Author: Mark Tapscott
"From what I saw, Tony did everything in his power to turn down away from Kevin to avoid him," said sprint car driver Cory Sparks.
Sparks was just a few cars behind Stewart during Saturday's race. He said videos that have been posted online do not give an accurate picture of what happened.
"People say that they heard the engine rev up and he gassed it. In a sprint car, the only way to steer is you steer with the rear wheels as much as you do the steering wheel. In my opinion, what he did was he gassed it to turn down away from him," said Sparks.
Sparks also said drivers are very limited with the amount they can see out of the right side of the car.
So true and I almost didn’t read it because of the title which I took to mean layoff ie. get rid of.
“But it’s also sickening to read and hear the macabre sensationalization, vituperation and character assassination being heaped on Stewart, especially by journalists and sports commentators, hardly any of whom have ever raced competitively at any level.”
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Thank you, Mark Tapscott .... he hit the nail on the head with this article - best I’ve seen to put this tragedy in perspective.
This is beyond ridiculous. Tensions fly high and the BS runs deep on the racetrack. Someone should have told him not run around on the track, that will get you killed.
Too many mediatards commenting on a sport they don’t know anything about.
I don’t like Tony Stewart but the media is acting like he’s some kind of rogue among gentlemen and its just not realistic or honest.
Dale Earnhardt was known as The Intimidator because you got out of his way or you were going to crash. Jr was fined a few years ago for saying he was going to wreck someone and then doing it. Both Busch brothers have a long string of “incidents” and penalties. In the very first Brickyard 400 the Bodine brothers took a personal fight out on the track and wrecked a bunch of cars. A complete list would run into the many hundreds.
This has been the most mind boggling straining to make news by the media and 15 seconds of famers ever! If the driver were a no-namer instead of Stewart, would this even be an issue. If Stewart’s car had been able to avoid the victim and lost control and Stewart died, would Ward be accused of murder?
I love our country and our police, but America lacks common sense and kows to mindless mass uprisings and I don’t feel safe because of it.
Interesting and informative indeed. The closest the 99.9 percent of us will ever get to “turning right to go left” is learning to ride a bicycle. The physics of this is why it takes a while to learn how to ride a bicycle. The first thing a cyclist does to turn left is to twitch the handlebars right, which creates the opposite reaction and leans the bike to the left. Then in a split second, with the lean in progress, the cyclist quite naturally swings the handlebars over to the left, and completes the left turn. That little millisecond “twitch to the right” is lost in the shuffle — the average rider has no idea he does it. When this whole thing finally clicks somewhere in the subconscious, that’s when a kid can ride a bike.
This article puts what happened in the proper perspective. I have also raced open wheel cars and sports cars for the last 10 years with Skip Barber and SCCA. Mark’s description of how a sprint car reacts to throttle and steering inputs is right on. You are sliding and drifting these cars to turn. I have been in situations racing in the rain, where it is very hard to see, or because of high humidity,your helmet is so steamed up after you slow down coming in to pit lane it drastically reduces your vision. Mark is correct again, in a yellow flag situation, you as a driver are checking your gauges, making adjustments to the car or your belts, you aren’t expecting a person on the race track to jump out in front of you. Add to that he had a black race suit and helmet on, it is a dirt track and dimly lit. It is a terrible tragedy,yes, but Ward should have never gotten out of the car until they safety crew got there.
They preach that in to you in racing school from day one. Unless there is a fire on board,DON’T get out of the car. It is your protection. My prayers are with Ward’s family and for Tony. This is something he will have to live with for the rest of his life. I agree that the uniformed media and low information voters that don’t have a clue about racing need to lay off Tony at this point.
Excellent article.
I know Tony Stewart has a reputation for being hot-headed and aggressive as a driver, and have even seen it first-hand (I was a flagger at Turn 11 at Sonoma three years ago when he spun Brian Vickers and was later stuffed into the wall by Vickers). But as the author says, that’s irrelevant to this incident and it’s unlikely he was looking out for another driver out of his car on the track and probably didn’t see him until it was too late. And having done a bit of racing myself (a handful of SCCA races, not nearly as many as Mr. Tapscott), I know you don’t get out of a car and onto a hot track unless the car is on fire, no matter how pissed off you are.
“Fat Boy” has a history of bed temper. Several years ago he ran into Truex and forced 99, Carl Edwards, to wreck. Edwards’ car was demolished.
When asked about it “Fat Boy’s” arrogant reply was as follows: “Well, these rookies have to learn to give us veterans a wide berth.” Why he was not banned forever for that incident is beyond my comprehension.
Travelling at those speeds and likely could have killed someone, he purposefully wrecks two cars? Is that standard operating procedure?
Racing in general, but definitely racing Sprint cars, is for a select few and I hope Stewart continues racing, pro and hobby.
And 100% correct.
From what I saw on the video, Stewart was trapped by the circumstances and the position of Ward on the track.
Sprint cars do not like turning right even in the best of circumstances and Ward was positioned directly in Stewarts path but slightly to the upper right.
No way Stewart could have swerved right to miss Ward an if he tried to he would run directly into Wards crashed car.
Instead, Stewart tried to turn left but by the time he saw Ward it was too late .
One issue the article neglects to mention is that the viewpoint of the driver in an open wheeled race car is very different than from a street car. You sit very low in open wheel car and the viewing perspective is very restricted.
To get an idea of what the driver sees in a sprint car, get a couple of bricks and a board and set them up so you are in a semi reclining position with your eye level about 18-20 inches off the ground.
Even a normal 8” curb looks like a wall from that perspective