Tony Stewart-Kevin Ward incident

Looks like he'll be racing as planned at Watkins Glen.

 

So you're saying Ward should have just done this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwc8obMmv7o

Again, I believe there was zero intent for Stewart to physically harm Ward. But I certainly believe there's a chance he was trying to intimidate him. The other six cars that passed Ward before Stewart swung by were going significantly slower.

 

Why would Stewart want to scare the guy? It's not like they have a history or had been jawing all night like in a football game. The first moment he would have known the guy was pissed was a split second before he hit him.

 

Because Ward hadn't run out closer to the cars at that point.

 

Stewart is fucked.

Ward walks down toward the cars, but Stewart's car runs well above the groove of the other cars. And he revved his engine or something as he made contact to fishtail his vehicle.

Yeah, I think he was trying to intimidate him and it got out of hand. He's fucked.
Sheriff was quoted as saying "there was a lot of bad decisions involved all the way around, but nothing intentional.

And yeah, probably that's true. But ....

The worst was Stewart riding above the groove of the other cars and fishtailing his vehicle.
I think he will be charged with a crime. And sued out the ass to boot.


I am gobsmacked NASCAR is allowing him to race today.

 

They say, "Holy shit, Tony Stewart just hit that guy."

Which he did.

 

Perhaps (I didn't, though), but you have two nanoseconds to make a decision between a bad move, a really bad move and an even worse one.

If you slow down or try to stop, you risk being hit from behind and causing a chain reaction. If you steer violently, you fishtail, perhaps flip over and leave yourself a sitting duck in the middle of the track. Option No. 3: Steer as much as the physics will allow and accelerate to get past this guy (who's moving as close as he can to you, BTW!) as quick as you can.

Not all of them. A couple of cars that passed as soon as Ward got out of his car were as high on the track as Stewart. A few others were lower.

 

I'm surprised anyone here is even entertaining the notion that this might've been intentional. That just runs too far afield of the common sense test to even be a consideration to me.

When I watched the clip I simply could not get past how supremely stupid Ward was. Now I realize such a tragic incident today requires weeks of discussion and debate over blame allocation and the state of the sport. But, nonetheless, allow me to suggest the analysis here could justifiably end at "don't run onto a dirt track toward speeding oncoming race cars at night while wearing a dark black suit." I mean, jesus, to say he was asking to be hit through his behavior is understatement.