The Memorial Day weekend auto-racing triple is back (Monaco, Indy 500, Coke 600) (1 Viewer)

Looks to be awhile. Drivers getting out of the cars.
 
Looks to be awhile. Drivers getting out of the cars.
Well, they're getting back in the cars, so maybe not too long. Hopefully they can get this race in. I wouldn't mind the Cup race getting pushed back a couple of hours. Would rather they run under the lights, but we'll see.

FYI, the Xfinity race had to run at least 90 laps to be considered official.
 
The wheels are tethered to chassis to keep them connected and from flying into the audience. Tethering was a direct response to two incidents that killed a total of five fans. After those incidents, engineers developed the tethers and they became required equipment in US open wheel (this was during the CART/IRL split). That was 1999, which is fairly recent in the history of the sport.

Yesterday, the particular geometry of the accident sheered the tether and released the wheel over the fence. It was pure luck that fans weren't hit - and with that weight and velocity of the wheel assembly, death (potentially of multiple people) would have been almost certain.

The engineers are definitely going to look at the incident (re: how the tether was compromised) and they're going to look to build additional redundancy to account for such a situation in the future. I don't think any of us knows enough about how that system is setup and where it can be improved - certainly not enough to declare that we don't know how much more they can do. These are very smart, professional racing engineers, they're highly capable and very creative.

My point was simply that race-safety innovations almost always result from a tragedy. Here, a near miss still gives us the same opportunity to improve . . . and to not have lost anyone as a cost is a blessing.
This gets to what you're saying about the attention that wheel coming off is gonna get. Curious to see if they come up with any changes.

 
Hahaha, Kyle B driving halfway around the track backwards after spinning out was awesome. Then the smooth transition to right himself was nice. And Kyle has been pretty chill this season. He's growing on me, lol.
 
Holy sheet...did Elliot just intentionally wreck Hamlin? Looked exactly like the Larson - Wallace situation in Vegas last season.
 
Blaney just had a better car tonight. Excellent drive by him. Long wait for a win for the 12. Most impressive drive had to be Bubba. Multiple mishaps by his crew put him a lap down, and later at the back of the lead lap cars multiple times and somehow finished 4th. Reddick was 5th. Great night for 23XI.
 
Blaney just had a better car tonight. Excellent drive by him. Long wait for a win for the 12. Most impressive drive had to be Bubba. Multiple mishaps by his crew put him a lap down, and later at the back of the lead lap cars multiple times and somehow finished 4th. Reddick was 5th. Great night for 23XI.

Awesome for Blaney - they deserved to win for sure. And Bubba ran a great race, earned that 4th, they’re rolling right now.
 

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