NASCAR Chairman and CEO: R&D working on safety solutions
RELATED: Dillon shaken but OK after wreck | Dale Jr.: 'It scared the (expletive) out of me'
NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France said Monday the sanctioning body's review of the last-lap crash in the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway was underway with the NASCAR Research and Development Center taking the lead. France spoke on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio about the sport's strong track record in safety and competition.
As Dale Earnhardt Jr. crossed the start/finish line for his second win of the season, a wreck collected cars behind him with Austin Dillon going airborne into the catchfence. Dillon's car landed on its roof and was struck by Brad Keselowski's vehicle. Dillon walked away from the accident while 13 individuals in the grandstand were assessed with eight declining medical attention, four treated on site and one transported to a local hospital in stable condition, according to Daytona International Speedway President Joie Chitwood III.
France said NASCAR employees were at work at 8 a.m. on Monday morning, working on solutions to avoid similar crashes in the future, at the organization's R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina.
"We're the only ones in auto racing that have a full‑time research and development center where their sole responsibility is to sort out these kind of issues to make them better," France said. "This is auto racing. We're going to have challenges, and we're going to have hard crashes, as was (the case) last night. Thankfully everything was OK, but you learn from every single one of these things."
"The real good news for us is this is what we do. We have an entire group of people that woke up this morning, trying to figure out how do we make this better, make sure the car starters don't elevate."
In a similar crash at the end of the February 2013 XFINITY Series race at Daytona, Kyle Larson launched into the catchfence, and France noted how the sport took lessons from that incident that helped strengthen the fence.
"We learned a great deal on that, as a matter of fact," France said. "It reinforced the catchfence in different ways, and we went from an engineering standpoint right to work, and we'll do the same here.
"Our work in safety, whether it's the race car itself -- which held up beautifully, thankfully -- or certainly making our fans safe, that work never ends in auto racing and at NASCAR. And we take that responsibility at the top of our list, and we'll go right to work on that. We're all working on it."
RELATED: Exclusive camera angle on crash; No. 88 team's reaction
Pleased with the racing put on by the superspeedway package, France looked ahead to a new rules package for Saturday's Quaker State 400 Presented by Advance Auto Parts at Kentucky Speedway (7:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM).
"Obviously what we do want is the closest, tightest racing we can (have), but we put safety at the top of the list for obvious reasons," France said. "And so we pursue that, those things, as we go along, and have a track record of getting those things right, although it's a moving target and although it's never simple.
"An accident like last night, boy, it sure takes your breath away, and it should. But that's auto racing, and we're working on better solutions all the time to make racing safer and better."