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Despite new rules, race is marred by inevitable wreck

An 18-car crash on Lap 149 leaves no one hurt but undermines notion that race is safer.

By MIKE READLING, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 18, 2002

DAYTONA BEACH -- It's not the Daytona 500 unless somebody finishes the race with no front quarterpanels and hood and with an air filter and engine compartment for all the world to see.

In fact, there is a joke that, late in the race, you can count on two more pit stops: one under green and the final one under yellow while they clean up what has come to be known as the "Big One."

You don't know when the Big One is coming, but you know it will happen. And rule change after rule change after rule change can't seem to change that fact.

Officials have done everything from widening the restrictor plates to slow the cars to changing aerodynamic packages to adding flaps to keep the cars from going airborne during a spin. All that has done is make the wrecks more spectacular, as there now are 43 cars bunched together in double-wide rows.

Sunday, the Big One came on Lap 149 when Kevin Harvick tried to block Jeff Gordon's pass for second position entering Turns 3 and 4. Gordon touched Harvick's rear bumper; Harvick got loose, shot up the track into the wall and came back down in front of the rest of the field.

The result was 18 cars bouncing off each other, enough smoke to cloud the entire corner of the track and Kenny Wallace's No. 1 Chevrolet bursting into flames. Nobody was injured, but the pileup took out several cars in the top 10 at the time and severely changed the complexion of the race.

"You always get prepared for this race knowing something could happen to you," said Bobby Labonte, who was knocked from the race with damage sustained in the incident. "There were a lot of cars torn up there at the bottom of the racetrack. But that's generally what happens here."

Neither Harvick nor Gordon, two of Winston Cup's most intense competitors, seemed fazed by the wreck, saying you have to expect that when you show up at Daytona.

"You have to block 'cause if you get hung out you have to go to the back and start over again," Harvick said. "I came down, we got together and I wrecked."

The wreck called into question whether the cars are safer than they were last year, when Dale Earnhardt died in a crash during a last lap of the Daytona 500. Sunday, all the drivers wore restraining devices as part of a safety program resulting from that incident. At least one driver scoffed at the notion that the drivers were any safer this year.

Bobby Hamilton said until the teams are allowed to add more power, the bunch-ups will continue, and so will the Big One.

"I think nobody's dead so it's safer," Hamilton said, sarcastically. "I think nobody's hurt a bit so it's safer. Nobody flipped over.

"The beautiful part about it is I think the race fans had a good time. That's the important thing."

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