KenJennings

The head under the white helmet in my avatar is mine. I understand more than you think. No one here has a greater appreciation of the sport or the skill it takes to be on top of it. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't base beliefs on hopes. I said right off the bat to pay attention to what drivers don't say. If I was behind Stewart and he did nothing to contribute to the death, I'd be on every show in the country saying that. I hope a driver that was behind him comes out and says that. I'd believe him. If no driver goes to bat for him...that speaks incredibly loudly. Can you create a new avatar pic with a view from your helmet in a dirt car track at night with lower lighting on a turn with a black clad racer about 20-30 degrees to your right? Sounds like a good time for some power oversteer according to your earlier post. You're not the only person around with experience behind the wheel of a racecar. I've never raced competitively, but I have driven mini-stock on the dirt oval at Kopellah Speedway in western Wisconsin. I just never had the confidence to race in an event against others. I had the opportunity, but I sat on the sidelines and let my brother race.

My grandpa drove a tow truck at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds racetrack for years. This meant that I grew up getting to spend a lot of time in the infield at the facility during races. I spent time around names like Dick Trickle, Dave Marcis, Scott Wimmer, even the occasional Rusty Wallace or Mark Martin. There was a long stretch of time through the 90s where I think I was at every race at that track... Around this time of year in 1998, I was 12 years old. I was watching the race, especially following Adam Petty, the grandson of NASCAR legend Richard Petty. Adam was touted as the next big thing, a driver to watch... and I was very excited to get to see him race. Petty was running toward the front of the field, and pulled into the pits to change right side tires. When the front tire changer ran around the front end of the car, the air hose hung up under the front bumper. so he quickly got down on his belly, and reached under the car to free it up... ...and that's when the jack dropped. There I was, sitting in the grandstands, not more then 100 feet away. Watching intently, as the jack dropped on that poor guy, and the car ran him over, dragging his body a short distance down pit road, before coming loose and tumbling to a stop. It is one of the defining moments in my life. It is the only time I have ever actually witnessed death. And to a kid 12 years old, it scared me and broke my heart. I think about that jackman from time to time. I don't know who he is, or anything about him. I don't know if he's still in the business, or if he continued on after that race. But I think about that poor man. He has to live knowing that his error killed someone. I know what it's like to lose a friend. But I can't imagine the pain that someone would feel knowing that they were responsible for it. I think about Adam Petty... who tragically died on track in New Hampshire 2 years later. I wonder how he felt, knowing- through no fault of his own- that he ran over his team member. When I watched this accident with Stewart and Ward Saturday night, I was transformed right back to that kid in the grandstands. And I've shed quite a few tears thinking about this in the past few days. I am a member, however insignificant, of the racing community. I've actually spent time turning wrenches, and unloading cars off trailers. I understand this world, and more importantly, I feel for its participants. We lost one of our own on Saturday night, and I can't help but feel like we've got another one in the balance. I've never met Tony Stewart, but I've been there to watch him race on multiple occasions. I know the kind of guy he is, and I can't even imagine the pain he's in right now. I'm hurting to think about this incident. This isn't the time to play the blame game, to score cheap points, or to otherwise armchair quarterback the situation. It's just a terrible, terrible tragedy. I really wish people would think about this for what it is, rather than putting down things that they don't understand.

Bullies take advantage of those in a weakened state to get their own pleasure. Like taking advantage of two people who were just involved in a terrible accident, or mocking an entire community who is mourning, so you that you get your cheap laugh.

Deleted. Doesn't need to be said here.

The next time there's a tragedy surrounding some community that you're involved in, I just hope you realize that I'm not going to walk in, ignorant of the facts, call the victims of the incident pussies, and furthermore degrade the activity. I'll go ahead and show the mourning community some respect. But you're into fighting, right? So that means you can just hold that over anyone else because fighters can beat up anyone else. Nobody who doesn't fight is just a pussy held up to your standards. Just like the f***ing schoolyard bully...

http://x3.cdn03.imgwykop.pl/c3201142/comment_QvuXTc3URL5dnRrS3jVis5JXhplK6tQR.gif This is the EXACTLY the correct animated gif if you need a 3500 pound car to be a tough guy. Are you posting in this thread for some specific reason? Because I really don't see much point in what you're saying beyond being distasteful, rude, and condescending.

http://x3.cdn03.imgwykop.pl/c3201142/comment_QvuXTc3URL5dnRrS3jVis5JXhplK6tQR.gif

Your desperation to see Stewart implicated in the fault for this accident is pretty stunning. As stunning as casting an elite, famously ill tempered, famously intimidating race driver as a passive Mr. Magoo character with so little track awareness that he couldn't see a 150 lb. moving object while driving through a fresh accident scene that he helped create one lap earlier because the belief that his recklessness might have contributed to killing someone is too difficult to accept? It is difficult to accept. It's not hard to believe. In fact it's hard to believe otherwise. Your description of the situation is so off base that it makes me think you're the only Mr. Magoo around.

Your desperation to see Stewart implicated in the fault for this accident is pretty stunning.

Have you ever competed in anything? Are you naive enough to think acts of intimidation don't happen all the time? So let's get your contention straight here. Tony Stewart, who made no contact with Ward, comes around the track, and actually sees a pedestrian approaching him from the dark, to the obscured right side of the car. In that split second, he becomes angry enough (again without any real reason) that he decides he somehow should 'intimidate' this pedestrian, even though he won't be competing with the guy again tonight... or in the indefinite future. So for no reason, worth nothing to gain, and no motive to be angry; in that split second that this driver emerged from the dark, on the obscured side of the car, Tony Stewart formulated a plan to throw up a rooster tail at him- again, for no reason. If you're projecting your own views on competition here, maybe you should avoid competing; but by using a modicum of sense and judgment here, I can again safely say that your assertion is patently preposterous. You're demonstrating a real unwillingness to admit your obvious lack in reasoning here.

Do you even realize how preposterous your story is here?

I've done lots of different forums... a wide variety of topics. Many I liked, but this is the only one I've stayed at the whole time.

I know I'm officially flooding the thread at this point, but this story has me more emotional than any sports story I've followed since Earnhardt died. And in that vein- I hope that Stewart spends some time with Sterling Marlin. I think that Sterling has a good idea what Stewart is going through. When Dale Earnhardt died in the 2001 Daytona 500, many people blamed Sterling Marlin for Earnhardt's death... These accusations were unfounded and reckless... and they led to death threats, and countless nasty messages sent his way... but for Sterling Marlin, the idea that he was responsible for killing one of his best friends still haunts him to this day. The truth is, Sterling Marlin had absolutely no culpability in Earnhardt's death- Earnhardt threw a block on Marlin, and wrecked himself that day. I say this as the world's biggest, most loyal Dale Earnhardt fan. He was, far and beyond anyone else, my childhood hero. But he made a bad move that day. The accusations still ring to Sterling Marlin. As unfair and brutal as they are. Sterling Marlin has to live with the idea that he killed Dale Earnhardt. Tony Stewart is going to have to endure something very much similar, and in some ways worse. Even though Stewart wasn't at fault for this incident, this is going to be with him for the rest of his life. Kevin Ward made a bad move. It's an understandable and forgivable move, and if he hadn't been hit, nobody would've cared. If Dale Earnhardt would've survived his wreck, nobody would've cared. Honestly, I could easily see Tony Stewart doing exactly what Kevin Ward did, had roles been reversed. He didn't deserve to die, but he died making a bad decision, and it's one anyone could've made in the heat of the moment. Just like Earnhardt, he died making a bad decision in the heat of the moment. It's a horrible, horrible tragedy. But just like Sterling Marlin, it's not Tony Stewart's fault. It's just really, really shitty situation.

I'm just thinking about all of the developments that Tony Stewart has personally contributed to the world of motorsports safety- especially in Sprint Cars... I wonder how many drivers' lives he's saved.

This is a go-pro picture taken from inside a similar winged sprint car: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JYRZSVfNYAE/0.jpg How well can you see to the right?

I also want to show you a picture of a winged Sprint Car. This isn't the exact one, but it's another of Stewart's Sprint cars: http://www.dirttrackdigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/IMG_319812.jpg Notice how the wing on the roof extends down significantly obscuring the vision to the front right of the car? In fact, the wing is staggered higher on the left side, to allow for better vision as the cars turn left. What you can see out of a winged sprint car, going around a left hand corner, is limited fairly significantly to what is left of you.

I went back and looked at the earlier parts of that video, and I just want to make another observation. Stewart didn't put Ward's car in the wall in the first place. They never made contact. Stewart kinda took away his line, but Ward drove into the wall on his own. So Stewart, not having made any contact whatsoever, would have no reason to send a message, no reason to be angry at all... Why would Tony Stewart be looking to do anything in anger to a driver who never touched him?

"This is right now being investigated as an on-track crash, and I don't want to infer that there are criminal charges pending," Sheriff Povero said. "When the investigation is completed, we will sit down with the district attorney and review it. But I want to make it very clear: There are no criminal charges pending at this time." Good to hear that the Sheriff sees it this way.

A driver dying under a yellow is not a "racing deal". That's absurd. What's absurd is trying to blame the driver for a pedestrian walking onto a race track. Ward let his frustration get the best of him, and made a bad decision on the racetrack. The result is tragic, but it is, very much, a racing deal.

If this gets pursued any further, it is nothing more than an overzealous prosecuting attorney seeing a chance to get his name in lights among a both profile national case. This is a racing deal. The law needs to GTFO.

How are you determining what various drivers did with their right foot? And where did you learn that power oversteer is a reasonable object avoidance technique at half speed under yellow? If someone was spinning their rear wheels at that point, they were trying to fling dirt on someone. Bullshit. When you have to make a snap call to avoid a moving object, you do whatever you need to change the direction of the car. Yeah, you turn the steering wheel to the left, not snap the back end to the right with 1st-day-of-driving-school boneheaded-ness.[/Quote] And if he'd done that, he would've hit Ward squarely instead of a passing glance. No, he would have moved to the left. A race car steers just like any normal car when it's not near its limit. The steering wheel works just fine. He was already turning around the corner. Without changing the attitude of the car, the contact would've been even more severe.

So the real agenda shows. You dislike the guy, so you paint him as a killer. The real issue is a guy was killed under yellow (unheard of in even the most rookie of series) by one of the most talented drivers in history. That can only happen when both guys are doing something they have no business doing. What happened is beyond ridiculous. I've always liked Stewart for the most part. So tell me, why did the car in front of start also accelerate, and only narrowly avoided Ward?

So the real agenda shows. You dislike the guy, so you paint him as a killer.

How are you determining what various drivers did with their right foot? And where did you learn that power oversteer is a reasonable object avoidance technique at half speed under yellow? If someone was spinning their rear wheels at that point, they were trying to fling dirt on someone. Bullshit. When you have to make a snap call to avoid a moving object, you do whatever you need to change the direction of the car. Yeah, you turn the steering wheel to the left, not snap the back end to the right with 1st-day-of-driving-school boneheaded-ness.[/Quote] And if he'd done that, he would've hit Ward squarely instead of a passing glance.

Also, they were on the far end of the track from the camera view. Which means the sound of the engine revving is going to be a moment behind the video. So Stewart really accelerated just before he was beside Ward, not when he got to him.