Scott says the jersey barriers saved him from worse injury. A poured wall tilted in at the top getting hit at that angle would have stopped the truck dead in its tracks. Straight from the horses mouth. At least getting a bit airborn spent some of the trucks energy. Good news is that all of the safety equip in the truck did what it was supposed to do. Motor is likely no good though. One valve cover crushed, timing cover crushed, balancer broke off and crossmember is an inch into the oil pan. Remember, at 85mph, 3700lbs carries a lot of energy!
Scott says the jersey barriers saved him from worse injury. A poured wall tilted in at the top getting hit at that angle would have stopped the truck dead in its tracks. Straight from the horses mouth. At least getting a bit airborn spent some of the trucks energy. Good news is that all of the safety equip in the truck did what it was supposed to do. Motor is likely no good though. One valve cover crushed, timing cover crushed, balancer broke off and crossmember is an inch into the oil pan. Remember, at 85mph, 3700lbs carries a lot of energy!
I know if the walls were straight up and down i wouldn't have been able to drive the BT teams car the night my throttle hung in practice in SS, people couldn't believe I wasn't hurt, but hey, we're just drivers that have gone through it, what do we know? 😉
I hope they never get rid of the white and blues
Hmm. An interesting argument. It makes sense that the car's impact sending it up would expend some of the initial energy of the hit. I guess the question is does the car going up in the air after the hit cause more problems than if the wall just stopped it?
This is our "brand new" jersey barriers being baptized by Ron Pearn and Paul Gilgan in 1982. I was there that night and this happened in turn 1 right in front of us. Gilgan was on the pole and his throttle stuck. Everyone else was turning but he just straight lined it right into the concrete. Pearn was on the outside pole, which unfortunately was wrong place to be. Most of all I remember the sound of those 2 cars hitting. It was a show stopper for sure. (That was one of those hits where everyone gasps, jumps to their feet, then there's that few seconds of creepy silence before the announcer catches his breath and says something.)
This was a make-up feature for the Friday night before, so it was the first race of the night. Talk about a way to kick off the evening. Reason I remember it so well is that, as a family, we stopped going in 1978 for some reason, and it was 1982 by the time I talked Dad into taking us again. This happened on our first night back.
Anyway, there's a point to this. What would have been different if the walls had been straight up? Less damage, more damage, worse injury? Both guys walked away...but it was some time before Pearn got it rebuilt and came back. I dont remember if Gilgan ever did or not.
I hope they never get rid of the white and blues
I dunno. I like red and white like a lot of southern tracks have. Brighter and more polished looking IMO...more pleasing to the eye. Never understood why they went with blue.
But blue and white has become pretty distinctly Delaware...so what the heck. Beats the hell out of straight white.
😉