Wrap Them Up in Cotton Wool

by Tammy

Watching Twitter during a race has to be almost as fascinating as watching the race itself—especially if it's NASCAR, and especially when there are wrecks.

NASCAR was at Daytona last weekend, which means restrictor plate racing (which I still don't understand the fun of) and the possibility of "the big one" because the cars are all bunched together with only parking-lot spacing between them as they do something like 200 m.p.h. Saturday night for the Cup race, there were a number of "big ones"—including two on the last lap alone.

But it was the big one that collected (and bounced and shredded) Denny Hamlin's car that was probably the most scary, given that he's wrecked badly already this season and hurt his back. (He seems to be fine; certainly he got out of the car and walked to the ambulance on his own steam.)

Two points about that accident stood out to me:

1. It reminded me a lot of the kind of impact Dale Earnhardt had in his fatal wreck just a few hundred yards away, but with a dramatically different result. (Watch Hamlin's crash Saturday, and Earnhardt's crash in 2001.)
2. Twitter lit up with the information that where Hamlin crashed, there were no SAFER barriers installed. Lots of people were outraged over that fact, and I gather that there were probability studies done about where they were most needed at Daytona International Speedway, and not every location around the 2.5 mile oval made the cut.

Here's my basic question: how much should tracks and series and organizing bodies try to protect drivers from impact?

That's going to sound harsh, and of course I don't want anyone seriously hurt. But should Daytona have SAFER barriers on both sides of the track, all the way around? Should Le Mans tear out trees along Tetre Rouge and put in more spongy barriers so that someone like Allan Simonsen isn't killed running into it? Should IndyCar or F1 cars have kevlar bubbles over the cockpit so no one's hurt like Felipe Massa or killed like Dan Wheldon? At what level of racing should the safest-possible seat (or belts or helmet or whatever) be mandated, so more aren't killed as Jason Leffler was? 

Do we wrap them up in cotton wool, these racing drivers? Where do we draw the line of trying to make an inherently dangerous activity safe? I don't know the answer....

Writing About the Crashes

by Tammy

I've felt a bit ghoulish the last few days. You see, I've gotten back to my work on the second book in the Kate Reilly Racing Mystery series, and it starts with a bang. Literally. It starts with a wreck. So I've been searching for videos of crashes and trying to understand what each driver involved was thinking and trying to do, what went wrong with their plans, and what went wrong with other conditions, such as weather, surface, traffic, etc.

In some ways, it's a fascinating abstract problem. It's all too easy sometimes to watch something like NASCAR and think of the cars as easily regenerated items. I mean, that's not too farfetched, right? We see them, good as new, week after week, no matter what kind of crumpled mess they end up in the week before. And since NASCAR drivers are so rarely hurt badly these days, crashes seem almost fun.

I won't go into the terrible reminders we've had this year that crashes are often very serious, and can be deadly. I'll just say that safety has come a long way.

I haven't found a video of exactly what I want to happen in Kate's crash (suffice to say this accident needs to result in specific outcomes), but I've watched a couple others to get a feel for how an out-of-control car moves in the location I've chosen, as well as around the rest of the track.

Those of you who know racing have already figured out the track I'm working with: Road America (track map above). And I'm betting you've all also figured out what turn I'm talking about. Yes, the Kink, where GT2 Corvettes reach more than 145 m.p.h. and pull up to 2.6Gs. Through a turn. As Jan Magnussen said of it, “If you’re willing to take a risk, you can gain a lot – or lose a lot. That makes it really exciting.”

Exciting is one word for it. Just ask Katherine Legge, who walked away only mildly bruised from a spectacular wreck in the 2006 CART race.

Though I feel like I'm protesting too much, I'm really not someone who enjoys the wrecks, except for what they tell me about what a driver is thinking and trying to do ... and getting wrong. I guess I'll have to live with a bit of ghoulishness, in pursuit of the story I want to tell.