Amid sport's safest period, the risk never goes away

RICHMOND, Va. -- There's a new grandstand rising to acrophobic heights, topped by a plush suite area and an unparalleled view of the city skyline. The place has sold out all 112,029 seats, and will host a full house Saturday for the 32nd consecutive time. Once again the Nextel Cup tour comes to Richmond International Raceway on the eve of the Chase, with the publicity machines working overtime as NASCAR plunges headlong toward its revamped playoff format.

What happened here four years ago, when a promising career ended and a life almost did, seems swept away by history, like the days when the racers on this old fairgrounds track skidded around on dirt. Jerry Nadeau's impact with the wall during a practice session delivered a force 135 times stronger than gravity, leaving him unconscious for 20 days and saddling him with physical symptoms that linger still today. Brief, hopeful plans of a driving recovery program were eventually replaced by some go-karting, some coaching, and the reality that he would never compete on NASCAR's premier level again.

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It was the end of a long trail of devastation, an ocean of grief that consumed this sport for the better part of four years. The deaths of Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin and Tony Roper in 2000, Dale Earnhardt's fatal crash and Steve Park's devastating accident in 2001, Jeff Purvis' brain injury in 2002 and Nadeau's debilitating crash in 2003 -- it was a string of heartache that rattled families and forced changes upon a series that for too long had been behind the curve in terms of safety. Suddenly the advances came fast and furious, and life-saving acronyms like HANS and SAFER became the norm.

A paradigm shift had occurred, and what had been one of the most reactive major racing series in terms of driver safety became one of the most proactive. The sanctioning body opened an R&D center to conduct safety research, redesigned the racecar in part to better protect the driver, at long last mandated head-and-neck protection and added soft walls to every track. The results were evident -- NASCAR's top series went more than four years, 158 event weekends, without a driver missing a start due to a race-related injury.

That streak ended Saturday when Ricky Rudd, a tough-as-nails driver who has started 900 Cup races, who used duct tape to keep wreck-swollen eyes open so he wouldn't miss the 1984 Daytona 500, will sit out of the Chevy Rock and Roll 400 with a separated shoulder suffered last weekend at California Speedway. The accident serves as a reminder that despite all the advances, despite the renewed emphasis on safety in a sport where too many drivers once saw themselves as cowboys and viewed the use of any safety device as a sign of weakness, the risk is always there. The idea of complete and total safety is an illusion, and despite all the mechanisms and devices in place to prevent injury, occasional loopholes still exist.

That much could be seen last week at California, a place where the speed and width once led to near-calamitous hits like the 2002 wreck that left Dale Earnhardt Jr. with a concussion. Few tracks have benefited more from the addition of the Steel and Foam Energy Reduction (SAFER) barrier, that layer of steel tubes and polystyrene foam that lessens impact energy transferred to the driver. But last Sunday night, when Jeff Gordon bobbled up into Jeremy Mayfield, who turned David Reutimann, who turned Rudd toward the outside wall, the veteran driver slammed into bare concrete at the exit of a turn, where at most tracks the SAFER barrier stops (watch video).

"What I hit was pretty solid," Rudd said. "It was a pretty hard hit." (Continued)