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CUP: How Safe Is Safe Enough?
Written by: Tom Jensen   
10/30/2009
Talladega, AL
 
Carl Edwards and Ryan Newman wreck on the last lap at Talladega Superspeedway during the NASCAR Sprint Cup race in April 2009. (Photo: LAT Photographic) ยป More Photos

It happened back in April, the last time the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series raced at Talladega Superspeedway, and again in July at Daytona International Speedway.

And there’s a strong chance it will happen again on Sunday at Talladega: Two drivers race ahead of the field on the last lap, motoring towards the start-finish line at speeds upwards of 190 miles per hour. The leader goes to block the second-place car, which is trying to pass. Contact. Crash. A violent, high-speed impact.

For Carl Edwards , contact with Brad Keselowski on the last lap at Talladega in April put him first on the hood of
Ryan Newman's car and then up into the catchfence, where a piece of debris off his car went into the stands and broke the jaw of Blake Bobbitt, a 17-year-old race fan from Rogersville, Ala., who was there watching the race with her family. Six other fans suffered lesser injuries.

For Kyle Busch, a bump with Tony Stewartas
the two went for the victory at Daytona sent him hard into the wall, and his season into a tailspin. He came into the race eighth in the Sprint Cup points standings; two races later, he was 14th en route to missing the Chase for the Sprint Cup for the first time since his rookie season of 2005.

This time out at Talladega, the catchfence on the frontstretch has been raised from 14 to 22 feet tall and the restrictor plates on the engines the cars are using this weekend are 1/64th of an inch smaller than those used the last time before here.

But speeds aren’t appreciably slower this time around and drivers say there’s a strong likelihood of another race-ending crash.

“I think the smaller plates will keep the pack together more. My incident with Brad in the spring was just two cars,” said Edwards. That’s all it took was two cars there, so in that respect, I believe that with the smaller plate, those two cars would have been going slower so maybe it would have been better. There would have been less chance of the car leaving the ground, so, in that respect, it’s good.”

But he quickly added, “As it is right now, we’re stuck in the one big pack. The smaller plate is only gonna magnify that or amplify the chance for that.”


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