Ever since the introduction of the Next Gen car, driver safety has been one of the most talked-about aspects of the sport. With some believing that safety has come at the cost of the racing product, few can say that the changes have not been justified. And when someone like Tony Stewart, who has been known to speak his mind about everything he feels is wrong about NASCAR, comes out to praise the governing body’s effort in this regard, no other case can be made with much credibility.
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The SHR owner recently came on The Pat McAfee Show to discuss a whole host of things, including where he feels the sport has improved, how his career is panning out post-NASCAR, and why the sport lacks recognizable faces like Jeff Gordon presently.
Tony Stewart feels NASCAR has come a long way after Dale Earnhardt’s Death
The three-time Cup Series champion went full-time in the Series in 1999, at a time when there were no head and neck restraints, no containment seats, and not many provisions that protected the drivers in case of a crash. According to Stewart, all of this changed after Dale Earnhardt’s tragic death at Daytona in 2001, when the sport took major steps to ensure driver safety.
Stewart said, “Well, they did as much as they knew they knew they could do at the time but then after Dale Sr.’s accident, everybody really put a lot of focus on making sure how do we keep this from happening again. There were guys getting killed in race cars, I mean, it’s always been that way. But every decade, the amount of guys that die in race cars keeps getting smaller and smaller. and the injuries are smaller and smaller.”
“I mean, you still have big injuries, still have guys getting paralyzed, you have guys that get brain trauma. But the amount of opportunities and the amount of times that happens keeps getting smaller and smaller and the sport keeps getting safer and safer.”
Tony Stewart believes it has not been just NASCAR
Stewart is one of those few racers who have achieved success across multiple race formats, not just NASCAR. Currently, he participates in NHRA and SRX Series, and his ownership duties with Stewart-Haas Racing mean he is as close to the developments in the sport as he ever was.
Detailing how motorsports, in general, has seen a lot of developments in this regard, Stewart added, “And it’s across the board, it’s not just NASCAR, not just IndyCar, Sprint cars, NHRA, drag racing. Everybody put a full-court press on how do they take the cars in their series and find a way to make it safer to keep these drivers from being hurt.”
“I mean the safety side of it, both in NHRA, IndyCar, NASCAR has come a long way in the last 10 years.”
Fair input from Stewart. While NASCAR can be criticized, fairly or unfairly on its experiments and their output, driver safety is one aspect where the governing body has undoubtedly looked after its own in the best way possible.
