Tony Stewart-Kevin Ward incident

Sorry guys, but a story of this gravity doesn't deserve to be buried on a stupid running thread.

How terrible. A road rage accident of the worst kind, but it must be said, one that both contributed to.

Kevin Ward should never, EVER, be on-track in a situation like that. To be blunt, no driver should EVER be on-track PERIOD, much less in some moronic desire to "get" a driver in a racing incident. Settle your beefs off-track.

That said, Stewart looks really, really bad in that video. For starters, there is no reason whatsoever he shouldn't be down on the apron to avoid Ward at all costs. No matter whether Ward is stupid as hell for being there in the first place. Stewart has to do everything he can to avoid him anyway.

The acceleration is pointless. Having seen the video, I can accept MAYBE that Stewart was accelerating to get away from him, but why be there in the first place? The best case scenario I can think of is that Stewart stayed in the middle of the track defiantly, realized shit was about to go down very badly, and reacted too late. That's the BEST case scenario.

More likely, Stewart was enraged himself and, at best, made a terribly tragic mistake, or at worst, deliberately ran over a driver.

I'm seeing some Twitter nonsense that he couldn't see out of that side of his car. Bullshit. Not every sprint car track is a bullring. I've covered sprints on ahalf-mile oval and you have to be able to see to the right just to negotiate the track and its traffic.

I think Stewart's in trouble. Not rest of his life in the pokey trouble, but trouble of some sort.

And not to go all Darren Rovell, especially in the context of death, but his NASCAR career is well and truly fucked in its current form. Good luck getting his corporate buddies to go to the mattresses and keep forking over dough after watching that video.

 

Agreed this merits a separate thread.

 

Agree with Bubbler. Bad decisions all around.

Poor Ward. Never should have walked down that slope.

 

And authorities say that Ward has died.

 

Video has been removed from YouTube.

 

The spin-doctoring on this story will be intense.

 

USA TODAY just had a story about NASCAR's struggles in its Friday edition. Wow. This is going to be a major, major black eye for the sport and for the circuit if it's the worst-case scenario.

For now, SportsCenter is reporting Stewart is "shaken, but cooperating". I won't get into speculation or anything here because this is still developing, but what a turn of events.

I agree the spin-doctoring will be something.

 

It doesn't look good at all, but Ward has no business running onto the track like that.

It's a pretty easy guess that Stewart is going to say he didn't see Ward. With Ward wearing a black driver's suit on a dirt track at night, I can honestly see it being entirely possible that he didn't see him until it was too late. Especially considering that Ward is running onto the track at the end of the turn.

 

I'd buy that if we weren't talking about a driver who's raced sprints for over 20 years who has also been in his share of racing incidents, including drivers being on-track. A driver who has deliberately hit cars before, including at least once in the pits, something extremely dangerous.

But, yes, it is supremely stupid for a driver to be on-track, but guess which series has looked the other way and nod-nod, wink-winked at it since its been a guaranteed highlight for them on SportsCenter for 30 years?

 

It's being yanked from all sources. The spun machine in full operation.

I would guess there may be some other video from other sources which will give a better view of whether Stewart really gunned it coming around the curve. Whether it will ever see the light of day, who knows.

 

This is just awful.

 

Silly me. I was thinking it was out of respect for the dearly departed [/bluefont]

I can imagine NASCAR saying they can't do anything since it wasn't a NASCAR event and yadda, yadda, yadda, but how can NASCAR ignore it?