Piece of lead off another car damages No. 55 ride, hits driver in helmet
Photo credit: @JasonToy1
NEWTON, Iowa – Talk about a welcome back gift.
Jamie Dick, driver/owner of the No. 55 Viva Motorsports Chevrolet, returned to competition at Iowa Speedway on Saturday for the first time since being diagnosed with new onset diabetes in March. It started off with a bang — literally.
While coming back onto the track from pit road, a piece of lead came off of the No. 4 car driven by Ross Chastain, impaling Dick’s Camaro in the upper left portion of its windshield. The hit was so hard, it destroyed the laminated windshield and protruded through, hitting and leaving a noticeable dent in Dick’s helmet.
“It was a rough return (to the track),” Dick joked in between practice sessions for Sunday’s NASCAR XFINITY Series 3M 250 (2 p.m. ET, FOX Sports 1, MRN, SiriusXM). “I was following another car out and when we pulled off pit road and got on the race track, I saw a piece of something; I thought it was a brake deck hose because it was silver and cylindrical. When we got down into the corner, I saw another piece of that fly out and I kind of dodged it.
“Then a split second after that, the lead hit the windshield. I don’t know if it was lead or tungsten, but whatever it was, it hit the windshield. I didn’t even see it before it hit, I just saw the windshield cave in and I felt it. I didn’t even realize it hit me (in the helmet) until we came in. I might’ve felt it, but everything happened so fast you don’t know exactly when you feel it.”
Dick was checked for concussion symptoms and cleared in the infield care center and he said he felt “fine.” His car, on the other hand, not so much.
Aftermath of Jamie Dick getting hit with a piece of lead on the race track. Dented his helmet. #NASCAR #3M250 pic.twitter.com/R6hUB2BrxQ
— Pat DeCola (@Pat_DeCola) May 16, 2015
The single-car No. 55 team (which also employs Jeffery Earnhardt as a part-time driver) was forced to use a backup car for the second session and planned on replacing the backup car’s engine with a separate backup engine after an oil issue cropped up in the replacement.
For a driver that’s already conquered a mountain of adversity already this season in the form of his new disease just to get back to racing, Saturday’s events certainly didn’t make things any easier. Dick immediately received plenty of support from his peers, as Ty Dillon and several other drivers came over to his garage stall after practice ended to check on him.
Chastain and team owner Johnny Davis did come by to apologize to Dick and make sure he was OK. While it wasn’t necessarily his fault, Chastain also tweeted a full apology shortly after the incident.
— Ross Chastain (@RossChastain) May 16, 2015
NASCAR officials were also quick to the scene.
“NASCAR was there right away inspecting and seeing what happened,” Dick said. “The laminated windshield did its job, which is the good part, and that’s something they implemented a year ago or so. That held up or else it would’ve been a much worse day.”
While Dick said it isn’t really for him to say whether or not the No. 4 team should be penalized for what happened, he mentioned he “would be very surprised if there wasn’t one.”
NASCAR XFINITY Series director Wayne Auton addressed the situation Saturday afternoon and indicated the issue would be brought up during Tuesday’s debrief at the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina.
“Number one, safety is our biggest concern out of anything that we do in motorsports,” Auton said. “It’s a sport that there’s 10,000 revolving pieces 24/7 when vehicles are on the race track or they’re sitting here in the garage area.
“Notoriously, penalties are discussed on Tuesdays and that will definitely be discussing that one Tuesday. Any time that we have found weight coming out of race cars on the race track, we’ve been pretty harsh about it. We have to be. That’s part of it. People are sitting up here in the grandstands and drivers sitting inside these race cars. We’ll discuss it Tuesday … pretty confident something will come out of that.”