NASCAR, 587 words

Each and every week NASCAR fans can't wait for the next race. They've either been fortunate enough to have gotten some tickets to go to the race or can take a few hours and sit down to watch it on TV.

Racing is fun to watch. It's exciting, exhilarating and entertaining. Most everybody has their favorite driver and team and they stick with them through thick and thin. NASCAR fans are loyal and dedicated, even to the detergents they use or the car brands they buy.

NASCAR fans who have watched through the years have seen great victories and the Petty-Pearson battle in 1976, the "pass-in-the-grass" by Dale Earnhardt at Charlotte. But they also have the breath-taking, hair-raising memories of Richard Petty barrel-rolling down the front stretch at Daytona or Earnhardt's car sliding on its top at Talladega. Oh, there have been many other spectacular crashes where they walked away. But the reality is, after all the fun and games, this is a very dangerous sport. Even though we've had two tragedies recently, it's still a rare occurrence. The last Winston Cup driver who actually lost his life during a race was J.D. McDuffie at Watkins Glen, N.Y., in 1991. I've thought about this a great deal, and sadly I don't have any statistics to back this up.

But think of it this way: if you drove your car 500 miles every weekend, and then added another 1,000 more miles for the testing, practice and qualifying, not to mention just getting to and from the track, the chances are great that you would be involved in some sort of accident. That's reality.

Now I'm not taking up or covering up for anybody or anything. I've heard all the NASCAR bashing about the way they don't handle tragedies well. And I agree, they don't.

Why? Because we are a close family, and we work together week in and week out. And things like this really hurt. Those in the NASCAR hierarchy aren't exempt. Not only do they have to deal with the death of a friend, but also then they have to make that dreaded phone call to some heart-broken parents that their child has died. It isn't easy for anyone, I assure you.

I remember myself being a child of nine, when that dreaded phone call came in that my own daddy had lost his life racing at Darlington. That's reality.

And driving isn't the only dangerous part of racing. It's dangerous in the pits as well. Over the years we've lost several pit crew members. But the race goes on. It always has. Kinda like P.T. Barnum, when he said, "The show must go on." As a crew member who has done this for years, and as a son who lost his own father, I know that some good always comes out of tragedies like this.

We usually find out what happened in the accident and then try to make it better. In racing we do this by naming roll bars there's the Petty bar, which keeps the right side of the roof of the car from collapsing, or the Earnhardt bar, which keeps the center of the roof up after being hit on top of the roof. As simple as that sounds, for those of us who work in this sport, it's a tangible, physical reminder.

On a personal note from my own family, our thoughts and prayers are with Kenny Irwin's family.