our seat, the way the steering column is arranged. This is the first year I’ve run all this stuff and I really have to thank David Gilliland for some of the stuff because we ran the Lajoie seat.

"In the past, my arms used to get tangled up in the seat and he sort of has a modified version of that seat. I drove his car in a test somewhere and I liked the seat a lot, so all of my seats are that way now. That good, safe seat is really probably what we owe most of the safety to as far as the wreck that I had with the head arrangement being so rigid and stiff, but, anyway, I think NASCAR does an excellent job – not that they didn’t do it in the past, but you kind of look at it before Earnhardt and after the Earnhardt situation. Since that time a lot of things have taken place in the emphasis of safety.”

If Rudd's shoulder doesn't heal sufficiently, he may have run his last race at California. If so it would be an even 900 career races.