Earnhadt question

[Jeremy A]

I heard there is a wab site out there that is a petition to get the number 3 retired from nascar.

I have been looking but can not find the site.

Does anyone know where the address to this place?

[Troy LaTour]

Jeremy,
Go to www. nascar.com, on the cover page is a area titled " Fitting Tribute to Dale Earnhardt for Sunday ". You can vote for 5 different options, they are: Memorial decal on all cars for 1 year,Vacant garage stall, Vacant pit box, Retire #3, Or , all of the above. Most of the votes lean towards all of the above. I have been a fan of Dale's since he was driving Rod Osterlund's unsponsered #2 Chevy, I personally would like to see NASCAR retire the seven time champ's number. That only seems right,I as feel it just would not be the same if someone else used that number.
RCR is putting Kevin Harvick in the GM Goodwrench Chevy on Sunday with the number(30) that NASCAR issued to RCR for Kevin's team.
I already miss Dale, but Kevin is an excellent driver and will do a good job for RCR on Sunday and in the future.
Troy LaTour
Warrior Boats

[Firetiger(MN)]

This is what you are looking for.

http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?DaleE3

~60,000 so far.


*3*

[Jeremy A]

from the looks of it there are several of these out there. I heard the address of one last night, but it left my brain before I got to my computer.

I will update this thread with any others I find.

the pole will be left open this sunday. RCR and DEI cars will have a special decal on there cars in tribute, the rest of the cars will have a diffrent decal.

and I would love to see 3 retired also

[Troy LaTour]

Jeremy,
I just looked at Nascar.com, there are two new updates.
The Goodwrench Chevy will be #29 and painted white, and NASCAR said that Dale's left side lap belt was seperated. Richard Childress said the belts were brand new and manufactured in November 2000.
There are about 210,000 votes on NASCAR's website.

[Jeremy A]

WOW, that saftybelt thing brings alot of questions to mind.

if the belt was unbuckled sunday night to discover that the webbing was broken, how did they get dale out of the car?

Also if he hit the stearing wheel from that impact would the doctors have see the damage to the front of his body andreported that sooner?

Since I am an x-racer I have more questions but those are for another time.

To me it sounds a little like nascar is trying to cover there butts for not enforcing the proper safy precautions.

[GullGuide]

I really do not follow NASCAR, but I, as everyone else, knew who the Intimidator was.
What I heard from the press conference immedetely following his death, the doctor said there was no damage to his face. What I also heard, and this makes a lot of sense, is that when you hit a wall doing 180, your body stops, because of the harness, but your brain keeps going, slamming into the wall of your skull. I don't know exactly how many G's would go through ones body from a 180 to zero stop, but it is definetly enough to kill you.
No safty device in the world can protect your body from that kind of G force.
I personally witnessed a head-on crash a few years ago..60 to zero just like that. Both victims were wearing seat belts, but both died because their heads continued to travel at 60mph, snapping their necks instantly. Immagine what would happen at 180.
Like I said, I'm not a huge race fan, but when someone of his magnitude is lost, we all suffer.
GullGuide
>"////=<

[Dave in Mpls]

Before I begin, lets all agree that dead is dead.

However, if I hear one more time that Dale's car hit that wall at 180 mph, I think I'm gonna have a caniption!! If that car hit the wall at 180 mph, they would still be picking up pieces off the track, infield and surrounding community. The fact is, there wasn't alot of structural damage to the car. The car may have been traveling 180 mph, but the velocity vector perpendicular to the wall was nowhere near that.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest!

Regards

RIP, Dale

[Airwave(OH)]

OK so how fast was he going????????????????????at impact...Like it matters

[AquaMan]

Thanks, Jeremy A, for heads up. I signed the retirement of #3. It is a fittiing tribute for The Terminator!

On another note, reading the information the last couple of days regarding the seat belt answered my questions. I have watched that impact 100 times and could not believe that it was fatal. I have seen those impacts so many times from NASCAR and it had to be a failure of something in the car. The crash was not at top speed, nor was it a direct hit. Ken Schrader's car, as well as the skid, slowed the cars impact. If anything the side impact, which took place a split second before Dale hit the wall, was equally as bad as the forward hit. But the two hits were far less violent then the roll over he encountered before. I knew something else happened in that car then a basic wall hit.

Eitherway, this was a freak tragedy, but that IS racing and the risk we all have to regretfully accept. I just hope the sponsors and the media will keep their hands off the racing format and let the racers handle the issues they feel are important. To the objection of a lot of drivers, the roof airfoils were the media's way of equalizing the pack and making it "more exciting"...they got that, didn't they? Next will be airbags.

My heart goes out to the wife and kids!

AquaMan~~~~~~~~~~~~~

--- "It all begins and ends at the water's edge"

[Firetiger(MN)]

I cannot tell you at what speed the car was moving at the moment of impact, but I think what most are talking about is the speed at which the cars were moving before the accident. Either way, very little speed was lost before the crash.

[Dave in Mpls]

Of course it doesn't matter - did you read the first sentence of my post???????????????????????????

How fast? Kinda hard for me to say, as I was in Mpls Sunday, not Daytona. Use your imagination and tell me what a car would look like after hitting a wall at 180 mph. Now, compare that with what the car actually looked like after the crash. I'd guess that he actually hit the wall at something less than 30 mph.

My point is that I'm sick and tired of the media continually suggesting that he HIT THE WALL at 180 mph.

Regards

[Firetiger(MN)]

Less than 30 mph?? You have to be kidding. I'm sorry but you do not go from 180 to 30 just by skidding. Damage to the car is not an indication of the speed at the time of the crash. If you listened to any of the other racers, they all say it's the worse type of crash there is. Energy is lost by rolling, flipping, or banging other cars which is evident by pieces of the car flying off during an accident. Dale hit square on and there was very little energy lost before that happened.

[Dave in Mpls]

I'm not saying that the car was traveling at less than 30 mph, it may very well have been going 180 mph, but the majority of that speed was carrying the car down the track, and did not play into the collision between the car and the wall. What I am saying is that the speed at which he actually HIT THE WALL was something less than 30 mph.

[sib]

some are spectulating that if he had a full face helmet he'd still be alive today. they are saying that after the belt broke he smashed his chin on the steering wheel, thus fracturing his skull.

who knows, yes he was great, but he was no richard petty who has more than 200 victories to his name. nevertheless, he will be missed by many.

"go outside and play"
sib

[Firetiger(MN)]

Slow motion TV is deceiving.

[Ex traffic cop]

The impact of the car was something like 30 degrees. Without plugging the formulas your original guesstimate for impact equivalant speed would be one third of his speed, or about 60mph head on. The impact with Schrader wouldn't lessen the internal (body) velocities, but would in fact cause two accelerations to be happening at once. A rough equivelant would be touching off both barrels of a shotgun a split second apart. No more energy than 5 seconds apart, but lots more recoil. Hope this helps a little, we're all still hurtin.

[Al]

Dave makes a very valid point. I'll second that notion that dead is dead. He is right though. The inertia of the car was moving downtrack with the flow of the pack. Yes he hit the wall hard, but there is no way that the inertia transferred directly sideways at 100%. There could be no skid for the transfer of 180 MPH to the wall.

I saw a clip from another wreck that Dale had several years ago. It was nearly identical except for the fact that the nose of the car slid enough that it wasn't directly going into the wall. If I remember correctly, he walked out of that one.

I don't follow NASCAR much, but I admire people who are the best at what they do. It saddens me to see #3's "race" come to an end much sooner than anyone would ever believe.

[Bob]

If you've never seen in person just how fast 180 mph is on these tracks then you will not really comprehend it by just seeing it on television. It is incredible when you see it first hand.

[Pete(OH)]

Sorry guys but NASCAR will not retire any numbers but will put #3 in moritorium for 1 year plus Childress said he will never put another black #3 on the track.

[Smitty]

Not to take anything away from "The King", but I think it's hard to simply compare the number of wins each had as a measure of their success as they competed in different eras.. As with most sports over the last 20 years, rules and regulations have been implemented to create parity for "fan appeal".. If anyone dominates for too long, the rules are changed to make it more exciting again for the fans and marketable for sponsors..

Apples and oranges, just my opinion. I only know that The Intimidator has been "the greatest" in my time of following racing. 180MPH or 30MPH doesn't really matter at this point (as Dave/Mpls said), we've still lost a legend and the person most thought of when you say the word Nascar.

[Firetiger(MN)]

I would like to also say that there is a phenomenon called centrifugal force that also has a role in the speed at which he hit the wall. Remember, this isn't 180 mph down a straight track...this happened on the curve and I think many of you are forgetting that. That is why they say it's the worse type of crash there is. The car shot up the race track (which has a 31° banking) at a very fast rate and therefore not much speed was scrubbed off. If you watch the wreck again, you will notice that contact in the left rear sent him towards the infield, but the centrifugal force sent him back up the track like a rocket towards the wall almost at full speed.

[Hoyt]

What's racecar spelled backwards?

[Bugtussle]

Actually the speculation last year after the deaths of Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin was that the open face helmet may be safer in a head on crash because they are lighter for one thing and the impact of the head snapping forward with a full-face helmet may actually have caused the neck to break. Sounds like there will have to be much more testing done to determine what can be done to improve driver safety in a crash like that.

[SUPERTROLLER]

I was going to let this one slide by without comment so I wouldn't argue with someone on an emotional level but since you said it first I'll agree with you. NASCAR has never retired a driver's number and probably never will. The way I heard it explained was that by someone else driving that number and winning with it that the other driver is remembered and honored every time we recall past drivers with that number. I know this isn't the popular view right now. I think it should remain with Childress or Dale Earnhardt Inc. as long as they want to keep it. That's what Richard Petty had to do with the 43. Dale wasn't for putting himself above anyone else and I believe by retiring his number that is what they would be doing. I do not personally think he would have wanted that. I also think if Childress let it go back to NASCAR that nobody would run it for many, many years anyway. Who would want to risk alienating 99.9% of the fans or trying to live up to the standard that would be expected of anyone with enough guts to run with that number? We don't know for sure what's going to happen to the number but we do know that the Goodwrench Chevy will NOT be black. They haven't finalized the colors but definately said it will never be black again. Maybe Kerry Earnhardt will take over the number when he's ready for Winston Cup or maybe he takes over the 8 and Jr. drives a 3 car but if anyone else tried to run #3 they would be ridiculed until their dying days. I realize the petitioners have their hearts in the right place but I can't go along with the special treatment of retiring his number. He was special but he didn't think he was anything more special than the next guy. He was very humble and lived his life that way. He didn't live extravagantly even though he easily could have.

Getting too long so I'll wrap it up. NASCAR probably won't retire that number and I don't think they should because I don't think Dale would've wanted anything extra done for him. IMHO.

[River_eye]

You are right. If only we could draw a picture for some of these guys. Just because the car was travelling 180 mph, doesn't mean that the it was a 180 mph impact.

You can side swipe a wall going straight at 180 mph which would be a minor bump, and you can also drive a car straight into a wall at 180 mph which would leave the car in a billion pieces. Both accidents happened at 180 mph but the impact depends on the angle of impact. Dale's accident was partly between the two extremes.

There were many forces acting on the car at the time of impact including centrifugal force, his velocity, inertia, aspect angle, and tire friction. All of these combined made for a deadly crash. But no, he did not drive directly into a wall at 180 mph stopping him dead.

River eye

[just a fan]

In response to Dave in Mpls:
Yes, he did hit the wall at approx. 180. How much energy was transferred does not reduce the speed. Apples and Oranges. If a pitcher throws a 100mph fastball and you get enough of it to clear the catchers mitt, does that mean he threw a 5 mph fastball?