Team owner blasts LVMS
Track owner Bruton Smith spent Friday lobbying to get a second annual Sprint Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. On Tuesday, Rick Hendrick wasn’t sure he wants to return for even one.
The team owner criticized LVMS after Hendrick Motorsports driver Jeff Gordon smacked into the inside wall, ripping the transmission and radiator from his car, near the end of Sunday’s NASCAR UAW-Dodge 400.
“If the teams are asked to spend $8 million apiece for a car that is a little bit safer, then we need to fix the damn walls at the track,” Hendrick told The Associated Press. “That ought to be priority No. 1, and if the tracks don’t have the (SAFER barriers), then we shouldn’t race there.”
Gordon was sore but otherwise uninjured after the accident, which happened shortly after a restart with five laps to go when he made contact with Matt Kenseth, sending both cars into a spin.
Gordon, calling the crash the “hardest I’ve ever hit,” was highly critical of the track’s lack of SAFER (Steel and Foam Energy Reduction) barriers. It also bothered him that the angle of impact was nearly head-on because the part of the wall he hit curved inward as an access point for safety vehicles.
“I couldn’t have hit the wall at a worse angle,” Gordon said after the race. ”It really tore the thing up. I’m really disappointed right now in this speedway for not having a soft wall back there. And even being able to get to that part of the wall shouldn’t happen.”
Hendrick’s reaction Tuesday was just as harsh. Speedway general manager Chris Powell acknowledged the criticism.
“I’m not mad at Rick Hendrick,” Powell said. “He’s emotional about his driver and (is) playing off the sensitivity of his driver’s comments Sunday night.”
Powell said he called Gordon on Sunday night but had not heard back from him. Gordon’s publicist, John Edwards, told Powell on Monday that the driver was testing in Phoenix and would return the call.
Powell said the wall along the inside of the backstretch was reinstalled to its former configuration a year ago after the oval had been repaved.
“There should never, ever, ever, ever, at any racetrack, at any level, be any blunt openings for a race car to hit,” said veteran Cup driver John Andretti, who crashed early in Sunday’s race. “That’s the worst thing that could happen.”
Bobby Labonte, the 2000 series champion who finished 17th, added, “There are always ways to make things better, but sometimes you just don’t know.”
Powell said NASCAR has never addressed a potential problem with that part of the track. NASCAR takes control of the track and garage area on Friday of a race weekend.
Powell said that opening and angle of the wall have been the same since the first Cup race 11 years ago. He said he’s confident the guardwall will be reconfigured to the satisfaction of all drivers.
The opening allows rescue and medical vehicles quick access onto the track.
“Bruton Smith, (Speedway Motorsports Inc.) and Las Vegas Motor Speedway as one entity will change it as deemed by NASCAR,” Powell said.
SAFER barriers were developed during a safety overhaul following the 2001 death of Dale Earnhardt. The walls were developed by Dean Sicking at the University of Nebraska and are used in some form at every track on NASCAR’s top series.
Powell said speedway officials worked closely with NASCAR when the original walls were installed and would do the same this time.
NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said the organization will meet with Sicking to evaluate the need to expand the use of the protective system.
“We obviously will take a close look with them, get with the track and take a look at it and go from there,” Poston said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
