Highlights

Retired champ blasts NASCAR on safety

(AP)
Updated: 2006-10-14 09:05

CHARLOTTE- Former NASCAR champion Bill Elliott has some tough words for the racing series on safety and its response to the 2001 death of Dale Earnhardt.

In a new memoir, "Awesome Bill from Dawsonville: My Life in NASCAR," Elliott accuses NASCAR of not getting serious about long-standing safety concerns until after Earnhardt's fatal crash on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. He said that's disrespectful to the memory of drivers such as Adam Petty, Tony Roper and Kenny Irwin, who died in on-track accidents in the months before Earnhardt.

"No one called for investigations or softer walls, or HANS devices when these drivers died. But when Dale Earnhardt died, NASCAR went full bore, head over heels on safety," Elliott writes. "We ought not only address incidents that kill stars. Shame on NASCAR for letting a handful of good men die before finally addressing the problem after Dale died."

Elliott, who won NASCAR's top title in 1988 and now races a limited schedule, is in the Charlotte area this week attempting to qualify for Saturday night's Cup race at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

He also used his book to criticize NASCAR for its continued reliance on local medical teams to provide emergency care at tracks. Other racing series, including Champ Car and IRL, have mobile trauma units and teams of doctors that travel to all races.

"Fans would be shocked to know how poor basic first aid is at many NASCAR tracks," Elliott writes.

"I've been in so-called safety meetings where all it is, is a Joe Blow local EMT who works that particular race because he gets a (garage) hot pass," Elliott writes. "This is a true story: I had a guy after a wreck one time, a paramedic, who was riding with me in the ambulance. On the way to the hospital he actually asked me to autograph my oxygen mask for him."

NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter took issue with Elliott's statements.

"NASCAR has a team of traveling medical liaisons," Hunter said. "They know the driver records and have relationships with the drivers themselves.

"However, local expertise continues to be important because local doctors are fully licensed for each particular community and know the full network of doctors and specialists in the area. This strategy maximizes the safety and communications for our drivers."

Hunter said NASCAR is "completely dedicated" to safety, citing implementation of soft-wall barriers at some tracks, requirements that drivers wear head and neck restraints during races race and the creation of the NASCAR Research and Development Center in Concord.

All those changes have come about since Earnhardt's death.

Elliott writes that after he was involved in a serious crash at Talladega, Ala., in 1996, his wife Cindy spent a year working with a NASCAR committee that examined medical care in the series. Two primary recommendations of that group, he said, were creating a mobile trauma unit and a team of medical specialists, including an emergency room physician, who would travel with the series.

"(But) NASCAR turned it down," Elliott writes. "They rejected both the doctor and the mobile trauma unit. We still don't know why. I think they felt that with such a unit there was still too much residual liability to NASCAR. That scares them."

Instead, he said, emergency care remains the responsibility of local track owners — and all drivers still must sign waivers at every race that absolve NASCAR of responsibility for injury or death sustained on the track.

Elliott also notes that it was only after Earnhardt's death that NASCAR made sure the medical files of all drivers were available at every race. And the series has kept "black box" data recorders in drivers' cars only since 2000, the year Irwin, Roper and Petty died.

No driver in the top three NASCAR series — Nextel Cup, Busch and Trucks — has died in an on-track accident since Earnhardt, but Elliott remains concerned.

"I'm a realist — if it's your time, it's your time — but we need to do everything we can to prevent wrecks and to provide top-notch care for those guys who do wreck," Elliott writes.

Jeff Burton, who has raced full-time in Cup since 1994, said Thursday at Lowe's Motor Speedway that he has not read the book but that Elliott's opinion should be looked at and respected because of his long history in the sport.

"He's a very opinionated person," Burton said. "That's come through in this book, obviously. It's amazing how brave you get when you're not doing it anymore.

"Safety is a goal that can never be reached. We've got to always be pushing to do it better. In safety, I'm not leaving it up to NASCAR to tell me what to do. I make enough money to figure it out. I should care enough to figure it out."