NASCAR Then and Now - Ben White [17]
Track safety has come a long way from the old dirt tracks, when rickety wooden fences—if anything—were all that stood between the fans and speeding cars, and a trackside clump of trees might be the last thing a driver sees after making a fatal mistake at top speed.
Modern tracks, such as New Hampshire Motor Speedway, keep fans safe with tall chain-link fencing anchored in concrete. These fences are built to withstand the impact of a flying stock car without collapsing. The multilayered wall that Patrick Carpentier has hit is a Steel and Foam Energy Reduction (SAFER) barrier, which is designed to absorb some of the force of an impact, protecting the driver from injury.
Standard highway guardrails were the norm at superspeedways in the early 1960s. They were generally effective in keeping the cars on track in normal situations, but the consequences could be grim when they failed. At the 1961 World 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Reds Kagle lost one of his legs when he slammed into the guardrail with such violence that it severed the barrier. His car was impaled by the guardrail.
This photo is an inside view of the SAFER barrier. The outer wall is actually a series of square steel tubes welded together. The arrow-shaped elements are stacks of thick foam. When a car makes a hard impact, the system absorbs much of the energy, and the foam pieces will often become dislodged. All of today’s NASCAR tracks have SAFER barriers along outside turns and on some inside walls.
The pit lanes are another area where great strides have been made in regards to safety. In this 1950 shot at Darlington, cars fly past the open pit area where hundreds of crew members stand close by. The crew working on the car in the foreground is mere inches from race traffic. With no wall separating the pits and track, an out-of-control car veering into the pits would likely have resulted in dozens of injuries—or worse.
This shot of the Daytona pit road shows a much safer environment for teams and officials. The speedway’s tri-oval layout places pit road far away from the racetrack. Pit lane itself is also considerably wider—with clearly marked stalls for each car.
Trackside Stables
The sound is music to the ears of any NASCAR fan: The roar of the 800-horsepower thoroughbred engines echoing around the speedway. The hardcore fans arrive early—long before the first practice session or race—just to hear those first exhaust notes, to take in those early morning thunderclaps coming from the infield garages. For some, this is what NASCAR is all about: the sound of one of the greatest toys ever invented by mankind—the internal combustion engine.
The garage area at a NASCAR track is like the locker room at a sports stadium or the backstage area at a music arena. It’s where the stars of the show make last- minute preparations, work themselves up into a frenzy before hitting the stage, and return to regroup when the show is over. Compared to yesteryear, today’s trackside stables are much larger and more spacious, but they remain the place to find—and hear—the stars of the NASCAR show.
It’s March 30, 1962, and dozens of cars sit packed tightly together, idling under the fluorescent lights of the Atlanta Motor Speedway garage area during a rainout of the Grand National event.
The state-of-the-art Las Vegas Motor Speedway features the Neon Garage, a complex that allows fans an unprecedented view of the garage area.
Hall of Fame crew chief Herb Nab works on the Junior Johnson–owned Chevrolet driven by Cale Yarborough in 1973. Back then, the