Once upon a time, Ricky Craven predicted a change in NASCAR.
He surmised that a day would come when drivers in NASCAR’s national divisions would look back and remember when they used to crash into bare concrete walls on a weekly basis.
Craven’s prediction has long since come to pass; most of today’s drivers in those series can’t even look back and remember the days before SAFER barriers, head and neck restraints and custom-made seats designed to protect them in the event of a crash. And because of that, a generation of fans has never known the stunning blow of learning that a driver passed away in an on-track incident in any of NASCAR’s national divisions.
After a series of fatalities — four over the course of less than two years, five if you add ARCA to the mix — all caused by the same type of injury, NASCAR engaged in what should be its most important project of the 21st century — making the sport safer.
And they succeeded. Since Dale Earnhardt’s death in the 2001 Daytona 500, there hasn’t been another press conference announcing a tragedy in NASCAR. No driver’s family has had to experience the numbing grief of loss because of racing, no fan has wondered what was next for the sport or who he or she was going to root for now.
Some of the safety measures NASCAR has implemented in that time included mandating SAFER barriers at any track wanting to host Cup races (there were and are a few exceptions for dirt tracks and some areas of road courses, but by and large, tracks have only increased the number of surfaces protected by those so-called “soft walls” since the early 2000s).
Drivers were required to wear head and neck restraints and full-face helmets to protect them from catastrophic injury. Each successive generation of racecar was safer than the last.
The so-called Car of Tomorrow was ugly as sin, but it was a step forward in safety. Thanks to it and SAFER barriers, Michael McDowell walked away from this crash at Texas.
The work NASCAR did to improve racing safety is perhaps its crowning achievement.
But time passes and people forget. NASCAR’s Next Gen car is the third new racecar since Earnhardt’s fatal crash. The fifth- and sixth-generation cars were underwhelming on the track, but each an improvement over the last in terms of driver safety. Drivers walked away from horrific crashes.
But 2022 feels different. The Next Gen car has raced well at a lot of…
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