One-on-one: Helton responds to tragedy
By Marty Smith, Turner Sports Interactive
September 14, 2001
1:05 PM EDT (1705 GMT)
HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. -- In the wake of Tuesday’s terrorist attacks on New York and Washington D.C., NASCAR president Mike Helton made an unprecedented decision to postpone Sunday’s NASCAR Winston Cup Series race at New Hampshire International Speedway until Nov. 23.
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Mike Helton
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Just after announcing that decision, Helton sat down with NASCAR.com's Marty Smith for an exclusive one-on-one interview to discuss the goings on over the past four days in America, and in Daytona Beach.
NASCAR.com: What was the major determining factor in your decision to postpone Sunday’s race?
Helton: “It was a combination, the most overwhelming of which was the ongoing issues surrounding Tuesday from a national perspective. Of course that also contributed to the elements that seemed to make going and running a race seem not as significant.
"The logistics of being able to get everybody in and out of New Hampshire due to the aviation industry being a victim of what happened Tuesday, the concerns about putting a large group together at one place still, while it appears certainly that there’s a great deal of questions still unanswered on a national level for safety and security of mass gatherings of people.”
NASCAR.com: How close were you to going ahead as planned?
Helton: “When the incident occurred on Tuesday, the immediate reaction was okay, let’s go ahead and do away with Friday and prepare for Saturday and Sunday, but monitor the situation very closely. And if circumstances were such that we could press on, we’d be prepared to.
"But as the circumstances or the mood or the feeling was such that it didn’t make sense to run the race, we’d unplug it. So ever since the incident began, it’s been a monitoring situation where we watched after details and had conversations with officials about things that were going on to come to the conclusion to postpone the event.”
NASCAR.com: Did the NFL’s decision influence your decision?
Helton: “Not necessarily. I think everybody, Major League Baseball, the NFL and NASCAR were waiting for other details around other issues to make a decision. So I think all these decisions came basically at the same time because we all got our answers at the same time.”
NASCAR.com: Did you have any talks with NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue or Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig?
Helton: “Yes, there were several different levels of communication. Bill France and Paul Tagliabue did have a conversation and there were other levels of conversations going on constantly among other organizations, other sporting organizations, and certainly officials in Washington D.C., to find out information and help us make the call.”
NASCAR.com: Is NASCAR itself planning on doing anything to help the victims?
Helton: “We’re encouraging everybody in the community of NASCAR to be aware and to do what they feel like they can to help out the cause. People will do that in different ways. I think that’s very appropriate.
"We currently are helping people with information and things that we know of from our contacts that could use additional efforts. We’re organizing input that comes from the competitors, the competitors sponsors, to try to help coordinate all that.
“The NASCAR community, in most cases, is made up of groups of individuals who can better serve a need, and react better, if they're allowed to take their own course. For example, a driver/sponsor relationship like Kyle Petty and Sprint would have an effort they could do jointly. And we encourage those to take place as opposed to an effort NASCAR organizes itself.”
NASCAR.com: How much did the logistical part of this play into it, as far as the airline situation?
Helton: “Well that’s a big factor. If the people working the race, the participants who are putting the race on, the fans that are in the grandstands, have difficulty moving around or aren’t able to move around, that’s a big factor. It definitely played a role.”
NASCAR.com: Do you have any particular concerns about the date being moved so late in the year?
Helton: “It would have been nice to continue the 2001 schedule as it was laid out. But certainly, Sunday’s New Hampshire race is not as important an issue today as what happened in New York and Washington, D.C. So we made the decision not to race on Sunday, but then there’s the decision of, ‘Okay, when do you run it?’ The first open weekend we’ve got is that weekend after Thanksgiving.”
NASCAR.com: Was the New York NASCAR office affected at all?
Helton: “Not directly. Certainly indirectly. In downtown New York, I can’t imagine an office building, hotel, restaurant, that is not impacted by what happened in their community. Following the incident on Tuesday, we closed the New York office and kept it closed all week. Primarily to contribute to keeping the traffic down so that the public service and emergency personnel could do their job.”
NASCAR.com: Do you think this will affect the Winston Cup banquet at all? (The Winston Cup banquet is held at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan.)
Helton: “No, I don’t think so. New York is the city of all cities around the world. And America is such that it will build back, and build back stronger. I think it will reach a point to where the phoenix of sorts that comes out of a disaster like this turns to a promise. I think we’ll find that soon. We’ll take our banquet to New York and we’ll celebrate with all America to return to the status it’s always held.”
NASCAR.com: What was your initial reaction to seeing the video of Tuesday’s tragedy?
Helton: “Devastation. As everybody that might have been watching the news as the initial incident occurred at the first building at the World Trade Center and then as they were reporting on it, everything else began to unfold live in front of you.
"It was just devastation that something like that could be thought of, much less carried out and implemented. The obnoxious action was just unbelievable at first, then as you gather up and understand that it really happened, it’s just devastating.”
NASCAR.com: Was this the most difficult decision you’ve had to make during your time as NASCAR president?
Helton: “I think there are much bigger decisions being made this week than the ones we’ve had to make. It was simply a matter of trying to do the right thing, and I think we’ve done that. I think we were also fair to take time to understand all the elements before we said we needed to postpone it. There’s a lot more difficult decisions going on this week that the ones we had to make.”
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