It was another scary day on the race track, this time at Charlotte Motor Speedway with the North Carola Education Lottery 200 and the Camping World Truck Series.
Not even a week removed from NASCAR’s complete disregard for safety in exchange for entertainment and replays to use for future marketing and advertising at Circuit of the Americas, we once again had an on-track incident where many fans were left wondering whether a driver was actually going to walk away.
And once again NASCAR’s safety crew was nowhere to be found for several minutes.
And once again this wreck shouldn’t have happened.
Here’s the replay of the violent wreck, for reference, although note that FS1 once again somehow didn’t get the full happenings of the wreck, so think of this as a replay of about half of the incident.
If you fast forward to the 0:24 mark of that video, you’ll see that Trey Hutchens’ #14 Chevrolet had already been hard into the wall (who knows how long before this), and is then seen riding the wall before nearly coming to a stop on track NEARLY SEVEN FULL SECONDS LATER.
Since NASCAR somehow didn’t see Hutchens wreck and then come to a halt, which should’ve been an immediate caution from the start, Johnny Sauter and Drew Dollar had nowhere to go and slam into the back of Hutchens at full speed, completely destroying Hutchens and Sauter’s trucks–not to mention putting many lives at danger.
By the way, that seven seconds doesn’t even include Hutchen’s initial wreck to get to that point, as at the 0:24 mark of that video, his truck is already destroyed. Who knows how long he was already wrecking before that.
Once the wreck happened everything came to a top, Johnny Sauter’s destroyed car had one noticeable (and concerning) thing about it: the window net was still up. For those not familiar, any time there is a wreck, a driver involved will put their window net down to signify that he/she is okay.
And yet NASCAR’s safety crew just moseyed over, in seemingly no rush at all, like a labrador retriever taking his morning walk around the backyard looking for a place to pee. This lackadaisical effort by the safety crew seems to becoming more of a pattern with each passing week, as this isn’t the first time this has happened in 2021.
To recap here: NASCAR had a truck wreck, then slide up against the wall, ride the wall, and then come to a complete stop on the track and get plowed into other trucks going full speed. For some reason, they completely missed all of that, and didn’t throw a caution flag until after that all went down. I’d estimate it a minimum of 10 seconds after it all started. Then, when it was unclear whether a driver involved was actually okay, NASCAR’s safety crew took what seemed to be several minutes to get there.
Here’s NASCAR’s take on what happened and why they didn’t throw a caution:
Completely unacceptable. All of it. And seemingly, a lot of people should be pissed off about it, right? Think again.
The media is what drives the thinking of the common person. Like it or hate it, they have the power to craft any happening to fit a narrative, both politically as well as in the world of sports.
But once again, nobody in the NASCAR media world stood up to call the sport out on its bullshit on Friday night. Just like last week at Circuit of the Americas. Just like at Kansas with the tire on pit road caution.
once again, NASCAR media members–at least prominent ones on Twitter–continue to get on their knees and hope whatever NASCAR puts in their mouth tastes good so they can spit it back out to the public. Or can’t be bothered enough to even report on stuff like this, much like they can’t be bothered to even tweet driver names instead of car numbers and/or put out any actual useful information.
Once Again
You probably noticed the words “once again” several times in this article. That was the 8th time for those counting at home. And I did that for a reason: shit like this isn’t just happening once and then not happening again. NASCAR continues to make questionable (at best) or downright awful (at worst) calls, and more and more we’re seeing them do this at the expense of either safety (COTA and tonight) or integrity (Kansas) in exchange for entertainment.
Additionally, we continue to not see any of the prominent media members point this out; in most cases, those guys actually defend this bullshit.
It’s getting old. Really old. And it’s making this sport incredibly difficult to watch and continue to defend, especially when driver’s lives are being put at stake for the chance at entertainment. This isn’t the fucking Hunger Games.
