Ryan Newman’s NASCAR Cup rivals say they are relieved by his recovery from last weekend’s Daytona 500 crash, which they say offered a warning about the dangers of the series.
Newman suffered what was initially described as “serious but non-life threatening” injuries when his car turned into the wall, went airborne and was hit by another car at the end of last weekend’s Daytona race.
The car ended up on its roof and was on fire before safety workers arrived.
By Tuesday afternoon, Newman’s Roush Fenway Racing team issued a statement saying he was “awake and speaking”, and he was release from hospital the following day.
Two-time Cup champion Kyle Busch said the incident was a reminder that drivers are “not invincible”.
“Sometimes you take it [safety] for granted,” said Busch.
“The severity of what we’re doing, the course of action of what injury can happen – it can happen in any instance, we’re not invincible.
“Safety is always an evolution.
“There’s going to be something else that happens that we have to go through and figure out the circumstances as to why it happened, how can we prevent it from happening again.”
Newman will not contest this weekend’s Las Vegas round and has been replaced in the #6 Ford by Ross Chastain.
Austin Dillon said drivers’ ability to escape serious injury from such crashes has likely led to a sense of complacency.
“You get numb to it a little bit because people just jump out of the cars,” he said.
“You just kind of say it’s safe enough, you’re just going to be a little sore the next day.
“Then, you watch how long it took Ryan to get out, the amount of people it took to get him out and the safety workers doing their job, it definitely makes you think differently about it.”
Dillon does not think, however, that Newman’s fast recovery will alter drivers’ approach to superspeedway racing.
“I feel like speedway racing is as wild as it can get, because you know what’s on the line when you get down to the end of the race,” added Dillon.
“You literally just shut everything off.
“I don’t think it will change the way we drive to make us any bolder.”
NASCAR’s executive vice president and chief racing development officer Steve O’Donnell is due to provide an update on NASCAR’s review of Newman’s accident at Las Vegas on Saturday.
Joey Logano said he was pleased NASCAR was already examining how the current safety devices were impacted and could possibly be improved.
“It says a lot about what our race cars are, and I think even this NextGen car in some of those areas where the impact was seems to be, from at least my non-engineering degree perspective, looks like it should be stronger in that spot,” Logano said.
“I’m glad to see that NASCAR is already looking at it, even before this in that area, and I look forward to getting in that car and have something even safer to drive.”