Nascar crash

massive nascar crash at daytona speedway in florida on saturday with around 30 fans injured

Lots of cars going crazy speeds in a relatively confined space. Who'd have thought anything could ever go wrong?

im afraid this was inevitable as these cars get faster and faster in the the search for more speed and the insatiable"win at all costs" outlook of the teams,drivers and fans,it was a horrendous accident and you really feel for the poor fans who only went to see a motor race and almost paid the ultimate price,my thoughts and sympathies are with the injured racegoers,hopefully some good may emerge from this tragedy,with a tightening of the rules and safety improvements in the tracks,and something done to reign in the speeds these vehicles are doing

Those kinds of crashes in NASCAR were not unknown in the past, but in this instance 2 things combined to almost cause a disaster.

1. Kyle Larson's car hit an access gate in the fence. This ripped the front end (engine etc) from the car which luckily didn't travel much further than the other side of the wall.

2. A wheel / tyre plus brake caliper etc cleared the catch fence and landed about 20 feet up in the stands. This, along with other debris is what caused most of the injuries.

When the fence was repaired overnight, the gate was not reinstated. Had it not been there for the accident the car would have been (relatively) harmlessly deflected back onto the track.

Up until fairly recently NASCAR had a history of cars spinning then going airborne when the air flow got under the rear end. This is why the roof flaps you see on recent cars were brought in. When the car spins and goes backwards, the flaps deploy and help to stop it flipping as seen on the #7 car in the video. Larson was unlucky in that an impact with another car caused his to flip.

There was one other factor that prevented carnage on Saturday. The race was a Nationwide Series event, which is basically a step down from the main Sprint Cup races. Had this happened on Sunday during the Daytona 500, those stands would have been full to capacity.

NSACAR will learn from this and find a way to try and prevent it happening again. It may be something as simple as removing the access gates in the fences.