Rusty Wallace reacts to Earnhardt investigation

By Dave Rodman, Turner Sports Interactive
August 22, 2001
1:43 PM EDT (1743 GMT)

ATLANTA -- Winston Cup driver Rusty Wallace has declared that NASCAR.com, the official Web site of NASCAR, will be the exclusive and sole supplier of his reaction to the Dale Earnhardt accident investigation report.

Wallace, the 1989 Winston Cup champion and the winner of 54 Winston Cup events, is regularly featured on NASCAR.com via his weekly “Rusty’s Rundown,” a look ahead to the coming weekend’s race track.

Wallace said that since he would be concentrating on his Penske Racing team’s preparation for this weekend’s Sharpie 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway, he would have no other comment on the report.

Wallace and others in the Winston Cup community were briefed on the contents of the report and were shown the same presentation that was given to the media at an afternoon news conference on Tuesday morning in North Carolina by NASCAR president Mike Helton, Winston Cup director Gary Nelson and the two lead investigators in the study, Dr. James H. Raddin Jr., M.D. and Dr. Dean L. Sicking, Ph.D., P.E.

Wallace got together with NASCAR.com’s Dave Rodman to do a Q&A following NASCAR’s release of the report.

WHAT IS YOUR INITIAL REACTION TO THE REPORT THAT DALE EARNHARDT’S DEATH WAS A RESULT OF SEAT BELT FAILURE AND THE ENSUING BLUNT-FORCE TRAUMA?

We knew the belt failed and we knew about the ring fracture -- the basal skull fracture -- but the burning question is why did the belt break? The doctors talked about the great variation in seat belt installations and how that can cause belt dumping and that that is what appeared to happen in this case. No one ever came out and said it was installed wrong, but they made it plain that it had worked in the past and unfortunately it didn’t work this time.

I was definitely comfortable with the report. It was an in-depth report into what happened.

DID YOU MAKE ANY CHANGES IN ANY OF YOUR DRIVER'S COMPARTMENT FACILITIES AFTER DALE’S ACCIDENT, DO YOU CONSIDER SAFETY AN ONGOING CONSIDERATION AND YOUR RESPONSIBILITY?

I didn’t make any changes to my seat belt arrangement. I think NASCAR would agree, with all the times that they have looked at my car and the way the belts are installed, that it is a model of how they should be installed. The belts are as short as they can be and they are installed so they pull straight down to be tightened. The adjustment clips are installed at the top and the belts criss-cross behind the seat for maximum safety.

The NASCAR inspectors have been so impressed they bring other people by to look at them. I learned this from Jay Signore with IROC, who was a big proponent of making ‘em short and criss-crossing them behind the seat. Although I did start out wearing the HANS device, I only wore it one race and I went to the Hutchens device. The HANS is a wonderful device. I wore it for the first time at Texas. But some drivers have a different bone structure and it hurts my shoulders too bad and it’s hard to drive with it.

I’m comfortable with being left to my own on a lot of safety issues. There are a lot of people that pay enough attention to what’s going on inside the car. But for one thing, I can’t imagine myself going down the highway on a motorcycle without a helmet on, like you see a lot of people do. I think helmets are a good thing.

So, I guess, sometimes people have to say, ‘we need to do this and if it’s not done you’re not going to be able to practice.’ I think the modern day race driver is of the caliber that we know what we need to be doing. But I think if NASCAR sees enough variations in what you would think is a common sense thing they need to step in and say ‘let’s get it right.’

YOU HAVE BEEN A BIG SUPPORTER OF BILL SIMPSON. WITH TODAY’S REPORT, DO YOU SEE THAT CHANGING IN ANY MANNER?

Dr. James Raddin Jr. explains how Earnhardt's belt separated.

No. I am a big supporter of Bill Simpson’s. He’s done a wonderful job with a bunch of different pieces of safety equipment and he is a good friend of mine. He was a wonderful friend of Dale Earnhardt’s.

With today’s report I think there is enough evidence to support that what happened with that belt was not Bill Simpson’s fault. We’re not going to say the belt in Dale’s car was mounted wrong but it was different than most. In no way do I think it was a problem of anything that Simpson or Earnhardt or Childress did -- it was just several different situations that came together and turned into one big bomb. That was the way Dale had always mounted his belts and you’ve got to respect what Dale wanted. I think Bill Simpson ought to be able to sleep easier tonight.

ALL THE EVIDENCE PRESENTED IN THIS REPORT DEALT WITH DALE’S ACCIDENT - IS THERE ANY DISAPPOINTMENT FROM THE COMPETITORS’ SIDE THAT THERE WAS NOTHING BROUGHT INTO THIS INVESTIGATION FROM THE DEATHS IN 2000 OF ADAM PETTY, KENNY IRWIN AND TONY ROPER?

Yeah. I wish we would know more about that. I have never seen the official cause of death of either Adam Petty or Kenny Irwin. If it was basal skull fracture and everyone was confident of that I think we have addressed the issue with the head and neck restraints that most everyone is using.

But still, I think they all (deaths) need to be put together because they were all great drivers. With the horrible thing that happened with Dale, well, he’s the one that everyone got interested in investigating.

The main reason this investigation took off -- if he’d died and it was just another basal skull fracture, maybe it wouldn’t have. But we needed to know why did the belt dump -- what caused it to dump and fail? I am really in NASCAR’s corner. I loved what they did and they learned so much about safety for us in the future.

Unfortunately Dale made it happen for everyone to be a lot safer. He didn’t mean for it to happen but it does make people look at how they install their own belts and look at them more than they have been. Seat belts have always been looked at like they were bulletproof -- we used to replace our seatbelts when they were so stiff from sweat they wouldn’t go through the buckles -- so we have learned a lot from this.

FROM A DRIVER’S PERSPECTIVE, WHAT CAN YOU SAY TO KEN SCHRADER, IF ANYTHING IS NECESSARY, FOR HIM TO DEAL WITH THE NEWS THAT HIS COLLISION PLAYED A SIGNIFICANT ROLE IN THE CRASH?

There’s nothing you can say or that you need to say to Kenny or Sterling (Marlin) or anyone that was in the vicinity. When we’re all running 170 and a car comes flying across in front of you, there’s nothing you can do. The doctor said it best: He just said everything was unavoidable.

NASCAR President Mike Helton

WHAT DO YOU THINK, FROM THE COMPETITORS' PERSPECTIVE, CAN BE THE BEST THING TO COME OUT OF THE NEW RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT FACILITY IN CONOVER, N.C.?

The biggest thing I am excited about with the R&D facility is that they are closer to coming out with soft wall technology. There’s only so much we can do inside the cars, but I am excited they are very, very close to coming up with the best soft wall package they can come up with. Then, I am excited about implementing it as fast as they can and getting it to the race tracks. When you’ve got the best of everything you can only do so much inside the car. Putting it (soft wall technology) out against the wall is the next step.

WHAT IS A RELATIVELY REASONABLE TIME FRAME FOR CHANGES TO SHOW UP IN THE GARAGE AREA, DO YOU FEEL CHANGES ARE NECESSARY AND ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WITH THE DIRECTION NASCAR IS TAKING IN THIS AREA?

I don’t think honestly that we are smart enough to know how stiff or soft the fronts of the cars have to be. I have to admit I was one who was thinking they were too stiff. But listening to some of the things Ford had to say through Dan Davis made me think maybe the cars aren’t too stiff. That’s the reason the guys are gonna have to crash test the cars to find out more.

NASCAR is asking the teams to provide old cars to crash test and provide better information about that. If they just don’t have any old enough cars they can give up, NASCAR will be happy to go about buying ‘em and the people from Nebraska can test ‘em. I am real excited about the R&D facility when it comes to safety. It gets controversial when you talk about rules and engines and bodies -- but safety, that’s the immediate thing they need to start on -- not performance rules. With the R&D center they need to put a 100 percent effort into safety stuff.

WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF NASCAR’s DECISION TO HIRE A MEDICAL DIRECTOR WHO WILL COORDINATE MEDICAL STAFF AND FACILITIES THROUGHOUT THE CIRCUIT?

I am in total agreement with that. If you think about that, you can’t expect one guy to know everything. Some of these guys don’t know where the best local hospital is in these cities we go to. You have to have guys in these local cities. But to have a coordinator who can carry all the personal records and have a copy of my last physical and my eyesight and blood type and be the liaison between me and the local doctors -- I totally agree.

DO YOU FEEL A DIRECTOR OF CRASH ANALYSIS OR CRASH INVESTIGATION IS A POSITIVE STEP TO MAKE?

I do. Somebody has got to be in charge and not go around making knee jerk reactions to things. There needs to be some type of specialist involved who tests these things and makes sure it doesn’t happen again and I’m comfortable with that.

DO YOU FEEL A DRIVERS’ SAFETY COMMITTEE, OR A CLEARINGHOUSE FOR SAFETY INFORMATION IS A GOOD IDEA, OR ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH THE STATUS QUO?

At the time being I am satisfied with the status quo.

WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF THE TIMING OF THE REPORT? DID NASCAR TAKE TOO MUCH TIME AND ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH THE WAY NASCAR HANDLED IT IN TERMS OF KEEPING THE COMPETITORS IN THE LOOP?

I started out with a concern that everything was taking too long. But at Richmond when NASCAR spoke with us and told us that it needed to take this long to get the right answers, that went a long way to easing our minds. In this particular case I think the amount of time was highly justified. They came up with first class people to do this report and I’m comfortable with what is going on.