Safety concerns addressed

From (today) Monday, April 27th:

NASCAR Vice President of Corporate Communications Jim Hunter responds to safety concerns from yesterday's race @ Talladega Superspeedway.

"In regards to Sunday's late race incident at Talladega Superspeedway, it's extremely unfortunate that a few fans suffered minor injuries. No one wants anyone to get hurt while attending one of our events and our thoughts are with each of the fans injured this weekend.

Safety is, and always will be, NASCAR's No. 1 priority, and we are glad that each of the safety devices at Talladega yesterday worked properly, including the roof flaps and the catch fence. As most of you know, we are constantly evaluating safety initiatives. It's something we do every day we are at the racetrack, and it's something we do every day at the R&D center.

We tried letting the competitors police themselves when it comes to blocking and bump drafting. After reviewing all of those procedures, we might have to start making some judgment calls of our own and penalize, issue penalties for drivers who blatantly block and abuse the bump drafting.

We are going to take whatever measures we need to in order to ensure the races are as safe as possible for everyone.

One of our primary goals over the years is to build a restraining fence that keeps the cars and parts and pieces out of the spectator areas. And nothing is bullet proof from yesterday from what we saw yesterday, the fence, the retaining fence did what it was supposed to do; it threw the car back on the racetrack. There was some debris that went in the grandstand that, fortunately, did not invoke serious injury.

So we will analyze the fence and make sure that it did what it was supposed to do. We think it did. If there's something that we come up with, as we analyze this accident, we will certainly put it into play. We will make it as safe as we humanly can.

I might add that there have been multiple changes in the size of the restrictor plates over the years, both for safety and competition reasons.

As a matter of fact, we have changed the size of the plate during the course of the race weekend before, and we make it clear, we have different sized plates with us at every event, and we make it clear that the final plate size is not officially determined until the conclusion of the final practice."

Rick Humphrey, track president of the Talladega Superspeedway said on Monday: officials will evaluate the catch-fence system involved to see whether it needs to be heightened.

"We'll look at everything to see what we can do to prevent this," Humphrey said."Racing is a dangerous sport in general. Certainly, Talladega has created some very exciting racing and exciting finishes and along the way there have been some incidents that people have been rather outspoken about.

The racing here is unique. I don't think anything drastic needs to happen. We'll continue to have discussions to see what, if anything, needs to be done. The answer is not to blow the place up and start over."

Seven fans seated in the grandstands were injured as a result of flying debris from Carl Edwards' crash. None of the injuries were reported as life threatening. Two women were taken to Birmingham hospitals. They were airlifted not due to the severity of their injuries, but due to traffic congestion outside of the track. One woman taken to UAB Hospital was listed in fair condition on Monday. The other woman was taken to Brookwood Hospital in Birmingham for treatment of a medical condition, but no further details have yet been released. The other injured fans were treated at the track and released.

Update 4/29: The Associated Press is reporting a teenage female was released from a UAB Hospital on Wednesday after having reconstructive surgery to repair a broken jaw due to flying debris from Carl Edwards' car crash @ Talladega.