NASCAR hasn’t had enough time yet to determine what safety changes may result from Austin Dillon’s terrifying last-lap crash at Daytona International Speedway early Monday morning.
That’s the word from NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer Steve O’Donnell, who said in a Tuesday afternoon teleconference that the sanctioning body has no timetable for the completion of the investigation into Dillon’s crash.
Dillon’s car went into the Daytona frontstretch catch fence after Denny Hamlin spun around and launched the black No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet into the air. The incident prompted national headlines and a lot of debating about what, if any, changes should be made at restrictor-plate races at Daytona and Talladega Superspeedway.
“It’s still too early to tell,” O’Donnell said about NASCAR’s ongoing investigation. “The car just got back to the R&D Center yesterday. Obviously that race ended very late, and travel time up to the R&D Center. That will take some time to implement, but as I say, anything that we do find and we believe would be in the best interest of safety, we’ll move swiftly to do that.”
According to O’Donnell, NASCAR is talking about the next plate race at Talladega in the fall.
“I think we will have ongoing dialogue with the industry,” said O’Donnell. “That’s already started. It really started at 5:00 in the morning post-race, and we’ll continue that. Anything that we can do to continue to make the racing as safe as possible and have the fans in as safe an environment as possible, we will do that heading into Talladega.”
O’Donnell said NASCAR is looking at a number of options for improving safety. Asked whether NASCAR would change catch fences, he said that was only part of the issue.
“I think the catch fence, first and foremost, is there to obviously keep the car from going through, and I think it did that,” O’Donnell said. “I think the next iteration that we would look at, it may not be a fence make, but what are the new technologies that are out there, and I think this is an area for all sports to look at, with anything either flying away from a playing field or a racing surface. If we can lead in that area, we want to do just that. I wouldn’t make it specific to a fence. There could be a lot of new technologies that we could look at collectively with the tracks to make some improvements in that area.”
Several drivers, most notably Dillon’s Richard Childress Racing teammate Ryan Newman, voiced critical comments after the Daytona race, but O’Donnell said no fines will result from what Newman or anyone else said.
“I disagree with Ryan’s comments,” O’Donnell said. “We’ve got people up at the R&D Center who that’s all they do is work on safety each and every day, 24 hours a day, and I’m proud of the work that they do. But no, there won’t be any fines forthcoming or anything for the drivers.”
