LAS VEGAS — After taking one of the hardest hits of his career, four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Jeff Gordon believes the SAFER Barrier needs to be placed on both outside and inside walls at all NASCAR facilities.
Gordon was involved in a massive crash with five laps to go after his car slid up the second turn and barely touched Matt Kenseth’s Ford. That sent both cars sliding before Gordon’s car shot across the race track and slammed hard into the infield wall.
Gordon’s Chevrolet hit the abutment of the opening for a service road that gets safety vehicles onto the track.
The impact was so severe it ripped the radiator off his car and sent it flying across the track.
Despite the vicious crash, Gordon was uninjured.
“I’m OK, but I’m going to be really sore tomorrow,” Gordon said. “It was a really, really hard hit. It took me a while to be able to catch my breath and to get out. I looked down and I saw where the transmission was and it was no longer there.
“That’s probably the hardest I’ve ever hit and it was my fault. I couldn’t have hit the wall at a worse angle. It really tore the thing up. I’m really disappointed right now in this speedway for not having a soft wall back there. And even being able to get to that part of the wall shouldn’t happen. I would love to talk to them. I tell you what, that kind of hit shouldn’t happen. There is no reason why any track we go to should have that. I could have been really hurt bad, and fortunately it turned out OK.”
After admitting the accident was his fault, Gordon called for additional safety modifications at the 1.5-mile speedway.
“But I’ve got two things to say: Bruton (Smith, owner and founder of Speedway Motorsports, Inc.), you need a soft wall and to change the wall back there on the back straightaway. Thankfully, Hendrick Motorsports and everyone with this Chevrolet built an unbelievable race car because that’s the hardest I’ve ever hit.”
Greg Biffle saw the crash unfold and was asked if he thinks there should be any gaps on the race track that aren’t protected by the SAFER Barrier.
“There shouldn’t be any gaps anywhere,” Biffle said. “There should be SAFER barriers all the way around the inside and the outside of these race tracks. You’ve got to remember, if you look at the percentage of crashes that happen on the inside wall versus the outside wall, they’re pretty danged close, so why not have them on the inside?
“They need to run the one wall way past the other wall — parallel with about a 12-foot alley way, where you can come out of so that the walls are both flat. They always stop this wall and then make this wall come out so it has a 90-degree — you can hit the thing head on. If I’m coming at a 30-degree angle off the track, you can run into the wall head-on, and they need to fix that.”