NASCAR, Talladega skirt major disaster with Eric McClure wreck

NASCAR Nationwide Series driver Eric McClure pounded an inside wall equipped with a SAFER barrier on the backstretch of Talladega Superspeedway on Saturday in a vicious crash. Although the crash sent him to the hospital, he was only a few hundred feet away from crashing into a wall that could've done much more serious damage.

The SAFER barrier is a combination of steel and foam that absorbs energy during a hard crash. However, Talladega does not have SAFER barriers on all of its walls. In fact, an exposed concrete wall sits along the backstretch towards Turn 3 not far from where McClure hit.

McClure had to be airlifted out of the track and taken to the hospital for further evaluation after his #14 car collided with the SAFER barrier. Had he hit the nearby concrete wall, well, Talladega Superspeedway might have had a much worse situation on its hands.

That is why it is mind-boggling that race tracks still don’t cover every wall with a SAFER barrier. One of the common phrases about wrecks in auto racing is that if there is an unsafe spot at a race track, a car is sure to eventually find it.

Jeff Gordon found exposed concrete walls at both Las Vegas and Richmond in recent years, Elliott Sadler found an unsafe wall at Pocono two years ago, and several drivers found the walls surrounding the final turn at Watkins Glen to be very dangerous in the past few years.

Each of those tracks have since fixed its problems and retroactively installed SAFER barriers to cover the previously exposed walls, but why does it take a hard wreck to identify problem spots at a track?

Sure, SAFER barriers are expensive to install, but if tracks are going to fork out the money to install the barriers on some parts of their walls, why not cover every wall? Driver safety has to be a higher priority than money.

It is extremely unfortunate, and considering the technology NASCAR and its tracks have in 2012, slightly barbaric to not have SAFER barriers on any wall both on the outside and inside parts of the track, excluding pit wall because that would be a safety hazard for crew members going over the wall on a pit stop.

Most tracks, including Talladega, still don’t have SAFER barriers on their straightaways. Yes, a crash is more likely to occur in a corner, but a car running 200 mph on the bottom lane is going to hit the outside wall with quite an impact if it gets turned sideways.

McClure’s wreck showed that drivers can still be injured even with a SAFER barrier, but the severity of his injuries might have been much worse had he hit an unprotected wall.

Somebody is going to take a hard lick in Sunday’s race, but hopefully nobody finds a wall that doesn’t have a SAFER barrier.

Sadly, NASCAR officials, drivers, teams and fans still have to hold their breath and hope that doesn’t happen because hitting an unprotected wall is still a possibility.

Busch and Sadler truck battle might set up wild Cup race

The NASCAR fall weekend at Bristol got off to an early and rough start Wednesday night with the Camping World Truck Series race.

Kevin Harvick won the race, but that felt a little bit secondary to the action behind him throughout the night.

The race had nine cautions, but the big one -- and the one people will talk about for the rest of the weekend -- happened on lap 101 when Kyle Busch clipped the front end of Elliott Sadler’s truck, causing Busch to slam his right-front into the backstretch wall.

The race stayed green, and Busch limped around the track until Sadler came back around and he spun Sadler around to finally bring out the caution.

OK, so the two drivers had a dust-up at Bristol and Busch retaliated. That’s not terribly uncommon at Bristol, but Busch stoked the fire for the rest of the weekend by saying that Sadler wrecked him because he drives for Kevin Harvick Inc.

Unfortunately, Sadler actually drove the #24 truck owned by Joe Denette in this race.

Still, Sadler and Busch will both be in the Nationwide race Friday, and Busch and Harvick will be in the Cup race Saturday.

It’s unlikely Sadler and Busch would go after each other much more because Sadler is involved in the championship hunt in the Nationwide Series, but the Cup race could be another story.

Busch and Harvick have both been off of probation for a while now. And even though Harvick has said NASCAR told him to stay away from Busch on the track, talk is cheap.
If Busch starts to rough Harvick up, Harvick is almost certain to respond.

This could make for one of the best Bristol weekends in a long time. There have been a few moments this season where drivers really got upset with one another. Harvick and Busch at Darlington come to mind, and more recently the Greg Biffle and Boris Said incident at Watkins Glen. However, the biggest fireworks of the season could come Saturday night.

Harvick currently sits third in the points standings and Busch is already locked into the Chase. That means both drivers have very little to lose in the next three races, and they really have the least amount of pressure on them that they will for the rest of the season.

If both drivers are near the front toward the end of the race, we could certainly have a classic Bristol moment.

Bristol has been much tamer in recent years after the track was reconfigured, but Wednesday’s truck race may have brought back the edge to the World’s Fastest Half-Mile and could spice up the rest of the season.