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."

Contact from Reutimann sent Rudd's car spinning, and he hit the wall flush on the driver's side. According to some reports, he was briefly knocked out. His Head and Neck Support (HANS) device, designed to keep the head from whipping forward in a crash, wedged under a part of his seat headrest, yanking his left shoulder out of the socket. He came to Richmond this weekend with his left arm in a sling. Given that he plans to retire after this season, there's an outside chance he may never compete again. Still, he feels lucky.

"An injury like this, I'm not too tore up about it. I'm very happy that a shoulder injury is the only thing that I'm having to deal with," he said. "It could be a severe head injury, considering the way the wreck was and the way these cars are designed. They've got one major inherent design flaw, and that's that the driver sits way too close to the left side of the car. His head is very vulnerable in an accident like that, so all the safety devices and everything worked great."

Fortunately, Rudd's car builders at Robert Yates Racing slid his seat a little to the right when they were constructing his California car, a decision that might have saved him from a more severe injury. That's standard in the Car of Tomorrow, where the seat is moved more toward the middle of the car, dramatically reducing the chance in a left-side collision that a driver's head will make contact with the wall. But the COT doesn't go full-time until next year.

"Basically, when the wreck happened, it threw me into the left-side door cage and threw me toward the wall," Rudd said. "Again, that clearance you have between your helmet and the wall on these current cars, you're talking about when you're all stretched out, probably less than an inch of head clearance between you and the wall. Whereas with the COT, for example, it's probably a foot. That's probably the only thing I can see right now that needs an immediate band-aid on it. I know there are only five races left in these (non-COT) cars, but that's the only thing I can say."

We've come a long way from the time, not too long ago, when the first drivers to wear HANS devices were ridiculed by their peers. The quantum leap NASCAR has made in terms of safety could be seen in another wreck at California, Brad Keselowski's fiery, grinding, wall-climbing crash, which occurred when the Busch driver was turned toward the wall in a manner similar to the way Rudd was. Rescue workers pulled him out of his mangled car and carted him away on a stretcher (watch video). But he hit the SAFER barrier, and he raced again Friday night at Richmond.

Not everyone is as fortunate. At racing's lower levels, where a HANS device is an expensive luxury and SAFER barriers rarely exist, fatal accidents like the one last month that killed NASCAR modified driver John Blewett still occur. Even in a series like Nextel Cup, where drivers are wrapped in a protective cocoon of unprecedented strength, danger can seek out and expose the weak points. Even as drivers continue to walk away from accidents that might have been disabling just a few years ago, the search for new and better safety advances continues. NASCAR is in the midst of the safest period in its long history. But as Ricky Rudd proves, enough is never enough.