Crash questions

Wreck refuels uncertainty about Park's driving fitness

By the time rain scoured Pocono Raceway for the second time Sunday, all that remained of Steve Park's car were the dirt clods that had been extracted from its carcass.

The muddy lumps outlined the spot in the Winston Cup garage where a flatbed wrecker had deposited Park's yellow Chevrolet, and long after wreckage, hauler and team personnel had disappeared, the clods hung on, defying the afternoon's red-flag deluge.

Forming a horseshoe outside the No. 1's abandoned garage bay, they refused to dissipate, just like all those rumors that Park is damaged goods and should quit.

I know about the clods because I'd stepped in one mushy patty earlier while talking to Paul Andrews, Park's crew chief. The rumors are old news.

Imagine watching your driver spinning in a gyroscope and being unable to do anything about it. That was Andrews' situation Sunday when only a half-lap into the 200 laps that were supposed to make up the Pennsylvania 500, Park and Rusty Wallace banged together in a pack, Park shot off to the left, and collected Dale Earnhardt, Inc., teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr.

The rest has been replayed into infinitum -- Junior's car plowing into Park's, Park barrel-rolling three times before slamming into an interior guard rail.

Helpless on a pit box, Andrews watched it unfold on a giant video screen behind pit road. He heard nothing through his headphones.

"Heck no," he said of Park. "He had his hands full."

With silence roaring in his ears, Andrews took comfort in other teams' frequencies, others' descriptions. He also relied on his intuition, which told him the wreck's spectacularness might be its saving grace.

"Nothing you can do," Andrews said. "Nothing you can do at all. You just wait. Hopefully you hear a voice, or hear some other drivers, or our spotter saying, 'What are you seeing? What'd you see?'"

High above the track, Ty Norris, DEI's general manager, was on the spotters' stand spotting for Junior. While horrified at what he saw, he also knew those awful-looking barrel rolls were absorbing much of the crash's energy, not Park.

"I know it sounds crazy to say something like this," Norris said. "But he didn't hit anything solid. He didn't come to a sudden stop. So I betcha you won't see these enormous G-force spikes -- I would hope. I wouldn't think."

In the garage afterward, while everyone waited out the day's first red flag so the guard rail could be repaired, Park's car got the attention of a gruesome carnival exhibit. Fans were shooed away by NASCAR officials. Crew guys from other teams encircled it. Jimmy Makar, Bobby Labonte's crew chief, gave Andrews a consoling pat on the chest. Other chiefs -- Jimmy Fenning, Frankie Stoddard, and Sterling Marlin's team manager Tony Glover -- dropped by for a look-see.

More intimately interested were DEI teammates: Junior's crew chief, Tony Eury Sr., and Michael Waltrip's crew chief, Slugger Labbe. Nearly everyone peered into the driver's cockpit as if to confirm for themselves that, yes, Park had escaped unharmed. Owner Jack Roush, himself the focus of much garage hand-wringing months earlier, guessed that the engine -- and little else -- might be salvageable.

"The driver's area looks like it did when the race started," Norris said. "And everything else around it looks like it fell out of an airplane."

When Park showed up, it was to a few quiet hugs, genuine squeezes of his hand; photographers recording a reunion. Todd Parrott, Dale Jarrett's crew chief, made it a point to pat him on the back.

Sawing and hammering in the background indicated crew members were trying to compress the wreckage so it could be loaded on the hauler. As his guys finally rolled it toward the truck, Andrews voiced another worry: Park, who wears the HANS device and uses protective headrests, had difficulty extracting himself -- and not because he's a hale 6-foot-2 -- because he was suspended like a bat, and momentarily disoriented.

"The driver-cockpit area held up real good," Andrews said. "Unfortunately because he landed on the left side and upside down, that's not good. It's tough to get out of these cars right now with all the head protection we got. It's not a double-edged sword, but it's getting closer, you know?"

There may be no alternative.

"Anytime you see one of your friends, one of your drivers, one of your cars doing what that car was doing -- flipping and landing on the rail, it's scary," Norris said. "It's scary for everybody, the fans, everybody watching it. I think that speaks volumes to the safety measurements that NASCAR and all the teams have gone through."

Sunday's wreck may fuel more of those opinions that Park, who missed the first four races of this season while recovering from last fall's brutal Busch series crash at Darlington, should hang up his helmet. The No. 1 team has struggled since his return, which came at Darlington, coincidentally. He's 39th in the points and has finished no higher than 20th. Park rumored to be jettisoned by DEI at the end of the year.

He's suffered behind the wheel, no doubt. Park broke a leg in an ugly 1998 testing crash at Atlanta, and still speaks with a slight speech impediment, the only -- and temporary -- remnant of last fall's brain bruise.

But to say he's toast? On the basis of four months' results? I don't think so, yet. I admit I wasn't around for Ernie Irvan's head-injury sagas, though I know he nearly died, and that wrecks seemed to find him in the final years of his career. I wasn't around for Neil Bonnett's bad crash, either, before the one that killed him, though I know some people think he should have quit, too.

What I do know is Park's situation resembles someone more familiar to me, Eric Lindros. The New York Rangers' center, formerly of the Philadelphia Flyers, is an All-Star who has won nearly every NHL award except the Stanley Cup. And he's better known right now for surviving a half-dozen concussions, some of them downright gory.

You say it's different going nearly 200 miles an hour in a 3,400-pound Cup car? I only know I've seen hockey injuries that had all the explosive elements of a car wreck. The difference is you can endanger more people in a car than you can on the ice, but the dilemma is the same for Park as for Lindros; as it was for the 49ers' Steve Young: Whose business is it to tell you to give up what you love the most?

What happened Sunday at Pocono appeared freakish. Rotten luck. The bull's eye happened to wear a No. 1. I don't know what goes on in Steve Park's head. I don't know what his family, his teammates, the inner circle at DEI knows. I know this; he's no 15-year-old whose judgment should be overridden.

He was remarkably composed when he walked out of the care center, remarkably composed when he met up with team members in the garage. If he's wise -- and OK -- he'll follow the dogged comeback example of another head-injury alumnus, Ricky Craven, who's doing very well, thank you. And until telltale signs surface, or those near him can spot the not-quite-right, it's only fair to give Park room -- and time -- to breathe.

"It's a dangerous sport," Norris said. "And some of the things take your breath away."

Denise N. Maloof covers NASCAR for CNNSI.com.

 

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