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| Hamlin opted out Sunday |
Since its founding in 1948, NASCAR has been a tough sport, populated by tough guys.
In the early days, drivers ran
more than 100 races each season, traveling from track to track with little more
than the previous night’s winnings to support them and their families, while
still keeping the race car rolling. Safety was little more than an
afterthought, with injuries and on-track deaths not uncommon. Through it all,
though, drivers were forced to persevere, blocking out the pain in an attempt
to keep moving money across the table.
With no time to heal, drivers
were forced to bind their wounds, patch their cars together and get down the
road to the next race, creating a warrior mentality that produced some amazing
stories of human perseverance.
The most recognized name in
NASCAR, Richard Petty, famously ran a number of races with a broken neck in 1980, keeping his injury hidden from NASCAR officials despite
knowing that another wreck would almost certainly kill him.
“Of all the races we ran,” admitted
Petty following his retirement, “there were probably 100 of them that I
shouldn’t have been in the race car. At least 100 of them.
“You did it
because that was your job,” he said. “It’s the competitive spirit. No matter
how bad you were hurt, you didn’t want to get out of the car. We were so cocky,
we weren’t going to admit that we couldn’t do the job.”
Petty was far
from alone.
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| Tough guy Ricky Rudd |
Ricky Rudd walked away from a
gyrating, eggbeater of a crash during the 1994 Busch Clash at Daytona
International Speedway that saw his car flip six times through the infield
grass. Two days later, with Daytona 500 qualifying on the agenda, Rudd’s eyes
were swollen nearly shut.
“I could hardly
open my eyes,” recalled Rudd. “They were like little slits (and) I knew I had
to fix it. While the guys were changing the spark plugs, I went and got a roll
of duct tape. I didn't have Band-Aids. I would have used Band-Aids, but I
didn't have any. I duct taped it; took all the extra skin, taped it to my
eyelid, taped that up to my forehead, put my helmet on and went on."
Amazing as it
sounds, Rudd’s swollen eyes were not the worst of his predicament.
"I don't
know if it was an inner-ear distortion problem, trauma to my inner ear or
whatever, but my balance mechanism went kind of haywire. Everything would go
dark when I went into the corner. I never told anyone I was uncomfortable. I
went around there wide-open but I never told them I was really uncomfortable in
the car. I just focused on the back bumper of the guy in front of me, and
followed that.”
The Daytona
incident is not the only example of Rudd’s tough-guy status. In
1998 at Martinsville Speedway, the Virginia native dominated the NAPA Auto Care
500, despite running without power steering while battling an exhaust leak that
allowed fumes to enter his car on a 100-degree day. Rudd persevered to
claim the checkered flag then passed out cold in Victory Lane.
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| Stewart has also raced hurt |
Tony Stewart has
also done his share of sheet time in the aftermath of crashes. A pair of wrecks
on consecutive days at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 2006 left the former series
champion with a broken right shoulder blade. With the circuit set to compete at
the high-banked Dover International Speedway the following week, there was
little doubt that Stewart would need relief. Ironically, he turned to Rudd, who
kept the team’s championship hopes alive with a 25th-place finish.
More recently,
Stewart missed the final 15 races of the 2013 campaign after suffering a
compound fracture of his lower-right leg in an Iowa Sprint Car crash.
“From a driver’s
standpoint, from a selfish standpoint, you don’t want to get out of the car,”
said Stewart. “You want to be selfish because you WANT to be in the car.”
In 1990, Darrell Waltrip broke
his left femur in a grinding, seven-car practice crash prior to the Pepsi 400 at
Daytona. He underwent more than 10 hours of surgery to repair and stabilize the
break, with surgeons attaching an 18-inch long steel plate to piece together
his shattered-in-three-places femur. Waltrip
also suffered a concussion, fractured left elbow and broken ribs in the crash;
raising the total of injuries sufficient to remove him from competition to four.
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| DW headed for the Crash House |
Despite
that laundry list of trauma, however, Waltrip started the next week’s event at
Pocono Raceway.
“Three
days after the surgery, I’m telling the doctor, `I’ve got to get out of here,’”
recalled Waltrip. “`I’ve got to go to Pocono! I’m 10th in points.’
He looked at me like I had lost my mind.”
Waltrip
was fitted with a special brace to stabilize his surgically repaired femur,
allowing him to be lifted – with great pain -- into and out of his car by
crewmembers. He started the next Pocono race, immediately giving way to relief
driver Jimmy Horton before finally admitting defeat and skipping a number of events
in order to allow himself to heal.
Doctors said the former NASCAR
Cup Series champion would be sidelined for a year. He was back in the car in 90
days.
Terry Labonte sustained a comparatively minor neck injury
in the same Daytona crash, but drove the next day, finished fourth. Veteran
Dave Marcis suffered a hairline fracture of the left leg, but like Waltrip,
started the race before turning his car over to J.D. McDuffie en route to a 20th-place
finish.
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| "Stupidest thing I ever did." |
“(Starting
the Pocono race) was a setback, both mentally and physically,” said Waltrip. “Getting
in and out of the car was tough. I went to the shop so (crew chief) Jeff
Hammond and the boys could practice stuffing me down in there and getting me
back out. It was just a dumb thing to do. It was the stupidest thing I ever
did.
“People
say, `Why did you do it?’ I did it because they (NASCAR) let me do it.
That was a time when I needed someone to save me from myself and say, `We’re
not going to allow you to do that.’
“Doctors speculated that
my career might be over,” recalled Waltrip. “I lost a sponsorship deal because
they said they didn’t want a driver with a broken leg. So I know how these drivers feel. They feel pressure from
their teams and sponsors. They feel like they’re letting people down if they’re
not there in the car, keeping themselves up in points and in the running to
make the Chase.
“If
I had it to do again, I would say, `No, I don’t think that will work,’” he
admitted. “When you’re hurt, you’re hurt, and you’ve got to admit it. The smart
money is to stay home, get yourself healed up and then go back to work.
Modern-day
NASCAR drivers have finally begun to embrace that mentality; some more grudgingly
than others. NASCAR has also done its part, instituting new rules requiring drivers
to be examined and cleared by a medical liaison after each and every crash. The
sanctioning body recently began administering offseason neurocognitive
baseline testing to its athletes, as well, establishing
healthy parameters to use when examining drivers in the aftermath of a crash.
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| Junior helped change the discussion |
Those new
protocols were instituted after the sport’s Most Popular Driver, Dale
Earnhardt, Jr. suffered a pair of concussions within a month at Kansas and
Talladega in 2012. Earnhardt described his Kansas test crash as "the
hardest hit I've ever had," and after a subsequent wreck just four weeks
later at Talladega, he knew instantly that something was not right.
Earnhardt already knew a thing or two about
playing hurt. In 2004, he suffered significant burns to his back, neck and
thigh in a sports car crash at Infineon Raceway, but insisted on starting the
next few NASCAR races before giving way to relief drivers.
“I was lucky to even
be allowed to be in there (to start the races),” recalled Earnhardt of his 2004
injuries. “It took a long, long, long time to heal. The burn on top of my left
leg was a big, open wound. There was no skin … it was all muscle. It was
bleeding and I had to change the bandages every four hours or so.”
Older,
wiser and perhaps more secure concerning his place in sport, the third-generation
driver did things differently in 2012. Ignoring decades of tough-guy “rub a
little dirt on it” mentality, he consulted doctors after the Talladega crash and
actually heeded their advice, doing what few of his predecessors had ever done
before; removing himself from the race car for two events in the heart of the
championship Chase.
“It almost cost me my career,” says Earnhardt of his
concussion scare. “It almost cost me my happiness."
Yesterday at Bristol Motor Speedway, Denny Hamlin chose
not to return following a lengthy red-flag stoppage for rain, complaining of
muscle spasms and pain in his upper back and neck. He was replaced by youngster
Erik Jones, who did yeoman work before being swept up in a late incident and
finishing 26th, six laps down.
In another era, Hamlin might have faced the same pressure
to continue – despite the possible risk – that Petty, Waltrip and Rudd experienced
in their day. In another era, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver might have yielded to
the “Macho Man” mentality that prompted decades of drivers to risk life and
limb in the pursuit of a few championship points.
Sunday, however, Hamlin was allowed – and even encouraged
– to make a better choice.
That’s a step in the right direction.
