Safety Common Sense From Michael Waltrip

Slow the cars at the center of the corner — that is Michael Waltrip’s solution for improved safety in NASCAR racing.

The Daytona 500 winner offered his suggestion in an interview on safety issues at the UAW-Daimler Chrysler 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

"Look at one thing - the center of the corner," Waltrip said. "If you’re slow there, you’ll be slower everywhere on the track. If you slow the cars on the straight they will still be fast through the turns. What you want to concentrate on is the middle of the corner: if they figure that out it will be better."

The driver of the Napa Auto Parts Chevrolet provided a level-headed overview of the safety controversy only two weeks after the death of his employer, Dale Earnhardt. Waltrip might have been expected to take an over-emotional response to the Earnhardt tragedy, as his career was rescued from ignominy when the racing legend offered him a ride for the 2001 season.

But he declined to criticize NASCAR, or offer sweeping generalizations about the four deaths that have hit the sport in less than a year.

"Any time I have gone into the NASCAR trailer with ideas, I have been received with open arms," he said. "What happens when you have a tragedy like Dale’s is that media people who don’t normally write about motorsport say, ‘What are you going to do about it now?’"

"But that’s so unfair. NASCAR and the teams have been working on this all along."

Waltrip was also restrained when asked if NASCAR’s new aerodynamic rules to provide closer racing on super-speedways had led to the 18-car pile-up at Daytona which saw Tony Stewart’s car go airborne.

"Listen to racers talking over the past ten years about restrictor plate racing, and you’d have heard them saying, ‘When’s the Big One going to happen?’" he said, playing down comments that the modified regulations had increased the risk of crashes.

The brother of NASCAR legend Darrell Waltrip even suggested that the drivers themselves were to blame for multi-car shunts. "What makes me mad about these wrecks is that we cause them!" he said. He hinted that smashes could be avoided by less impetuous driving.

"I know that when I started in the Daytona 500 I said to myself, ‘I’m not gonna wreck.’ And I didn’t,’ he said.

Waltrip confirmed that he is among the drivers using the HANS head-restraint device. "I wear it and it doesn’t bother me at all. I love what it does - it feels good. You can cinch your seatbelts way harder than before."

He added: "I have not hit anything yet while wearing it, so I don’t know what it will do. But I’m going to wear it everywhere except maybe on the road courses."

Waltrip spoke fondly of the offer from Earnhardt that reversed his career status from zero to hero. "If only you could imagine everything I’ve heard for 15 years on the negative side," he said. "The thing that’s good for me personally is that I know the reason I won Daytona: I won it last September when Dale gave me that car.

"People started telling me that the pressure was then on me to perform. But I said, 'The pressure's off!’ I went to Daytona and I was ready. I felt like I knew how to win."