While everyone has an opinion and there is nothing wrong with that, most are drawn from "speculation" regarding TS's intent or an assumption of what it's like to sit in and drive one of these cars.
Unless one has at least some experience driving this type of car with an understanding of the driver sight lines as well as the handling and braking properties, these opinions and conclusions are, at the least, troublesome....
Whatever happened to fact based critical thinking?
To be more to the point, unless your a$$ has been in one of these cars these "opinions" are nothing more than baseless conjecture.
Flame away!

Here is a little better perspective - from the driver's seat. Note that the camera is mounted on the left side of his helmet, providing a somewhat better view past the right hand endplane on the wing than the driver himself enjoys. Put a guy in a black suit, pretty much in the dark, somewhere out past that endplane. Not hard to argue there was no way Stewart saw him.

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^^
Point is taken.
Cool video. Thanks!

thats in full race speed.

TS was going SLOW and going STRAIGHT.

The race was at NIGHT. So are so wrong on this issue. :rolleyes:

say TS did not see him. why would he accelerate just before he gets to a wreck? you can see the car is already sideways when he hits ward. WHY?

the body may have caused the car to change direction, but look how far up the track TS is AFTER he passes wards car.

you know, i just gave my opinion and prediction of the outcome. you guys gonna argue with EVERYONE that does not agree with YOUR point of view?

If you're going to have those standards, then 99% of the interwebs traffic will cease to exist.

I suspect the percentage of fault will probably be debated, using all the factors involved:
-Driving environment, point in race(fatigue), and TS's view of a pedestrian dressed in black.
-TS actions in following a driver in the center of the track.
-Track flag signaling(or lack of).
-The League's enabling of fistfights.
-Wards actions by getting out and walking into traffic

In the end it should boil down to 0-10% culpability during those last half-seconds:
-Did he even blip the throttle?
-Did he do it intentionally to avoid, to show off and scare/spray, or to purposely run Ward over?

Holy cow! That inside wheel seems to only loosely be tied to the steering wheel. It moves waaay more than the steering inputs.

Hmmm....Good Point. I retract my desire for deductive reasoning in problem solving and decision making.:D

I love the south, what I've seen of it anyways. Was just with someone from Nashville last night. I realize now that I might have besmirched an entire region of the country with my remark and for that I apologize, I'm just being candid when I say that I've never heard anyone talking about NASCAR at a BBQ or anywhere else in MN. or SoCal. And believe me, I've hung out with plenty of guys who are not exactly rocket scientists. ;)

I don't "get" NASCAR, it bores the living crap out of me. I watch one lap on a big screen and my mind goes numb. I don't watch TV at all unless it's on somewhere where I am, oddly enough NASCAR was on Sat. am on the TV on the wall at a friend's house where I was having breakfast. I don't think she was even aware of it, one of many people who just has a TV going in the background in the living room. I think it was qualifying or something, looked like interviewing drivers while cars whizzed by in the BG.

I'll stand by my remark that Tony Stewart is not well-known to the average person in wide swaths of the country. I'm a pretty major gearhead and I barely know who he is. I guess I've heard his name. When it comes to fame, it's all about whether the random person on the street has heard of him. Lot's of people are famous in their own little world, be it poker playing, hula hoop, Porsche parts, etc..

Approach anyone under 80 years old on any street in America. "Ever heard of Rod Stewart?" Yes. "How about Tony Stewart?" The guy on the cooking show? Sounds familiar. :)

He seems like anything but a great man to me, though I've not really heard of him.

OK, sorry I upset you. I shouldn't have added the "roll-my-eyes" icon.

But these car are steered by the throttle as much as the steeringwheel.

1. I don't really see from the video that TS did anything wrong to send the kid into the wall.
2. TS was past him when hit the wall. So TS may not have even known there was a problem until he came back around on the next lap.
3. Why would TS hit the kid? TS didn't even know the kid was in the wall.
4. Dark track, dark suit, can't see out of these cars, not ever thinking there would be a driver standing in the middle of the track.
5. Helmet tare off's greatly reduce vision at low speed. Ask any drive drive that uses them.

TS is getting blamed because he is the big star coming into the small town track and his past record of anger on track. The media is spinning this up. Don't buy into the media hype on it.

What next, Mister, rules in a knife fight?

Slim, sober and smart is no way to go through life, Son :D

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Ha ha! There are endless southern US dialects. From southern Ohio, where my family came from, it would be:
"So, Bubba J, what ya all doing on Saturdays?"
"Me and mom and them is watching NASCAR and drinkin´beer. Whach yuns up to?"

Most Southerns know that NASCAR races are on SUNDAY! ;)

I think the latter is more important than the former. Those of us who are at least a little familiar with Stewart wouldn't put it past him to blip the throttle going by and scare the guy or spray him with dirt. Of course, just because we can imagine or speculate that doesn't make it fact. The only person that's ever going to know his true intent is Stewart, and he's going to have to live with that for the rest of his life. Somebody already summed it up on the first page better than I ever could; there were two men there that made a bad choice. Unfortunately for both, its the biggest mistake of their lives and irreversible. Very sad.

But TS was not an aggressor here and no one can prove he had any anger at all toward Ward. Why would he be angered at Ward enough to try to spray him with dirt or hit him? There is no motive for TS to be angered a Ward. Strange how people keep bring up TS's "anger".

TS had just put the kid into the wall.

There's a reason the kid was so angry...