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Head of racing equipment company under fire

Bill Simpson, a former professional driver, says he has received death threats because his business made the seat belt Earnhardt was wearing.

Compiled from Times wires

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 24, 2001

MOORESVILLE, N.C. -- One of the most telling pictures of Bill Simpson shows flames engulfing his body.

He put the shot of him testing his firesuit on the cover of his book. He repeated the stunt to successfully sway jurors during a lawsuit. People say he shows the picture to visitors in his Mooresville office.

"That's one of his pride and joys," said Woody Washam, a banker who has worked with Simpson for four years. "He has that much confidence in his products."

Simpson made the firesuit he's so willing to test. In 1958, he developed the first parachute for drag racers. And his company, Simpson World, has worked to improve other racing equipment, such as helmets and seat belts.

Now Simpson has gotten death threats, he said, because his company made the seat belt Dale Earnhardt was wearing when he fatally crashed at the Daytona 500.

NASCAR officials said Friday the seat belt was found broken, and doctors said that may have led to the major injury that killed Earnhardt.

Simpson stressed Earnhardt's death had nothing to do with the way the seat belt was made.

He said he has made more than 1-million of the seat belts since 1966, and he has never seen anything similar to the way part of Earnhardt's seat belt was loose. "We have no responsibility for this thing."

Simpson is a former professional driver, member of the Living Legends of Auto Racing Hall of Fame and a self-described hell-raiser.

Because of his equipment, one driver said in Simpson's autobiography, he should earn a humanitarian award.

Because of his equipment, a jury deliberating a motorcycle injury once decided, Simpson needed to pay millions, forcing him to file for bankruptcy protection for the helmetmaking end of his company.

Simpson describes several lawsuits in his book. In one, a driver claimed there was a problem with Simpson's firesuit. During a courtroom outburst, Simpson volunteered to wear the suit and light himself on fire for the court. His demonstration worked. It took the jury four minutes to rule in his favor, he wrote.

In another case, a New Hampshire jury awarded millions after a motorcycle racer wearing a Simpson helmet fractured his skull and died.

Simpson was born in 1940 and grew up in California. By moving his business to North Carolina in the late 1980s, he has been credited by some for helping make racing Mooresville's largest industry.

In his book, Racing Safely, Living Dangerously, Simpson writes his goal is "to look back and say that I helped make automobile racing safer."

Other drivers in the book praise him.

"Over the years, I'd hear Bill comment about being sued for this and sued for that," wrote Rick Mears, a four-time Indianapolis 500 winner.

"I could never imagine being in that type of business, where you're dealing with this all the time," Mears wrote. "I mean, all he's done is try to make things better and safer, and here he'd be, getting sued. That has to wear thin real quick."

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