By: Josh Anderson
A Multi Car crash disrupted the Daytona 500 after Joey Logano reported a problem with his car on lap 71, then caused a chain reaction of cars trailing him to wreck into each other and the wall. 10 cars in total were caught up in the crash but it seems no one was injured.
After the death of Dale Earnhardt, Nascar has made many changes to make the sport safer so severe crashes have way less of a chance to happen and if crashes do happen the risk of injury is lower.
Nascar made a shift focusing on safety intensively. Head and neck restraints were mandated, a safer barrier was installed in oval tracks, new inspection rules for seats and seatbelts that were much more rigorous. The cars also had a roof hatch escape installed and the Car of Tomorrow was developed with focuses on safety and used until the end of the 2021 season before being replaced by the Next Gen car in 2022.
Earnhardt’s death didn’t only affect the rules and regulations of Nascar. Steve O’Donnell, another driver, thought it was more than that. “SAFER barriers, same thing,” continued O’Donnell. “Why do the tracks need to put them in? Will it really make a difference? (Earnhardt’s death) helped speed along those conversations, but the culture is what Dale Earnhardt changed, and it was a full culture of all those things.”
Since Earnhardt’s death, no drivers have died in a competition in any of the 3 major series. “We’ve come a long way since 2001, but making our racing safer is something that is never over,” said John Patalak, NASCAR senior vice president of innovation and safety development. “Racing is still a dangerous sport, so we’ll continue to work on our safety research projects and continue to learn and look for ways to make racers safer within our industry. And we’ll continue to search for the next generation of tools that will unlock these future safety advances.”
