Texas sized Nascar crash
Anyone catch that crash of Mike McDowell during Friday's Cup qualifying? Mean crash that without the Safer barriers and the new car and the head and neck system, he would be dead. Broke the Safer wall to pieces after piling head-on into the wall at about 190. He entered Turn 1 at about 200 and the car jumped loose, he tried to save it and overcorrected real badly turning himself head-on into the wall. The only saving grace was that he still had a lot of lateral movement and did not come to dead stop due to the Safer barrier acting as more a bounceback device. The car continued moving around the track instead of just stopping within a 100 feet of the impact zone.
Yahoo Sports is saying NASCAR may want to look into parking him due to inexperience at the lower levels. Yes, he raced ARCA and did great but their thing is, he only raced a couple of Truck and Busch races before going into the Cup car and his resume is not as long as Sam Hornish, Franchitti or Montoya. Inexperience did have a part in the crash but not for the reason they are getting at in my view. He said he felt something funny coming off of Turn 4, a driver with experience would have instantly aborted lap 2 and slowed way down going into 1. An experienced driver needing to make a 2nd lap in order to get into the race would have stayed after it but they would have done the opposite reaction of McDowell. The old adage for young drivers is to simply turn the wheel left and lock it down. Had he done that instead of trying to save it, he might have backed into the wall and it would have been at a much slower speed. What Yahoo Sports is getting at, is that he has no business being out there in the first place because he was a little spooked by the speed they were carrying going off into the corners and that he needs to run the lower levels first. The kid raced open wheel for a bit, speed isn't the problem. It was the fact he was in a car that is unpredictable and even the seasoned vets never know what is going to happen each time they go off into the corner. That is what spooked him just like it did to the vets at Atlanta on the hard tire.
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