Tony Stewart, this is not good

[Tervuren]

Originally Posted by KC911

One of my cousins married into a "3rd generation racing family" that been racing there probably 60+ years. Though I've been by Bowman Grey hundreds of times, I've never been inside. I think it started out as a dirt track after WWII, but I'm not sure. Anyways, I only see Jason a couple of times each year at large (60-70 people) family Thanksgiving/Christmas dinners, and have only mentioned his racing once...after I'd seen him and his older brother (Bert) on a late night BG TV race a few weeks before. I just mentioned that it must be a "blast" and he agreed. At these events I'm more preoccupied with his cute little girls (they're growing up though) as is he, as they're playing with the youngins like my grandnieces. Simply the nicest fellow you could ever meet imo, and he's the anti-thesis to some of the stereotypes presented on this thread. Though he's certainly no millionaire like TS, he makes a decent "living" supporting his wife and kids doing what he loves, "racing"...it's in his "blood" so to speak...doing what his dad and grandfather did before him. Jason is pretty competitive I do believe as they occasionally mention him winning on TV (and his brother is even more so), in the "top" division there. Different strokes folks....

Ah, I know them. They sit in a special bit of old America that is dissapearing. The series they race in - if you race in any pro series - you're no long able to race in this series. They work on their own cars, and know whats it like when they tear stuff up. Yes they ram cars under yellow, but its between a select few families, and not into any poor "up and comer". They and their family may have built the car or engine that is racing beside them.

The kids in the vids that were linked driving late models - are a totally different story, and are very destructive, with no thought to the consequences. They think they are the next great big thing, fortunately, the pro-race teams know the truth. With a big enough check, they can get into the pro level, but its millions/year to join the top three series of NASCAR without a sponsor, so that typically doesn't happen.

[URY914]

But Tony's car had a misfire. You can see the exhaust smoke skip a cylinder in the video. Everybody knows those cheapa zz Rockwell sprint car sound analyzer are no good. Just take an empty Busch beer can and hold it up to your ear. You can hear DW sayin' "boogity boogity boogity".

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by VaSteve

Ha ha. Yes and wouldn't the crowd be dirty as well?

We are, especially with the more powerful cars. I don't see rooster tails, but there is a shower of dust when the cars come by and the smart money wears hats and goggles.

[LakeCleElum]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

We are, especially with the more powerful cars. I don't see rooster tails, but there is a shower of dust when the cars come by and the smart money wears hats and goggles.

[ZOA NOM]

Originally Posted by URY914

I'm amazed you can see "TS CLEARLY stabbed the throttle to toss the car towards Ward" when no one else can.

The engine you hear on the video cannot be TS car. The video was shot from the grandstand and I sorta doubt there was a remote mic on the car. The engine noise came from a car on the front straight.

Agree to disagree. It was clear as can be, and the results support the obvious.

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by Tervuren

Ah, I know them. They sit in a special bit of old America that is dissapearing. The series they race in - if you race in any pro series - you're no long able to race in this series. They work on their own cars, and know whats it like when they tear stuff up. Yes they ram cars under yellow, but its between a select few families, and not into any poor "up and comer". They and their family may have built the car or engine that is racing beside them.

The kids in the vids that were linked driving late models - are a totally different story, and are very destructive, with no thought to the consequences. They think they are the next great big thing, fortunately, the pro-race teams know the truth. With a big enough check, they can get into the pro level, but its millions/year to join the top three series of NASCAR without a sponsor, so that typically doesn't happen.

Other than knowing Jason is just a really nice guy, I just learned more about him and his family's operation than I knew...Thanks! Naw, they're not "local legends" like the Petty's (I went to a b-ball camp that Kyle attended too when I was 12 yo....another SUPER nice guy imo) but they "are" local legends when folks like my parents know the "family name".

BTW guys...I read on the Internet ('cause I'm typing it now) that TS actually runs NGKs on the left side and Bosch plugs on the right side...gives him a distinctive sound that can be detected by astute folks LIKE ME from 1 mile away....it's gotta be true I'm tellin' ya....I wouldn't fib...HONEST

[emcon5]

Originally Posted by ZOA NOM

Agree to disagree. It was clear as can be, and the results support the obvious.

Sprint cars turn with the throttle. And you don't know what you are talking about.

[MRM]

Originally Posted by yellowperil

Why would anyone open this thread (at it's onset) if they didn't know who Tony Stewart was??

I don't think anyone really clicked on the post without knowing who Tony Stewart is. He isn't that famous, but anyone familiar with pop culture recognize the name. I was poking fun at Denis for first thinking he was a chef. Denis is usually more hip than that. it wasn't the best Star Trek franchise ever, but it was fun and I'm sure plenty of people remember him fondly. I was sorry to hear about his accident.

[skipdup]

Obviously sprint cars use throttle to turn at speed.
But is it right to imply they "must" turn with throttle, especially when talking about something that happened at low speed?

[skipdup]

Also, anyone else shocked by the visibility in the video above (GP at eye-level).
Everyone's been saying these guys have to drive, essentially, by braille.
Confusing...

[VaSteve]

I read somewhere else that had a nice annotated video showing that Ward jumped and grabbed the wing of TS's car. I also found the below video on Rennlist from Monday where I kind of thought the same thing. It should be pretty easy to tell from handprints on the wing of that was the case.

[intakexhaust]

I'm wondering what Gene Haas is thinking. The F1 community doesn't want the NASCAR mentality. And if they did, I doubt the fans would.

Anyhow, the Stewart-Haas roster may know how to drive but all are knuckleheads fighting among themselves and others on track. That Ward kid probably idolized these drivers and permitting hot-headed antics on track IS THE PROBLEM. The only way to solve it is a permanent BAN of these problematic drivers.

The thousands of vid clips between just the four hot-heads of the Stewart-Haas drivers (Tony Stewart, Danica Patrick, Kurt Busch and Kevin Harvick) is ridiculous.

[emcon5]

Originally Posted by skipdup

Also, anyone else shocked by the visibility in the video above (GP at eye-level).
Everyone's been saying these guys have to drive, essentially, by braille.
Confusing...

That doesn't look eye level to me, and it is forward of the screen.

This one is slightly above eye level:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfdNnyMuEMw

This looks pretty close to eye level, but offset to the right. The camera probably sees more to the right of the car than the driver can.:

[speeder]

Originally Posted by yellowperil

Why would anyone open this thread (at it's onset) if they didn't know who Tony Stewart was??

I knew who he was that day because he was all over the news. I could not have told you who he was the day before.

[yellowperil]

Originally Posted by speeder

I knew who he was that day because he was all over the news. I could not have told you who he was the day before.

Fair enough.

[speeder]

Originally Posted by emcon5

So he could show how superior he is to the unwashed southerners.

It's too bad that you feel inferior to others. And yes, I noticed that you do not live in the south.

Remember the big brewhau on Fox News when they claimed that the NYT did not cover Dale Earnhart's death? I did know who he was, FWIW. It was in fact on the front page the next day, with a picture of the crash. They assumed that none of their listeners would try to confirm the charge with a couple mouse clicks because it played so perfectly into the whole "liberal elite out of touch with good old Americans" crock of schit they pedal everyday of the year. And they were right. None of their listeners fact-check anything, they just buy whatever soap they're hawking on the commercials and vote for the ass rags that Fox tells them to.

And post their message on countless internet chat boards.

The arrogance is claiming that this schmuck is a "great man" when he appears to be anything but and assuming that average Americans watch or care about that stupid "sport".

[Tervuren]

Originally Posted by emcon5

That doesn't look eye level to me, and it is forward of the screen.

This one is slightly above eye level:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfdNnyMuEMw

This looks pretty close to eye level, but offset to the right. The camera probably sees more to the right of the car than the driver can.:

I made my first posts without watching any footage. I don't like people making money off of death so refrained from clicking things. After some comments by someone, I did click and embedded video, and since it didn't post any adds, I watched it, and pulled frames into other software to measure things.

It is highly likely that Stewart saw Ward was out of the car. However, I doubt Stewart would of seen anything to enable him to dodge Ward.

The lights - are from the grandstands - behind the camera - we see Ward better than the people on the track do(IE, full moon) The people on the track, see a crescent moon, say, 1/4 moon or whatever they call it. As he's facing tony, and perpendicular to the lights, Tony would mostly see an outline of just his left side. Ward would dissapear completely in the shadow of the #45, and appear again with almost no time to react to anything Ward did after coming back into the light.

Tony enters the frame sliding quite a bit sideways with no acceleration - this means he got on the brakes suddenly.(First, car gets pulled to the right as the bigger tire has more braking force, then, the bigger tire looses traction, the inner rear tire rotates the car left, and the back end slides out.) Tony enters the frame as someone that got DEEP on the brakes in a hurry prior to entering the camera frame. To me, this indicates he saw Ward before the #45 put Ward in shadow, or Tony just got the message of the caution*(see note 1).

At this point, Ward has stopped, the #45 almost wiped out Ward from just how close they came. From Tony's perspective - if he follows the #45's path, he'll miss Ward. Problem is, Ward lurches farther, and then either trips, or jumps into Tony's path. The time to react vs ability to actually dodge Ward is extremely slim from this point on. If Ward did try to jump on Tony's car, or punch Tony, or just tripped, there is NO way Tony could react for this*(see note 2).

If Ward tripped, he likely would of tried to push himself back upright off of Tony's car. If Ward wanted to get physical, then this would also explain the sudden forwards momentum right as Tony gets up to Ward. Tony's car did not deviate up the track beyond how it enters the camera frame until after hitting Ward. Ward deviates into Tony's car.

Could I, in Tony's place, have been able to read the situation and dodge Ward's leap into my path? I doubt it. Crazy takes you unexpected.


*Note 1
We don't know when exactly race control would of gone to yellow. It takes time for race control to notice, and key the one way microphone to the drivers. With 15 second laptimes, the cars barely have time to group up/slowdown by the time they come onto a wreck that just happened. Typically, further collisions occur if cars are bunched up racing for position at this time.

*Note 2
This happened in a corner, a winged sprint car's suspension is setup for high suspension loads from a combination of downforce and track banking. A "soft" suspension at speed is rendered hard as rocks at lower speeds. This means that at reduced speeds, the driver's vision is impaired from extreme vibration of getting battered extra. This also means the car's handling is greatly impaired, any bump in the track will help launch the car in the air longer than when at race speed, as the downforce and banking force would normally plant it back again sooner. Steering, with an overstiff rear suspension will result in the car rotating more than it can grip. While lower speeds give more reaction time, the car's handling is also impaired.

I would furthermore like to note, that when Tony, or Danica are shown gesturing at a passing driver, that the safety vehicles have already arrived, and that the car's had time to group up, and come under control. When Tony threw his Helmet at Matt K, he did not immediately exit his car, and walk up the track to find Matt. Instead, he got out with the safety personal, and before getting in the ambulence that arrived, Matt K. conveniently drove by in the pit lane.

[sand_man]

Originally Posted by yellowperil
Why would anyone open this thread (at it's onset) if they didn't know who Tony Stewart was??

I was actually watching the Road America IMSA Tudor (United SportsCar Championship) race on Fox1 and it was streaming on the news feed footer that "Breaking news: Tony Stewart kills another driver during sprint car race" This sounded strange to me, so I googled to get a better idea of what the hell the news was talking about! Then I was gonna post it on Pelican and saw that someone else already started a thread.

[flipper35]

A few things, the video skipdup posted shows the car dog tracking at slow speeds requiring some counter steer even in the corners and the other thing to remember is the driver has less visibility than the camera peripherally with a full face helmet on.

That said, I believe Tony saw the kid late (just as the driver before him did a split second before they almost ran over the kid) but the kid came further down yet making what happened inevitable. The one video you can clearly see the back end kick away from the kid.

As others have said, these cars do not have a transmission as we think of them. They are in gear or they are not and there is no clutch. They are geared to run over 100 mph in that one gear so idle speeds are pretty high. Pick the gear in your high strung car that will go 110mph and see how it does at low speed. How fast do you have to go to keep it running? My Cobra with the 2.72 rear end would idle at 18mph in FIRST gear at 1200rpm. Now put that in third where it would run 115mph and you are looking at nearly 40mph.

I think it was a stupid accident.

[skipdup]

It's been reported and seems generally accepted the car was doing 35 - 40 mph.
From personal experience, 40 mph, after being in race conditions, feels like (literally) 5 mph, at least to me. With the heightened senses, it's hard to miss much at that speed - again, from my perspective (for whatever that's worth).

Too bad TS either wasn't running or hasn't released GoPro footage. I think that would answer all questions. Heck, any other camera view might help (though, I don't want to watch that poor kid die any more times).