Q&A: Mike Helton

NASCAR has taken some unwanted criticism lately for its safety procedures during activity on the racetrack. Ryan Newman, for instance, was highly critical of the response time after his accident in practice at Watkins Glen International.

	Mike Helton

And he's not the only driver. Jeff Gordon crashed on the final lap of that race and complained about response time. Newman, Gordon and others have voiced their opinion in the media about the need for a traveling safety team, a group of emergency personnel who go to every race -- instead of the NASCAR policy of employing local workers and medical personnel to staff tracks.

NASCAR president Mike Helton spoke recently with a small group of reporters about its safety procedures, reiterating the sanctioning body's stance that they way it does things is the right way to do it.

But Helton also insisted that NASCAR isn't sitting still when it comes to safety.

Q: In the wake of Ryan Newman's crash at Watkins Glen, he was critical of the safety team. Jeff Gordon was critical after his crash. What does NASCAR make of safety?

Helton: Understand that our way of doing things, which is fire and safety workers, we still very much believe in. The relationship between NASCAR, the racetrack, the those providers is the model that works for us. Any time something happens that maybe challenges, whether it's emotionally challenged or it has a legitimate concern to us, we're going to go in and look at it and try to understand why something didn't work right or explain it to where the person that challenged it says, "OK, now I see it differently."

There are always things that can happen, irregardless of how you do it on the racetrack that may not work out completely the way you want them to. Our role and responsibility is to minimize to make sure it can happen as good as it can happen every time, whether it's a road course where it's awkward or unique, or it's a half-mile oval like Bristol. That service, that standard, that response, should be as good as it can be -- bar none.

That's our goal. We go look at things after they happen, analyze and find out where the weak link might have been, if there was one. We'll do whatever it takes to fix it.

In the meantime, the challenges that we face with on the way we do things is not fair. I think we do it well. I think our response is well. I think the quality of those who respond is good.

GROWING LIST  CONCORD, N.C. (AP) -- Four-time Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon asked NASCAR to improve its safety crews, joining a growing list of drivers unsatisfied with the current rescue efforts.  •  Complete story, click here

I think what has been overlooked is the amount of effort that NASCAR puts into the standard that we require from the racetrack, the level of caregivers that exists at the racetracks, the training they go through, the daily meetings at the racetrack, and the concerns we have for additional injuries on the racetrack as far as responding to accident scenes. Those are the staples that NASCAR works by and believes in and will continue to work that way.

But whenever there's a challenge on something that happens on the racetrack, we're quick to go to work on finding the answer to it. And if the answer says there's a weak link somewhere, we're going to fix it, and we're going to fix it fast.

Q: Ryan Newman, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson all said they'd like to see a traveling safety team in NASCAR. Are you guys looking at that harder because of their lobbying for it?

As I just said, I think the model that NASCAR uses is accurate and good and solid. Their understanding of it may need some help. Maybe we need to sit down with them and others, quite frankly, because in our conversations with competitors, it's not necessarily that they're sitting and telling us face-to-face that we need a traveling safety crew. They just want the best possible coverage they can get. Period.

"It doesn't matter how you do it. Give me the best possible you can get." That's our desire and our plan, and our effort is to do that for them.

I don't know that the traveling safety crew is particularly their idea. Maybe others have given it to them and used them to push their own motives. I think their desire is to give them the absolute best they can get, and we desire that, too.

So what you're hearing from them is not necessarily what they're telling the media? They're openly critical to the media, and it sounds like they're backing down when they talk to you.

I don't know that they're backing down as much -- I still believe that the drivers and competitors in the garage area, and their families, have the same goal that NASCAR has. And that is to have the absolute best coverage on the racetrack, as far as medical attention, response and effort that they can get.

	Ryan Newman was very vocal about the response time to his accident during practice at Watkins Glen. Credit: Autostock

We believe that the guy who's worked trauma all week long on interstates and in big metropolitan areas, they are currently up to speed and trained and prepared to react in an emergency situation on the racetrack. We've got three national series and 12 regional series that NASCAR serves, as opposed to one series with 20 cars. We've got 15 different series with a huge community to serve. And this works. Everybody's goal is to get the best possible service, and I believe we're there.

Now, we keep adding to it to make it better. With the advancement of medical technology, with the advancement of medical training, all of that stays current because we're using the medical providers who are involved in that advancement every day out in the public at the racetrack on race weekends. And we feel like that is the best way for us to do it. It's a matter of making it work on our racetracks.

We also have a high level of concern with 43 stock cars or trucks on a racetrack, of how quick the response can be. I don't know if you recall an incident we had in Daytona a few years ago in an ARCA race where an emergency worker got hurt. What you don't want to do is put somebody in a situation where the victims are compounded, where you have more injuries. We've done things to make that work better, by different locations at the racetracks. It's an ongoing process in making this as good and as solid as it can be.

Q: Do you know what went wrong at Watkins Glen?

It doesn't matter whether we think it was too slow or not. Ryan thinks it was. He's the person who this year has had a lot of opportunities to experience that. I'm not going to undermine his opinion because I'm not sitting in his seat. He is. He's had a lot of opportunities to experience those things. I have not, and I'm thankful for that. Taking his input is critical for us.

Certainly, as he understands, that we would prefer he and Jeff and anybody else to come to the trailer and discuss it, so we can explain what we know, and get it back and forth. But his input is important. Whether it was the 2:40 ... 2:40 to Ryan is way too long. How much more efficient you can make that is what we go to work on. Can you make 1:40? Can it make it 30 seconds?

How do you do that? Put more people out on the racetrack? OK, that's fine. We've done it in Daytona, we've done it in different places over the course of time. And we analyze that every day on how to make it better, as well as the standard of the workers that are there. We can work on these things from weekend to next week.

Can you do things differently in the control tower to send crews out quicker. Is that one of the things you're looking at?

	After the race at Wakins Glen a couple of weeks back, Jeff Gordon was very vocal about response time following his last-lap accident.

We can, and we have. We've tweaked and revamped and complimented the areas that need. Watkins Glen and Infineon are road courses, and that's unique. So we use SCCA corner workers to help the communication process because you can't see them from the control tower. Whether or not we need more workers to communicate quicker, whether or not we need more stations for the response teams to park in so they can get there quicker, those are the things that you continually work on to resolve issues.

Every time an accident occurs, whether it's in Daytona or Watkins Glen or wherever it is, you can learn from it and be better. I would certainly hope, at least from our dialogue, the competitors in the garage area will tell you that it's better today than it's ever been.

But we're not going to stop there. It should be better next week than it was this week. We've got Mike Phillips, we've got David Hoots, we've got Gary Smith, we've got people who are working on that. That's what they do. Part of their responsibility, and sometimes a high percentage of their responsibility, is to stay on top of these things and fix them and make them right -- be prepared in advance, but prepared after the fact as well, to tweak them and make them better. That's why we believe in what we're doing.

Q: Do you guys use a "chase car," and is there one NASCAR official in it?

Helton: "We have a vehicle on the racetrack that we put into play last year that will respond to a scene. It is a NASCAR official, a person that the person that the drivers will be familiar with, a face that the drivers will be familiar with. It's not necessarily to perform any paramedical issues, but to put the driver at comfort, as well as help orchestrate the incident that may be going on and to be another line of communication to the control tower. There are several lines, but the more, the better. That's what the person's responsibility is.

Q: You did that last year?

We began that last year.

Q: There was one of those at Watkins Glen and every racetrack?

There's one of those at every event.

Q: Could possibly adding more at a road course help out?

Not necessarily. What happened last week with Ryan is an issue that we determined that the amount of time it took for all that had to be done was not adequate. More stations for the rescue workers, more SCCA corner workers to let us know what's going on -- those are the type of things we can do there.

But again, we're willing to do whatever we have to do to add to the current program to make it right. But we believe in our current program.

Q: These guys are highly trained professionals, right? Someone made a crack that some of them were volunteers who use this to get passes for the race. That's not the case.

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That's not the case. And even if they were volunteers, they're highly trained professional volunteers, particularly in the Watkins Glen area. But they are highly qualified workers who have a great deal of experience. Either they're firemen or they're people on the highway, EMS people, who have a great deal of experience working accidents on interstates.

The track trains them, NASCAR trains them, we meet with them every morning to show them what a race car does. We have drivers go to the meetings with us to explain their side of it. There's a communication process that goes beyond just the fact that these are emergency workers who are highly trained and capable of working emergencies."

When a driver comes to you and says you need a traveling safety team, what do you tell them?

I don't think it's fair for us to take a shot at how somebody else does it. What we've spent our time talking about is how we do it and how can we do it better. Quite frankly, we don't have many conversations with competitors that say, "You need one safety crew out there that goes with us everywhere." We don't have those conversations. But we do have conversations about is, "Look, I want the best possible coverage you can give me out there." That's what we talk about, and that's what we work on.