It’s usually said that no matter how safe you make a racetrack, cars will find some vulnerable area on the track to crash and potentially have a very serious disaster that hadn’t been considered until it was too late.

As the top racetracks in the country add things like runoff areas and SAFER barriers to absorb impact in serious crashes, dirt tracks are a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to safety. The local tracks around the country that host Friday and Saturday night racing may or may not be as safe just simply due to cost. Yes, it’s terrible to cite a lack of money as a reason to not make a track safer in order to save lives, but it’s a reality that many local track owners face and many have to close down their tracks due to added costs or a developer that comes in with a big offer to buy the land. Some racers and fans know that and are willing to forego that if it means their local track doesn’t get closed down.

Such a situation happened Wednesday night. As Jason Johnson and Joey Saldana were racing for position in an All Star Circuit of Champions sprint car race in Florida, Saldana clipped the back of Johnson’s car and flipped end over end. Like a pole vaulter, the car just barely got over the ten foot fence and flipped past the grandstand, hitting a pole.

Thankfully, this had a happy ending in that nobody was injured, but it could have very easily hurt and kill many spectators. The car was so close to the fans that the bottom row of the grandstand was broken. Because the grandstand wasn’t full and fans usually prefer to sit higher in the stand in order to see more of the track, nobody was sitting there and nobody was hurt.

The fence itself looked like a general fence that probably isn’t designed to keep an entire sprint car from going into the stands. The fence is meant more to keep big body parts that break off from the car to fly into the stands.

On other tracks, the fencing is designed to curve toward the track at the top. That way if a car does get that high to clear the fence, it acts as a final attempt to keep the car in the vicinity of the track. More than likely, considering Saldana barely cleared the fence, that would have probably helped.

This just goes to show you that no matter how safe auto racing can appear, it can still be dangerous so it will always be a battle to make the sport as safe as possible.

[UPDATE]: Sunday night, another sprint car flipped over the same fence at Volusia Speedway, this time hitting spectators. World of Outlaws driver Dale Blaney flipped and according to the country sheriff, three people were seriously hurt.

[Black Flag]

About Phillip Bupp

Producer/editor of the Awful Announcing Podcast and Short and to the Point. News editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. Highlight consultant for Major League Soccer as well as a freelance writer for hire. Opinions are my own but feel free to agree with them.

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