R&D Center poring over data that came through in Daytona wreck
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On Tuesday, the sports world was still buzzing about Austin Dillon's spectacular wreck on the last lap of the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway. Meanwhile, NASCAR was busy investigating the incident for potential safety improvements.
NASCAR Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Development Officer Steve O'Donnell appeared on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio's "The Morning Drive" and explained some of the processes that were taking place in reaction to the wreck, which Dillon walked away from after waving to fans to signal that he was OK.
O'Donnell said Dillon's car and all the parts were at the NASCAR Research and Development Center in Concord, North Carolina, where they were under investigation.
"The incident data recorder that we have will give us over 10,000 samples per second of that incident, and that goes for 20 seconds," O'Donnell said. "(The people at R&D) are going to be poring over that data, looking at what improvements we can make from the car. Two things you never want to see, how did it get up in the air and how did it get into the fence. Both of those we need to work on, and we are doing that."
O'Donnell said NASCAR also was concerned with the debris that entered the grandstand. Thirteen spectators were seen at the track after the accident. Eight declined treatment, four were treated at the track and one spectator was taken to a nearby hospital, treated and later released.
"And the second piece (of the investigation) is what can we do from a technology standpoint to keep any debris from going into the grandstand," O'Donnell said. "We know this is an inherently dangerous sport, but the fans go there to be entertained. So what we can do to lead in this area and come up with some new technology that will benefit the sport and especially the race track."
O'Donnell also was asked whether NASCAR planned any penalties for the crew members who rushed onto the track and went to check on Dillon.
"Nobody is going to be penalized," O'Donnell said. "We took some hard cards, and the reason for that is we want to have some conversations with those folks. Listen, we all applaud everybody who wants to run to a scene and help out. That's something that I think is really cool about our industry in terms of people caring about their fellow athletes.
"We just want to talk about the safety aspect of it. We have got to dispatch our safety equipment; those folks are experts and to be able to get to Austin as quickly as possible, assess the scene. Any second we can't do that because the car might be surrounded is a challenge."
O'Donnell addressed a couple of other topics during the radio show.
On what went into the decision to run the race Sunday night instead of Monday, O'Donnell said:
"I know Brian (France) said it, 10:45-to-11:15 we thought we'd back with green flag racing. We missed that a little bit. Definitely started a little later than we had hoped or wanted, but when you looked in the stands and how many people remained for the race, big night for NBC, folks had been there for a long, long time, we thought it was in our best interest, knowing it was a work day the next day, to try to get that in if there was any way possible."
And finally on whether the Coke Zero 400 would ever go back to being a daytime event:
"I don't think so, the sport is so big now and there are so many partners that are involved. I think that worked for a time, and that was neat. I've lived in Florida for a long time and the showers are usually one hour and out of here. (The weather) was a bit unusual Sunday night. That's a huge opportunity for us, for the fans who come, for our television partners, it was a big moment for the sport to be able to race on Sunday night. We have to take those opportunities when we can if we want to continue to grow the sport."