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Just woke up to find out about this new.

RIP Kevin.

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Oh look what is front page news at the Dailymail...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

RIP and all... but no matter whos to blame... that guy is an idiot for walking into the track like that...

i've got a question. I've seen the video multiple times by now and i think there's only one video around so must be the same you all have seen for those of you who have seen it.
The conclusion i've come to is that there's too much hysteria obnubilating your judgment here because i simply can't see all the things you are talking about there and i cant understand how can you see them so i'll put emotions aside for a moment and i'll tell you what i can actually see from a technical prospective:

basically the man filming is following number 45 cars, than he goes back just in time to see Tony's car hitting the driver, so:

1 I don't see how can you tell Tony was accelerating. I hear a revving sound but it's clearly coming from car number 45 that has just passed by ( you can still see the 45 back wheels start spinning ).

2 You can't definitely see him accelerating in the video cause you don't see Tony's car till the moment he hits the poor guy.

3 his car doesn't look definitely sideways it just seems on a wider line ( but not too wide if you confront it with the lines of other driver passing by before him ) and pointing forward and not sideways

4 the number 45 car ( the one passing right before Stewart ) appears to swerve right at the last moment in order to avoid Kevin.

5 Ward put himself exactly in the middle of the track.

So summing it up what i see is a driver acting in an incredibly incredibly incredibly stupid way and paying the highest toll you can imagine for that but judging purely from what i can see in that single video if i have to put the blame on someone i'll give 90% Kevin and 10% Stewart. Stewart looks it could have been slower but that guy was absolutely insane in what he did, it's like putting yourself in front of a shooting machinegun and pretend the gunner is the one to blame for hitting you.
It's still sad but really looks like something coming out from darwin awards, sorry if this seems too cynical for you.

By the way let me say that i'm no Stewart fans, actually i don't follow american motorracing so all i know about him is he is a nascar driver and that even if this may have seemed cold i'm still sorry for the death of a young driver expecially because this was totally avoidable, hope this will put an end to all those useless exibitions of masculinity you can only see in american racing.

Where the hell do they get the "The cars were allegedly told to slow down before the accident" from?

Unless they mean the caution period?

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

I was gutted to here the news this morning, I go to a lot of ESS races and have seen Kevin race many times, he was a good racer and had a lot of talent, it's a shame I won't get to see him race again. I almost went to Canandaigua last night but I knew it would be packed so I went to another track instead, and feel fortunate that I didn't have to witness this.

I have only seen an edited version of the video, at this point I don't really need to or want to see what happened, it was an unfortunate accident and should be used as a lesson by racers all over so that it doesn't happen ever again.

RIP Kevin

Now that the racing is over and everything has calmed down, I keep getting the image of Ward's last moments stuck in my head. He was too brazen/careless with his remonstrations but the outcome is just too cruel. He was right to be upset about the crash, and didn't deserve the punishment for his frustration.

It's heartbreaking.

Found this very interesting; this was posted on FB from a member of the 45 car (first car ahead of Tony before Kevin was clipped) crew.

The more I watch and see it, the more I think it was just an accidental death, and a burden for Tony to live with. Initially it seemed his fault, but I stand corrected. He'll join a list of the following drivers who have to live with that on their conscience...

Richard Petty - killed an 8 year old boy and injured 8 others in the 60s during his drag racing days
Adam Petty - ran over his crew chief during an ASA pit stop
Don Garlits - backed over friend and crew chief Herb Parks on the starting line
Ricky Rudd - crashed into Bill Elliott's pit crew in Atlanta
Antron Brown - had a slick come off his dragster and hit a woman in the pit area, killing her
Adrian Fernandez - had his wheel come off during a crash and kill spectators at Michigan
Debrah Renshaw - never slowed down and slammed into an already wrecked Eric Martin 30 seconds after the fact and he was already unbuckling to get out of the car
Willy T Ribbs - hit a course marshall during a CART race
Troy Critchley - doing a burnout for a crowd in selmar, TN lost control killing 6 and injuring 22 others
Stan Wattles/John Paul Jr - their 2 car crash at Charlotte launched a wheel and suspension into the crowd killing 3
Allen Michel - crashed in the World of Outlaws pit area killing crew member Kelly Pole, who was under a car working on it.

In separate also fatal incidents including driver -
Jeff Krosnoff - hit and killed Gary Arvin at Toronto
Tom Pryce - hit F1 marshall

I'm sure there are more, but that's all I could come up with at the moment. It will be tough on Tony but he'll move on from it.

i can remember villeneuve killing a marshall after a crash with ralf schumacher in australia.
and frentzen starting a crash that killed Paolo Ghislimberti, a marshall.

i would not say that tom pryce lived with that marshall on his coscience he probably never had even the time to realize

Anyone know if Stewart had a spotter for last nights race? I know some of those guys use spotters and some don't.

no spotters for any of them.

above list forgets ray paprota, the guy that parlayed the track worker at daytona in 2004 during the goodys dash race

I'm still not sure what to make of it. All I hope is that NASCAR and other series can now stop the stupid 'boys have at it' attitude. Actually clamp down on drivers using their cars as weapons or running across the track. Until then, you're setting an example to all smaller series that this is perfectly acceptable.

I'm sure any driver around that's been involved with a fatal accident has had to deal with it. I'm sure Sterling Marlin and Ken Schrader think about February 18th, 2001 more than we'll ever know.

its been perfectly acceptable LONG before the boys have at it thing

Mike Hawthorn had to be convinced from a third party that he didn't cause the Le Mans 1955 disaster. The problem with the Stewart incident here is if he did try to be cocky against Ward. But the more I think about it, and the more the circumstances becomes clearer, I have to believe that this was an honest accident. The racing incident was just that, an racing incident, and Ward overreacted. As Stewart doesn't face criminal charges, it has to be racing community that have to take responsibility. "Boys have at it" is not very clever when dealing with lethal machines, even in responsible hands. We didn't really think of it before, but the situation really was an accident waiting to happen.

Do they even use radios in sprint car racing? Doesn't seem like they have room for any of that.

The track worker was killed.

Tracks and series that don't allow spotters typically use a Race-ciever, which is one way communication from the tower to the drivers, mostly used for lining up the cars in the correct positions under caution or calling cautions as soon as they're displayed.

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http://www.youtube.com/TMRacingVideos

It will probably work against Stewart that he has a certain reputation. Plus today we have internet which brings out the scum and the idiots of the world.

If Stewart was the ideal son-in-law we probably be talking about how stupid Ward was for getting so close but now a lot of people will think "oh look what that idiot Stewart did"

This is my conclusion unfortunately. From what I see of the video, it's hard to see what Tony Stewart did or didn't do -- without further video evidence, I think all of the speculation about whether he gunned it or not etc. is pretty much just that.

It *is* pretty clear, however, that Ward stepped in the middle of the racing groove, just after the yellow flew (when cars were still going along at a nice speed), in order to angrily confront somebody. It could've easily been that other driver (the 45) that nearly hit him. I don't think I've ever seen anything *that* brazen and crazy foolish in my years of watching racing, apart from some of the foolishness of certain Bowman Gray Stadium videos and the 2003 Silverstone lunatic run-on.

I know that some degree of "boys have at it" / short track tempers have been acceptable, but I think that in the past several years it's, um, been amplified? Yeah the slower short tracks (the type that held figure 8 races and demo derbies) sometimes had that sort of culture, but I don't remember ever seeing a fight watching the USAC sprints / Silver Crowns back when ESPN did their Thunder series at IRP / Winchester / Salem / Ventura / etc. Of course, that was a long time ago, so I may be mis-remembering. But sprint cars are kind of a bit fast for that sort of shenanigans, aren't they?