Start your engines!
Play RPM.ESPN Stock Car Challenge!
Win a Honda S2000!
Play The CART Challenge powered by Honda!
|
|
Thursday, May 3
NASCAR refuses to meet with Simpson
ESPN.com news services
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Race car seat belt maker Bill Simpson
flew to Florida on Thursday looking for exoneration from NASCAR
over remarks that the failure of his product may have contributed
to the death of Dale Earnhardt.
Instead, he waited alone in NASCAR's lobby for 15 minutes before
being told that NASCAR officials couldn't meet with him. A NASCAR
lawyer told Simpson that the seat belt maker's lawyer had written
NASCAR officials in April asking that they avoid direct
communication with Simpson unless he had an attorney present.
|  | | Griffin explained that Simpson needed to have an attorney present. |
NASCAR chairman Bill France and president Mike Helton were at
the headquarters at the time, but no meeting with Simpson had been
scheduled.
"I have nothing to say about nothing," Simpson, chairman and
CEO of Simpson Performance Products in North Carolina, said as he
left NASCAR's headquarters.
After Earnhardt's Feb. 18 fatal crash at the Daytona 500, NASCAR
reported that a broken seat belt was discovered in Earnhardt's car.
The news resulted in at least one racing team dropping Simpson as a
supplier and angry racing fans sent Simpson death and bomb threats.
Simpson has demanded an apology, saying an emergency worker on
the scene has said Earnhardt's belt was intact after the crash.
In addition, a court-appointed medical examiner who studied
Earnhardt's autopsy photos has said that "restraint failure does
not appear to have played a role" in Earnhardt's death.
"We're not going to meet face-to-face or directly with Bill
without his lawyer here," NASCAR spokesman John Griffin said
Thursday. "Any contact with Bill must be done through his legal
counsel."
Simpson's attorney, Robert Horn, didn't return a phone call to
his Jackson Hole, Wyo., office.
The last time NASCAR officials met with Simpson was just a few
days after Earnhardt's crash. At that meeting in North Carolina,
Simpson was allowed to view Earnhardt's car and the seat belt,
Griffin said.
The Charlotte Observer reported Thursday that drivers Rusty Wallace and Ken Schrader joined Simpson and Helton that day at a Charlotte-area garage to view the wreckage.
After looking inside Earnhardt's car, Simpson concluded then that the seat belt hadn't been properly mounted, causing the fabric to bunch up and break.
In comments after the accident, driver Rusty Wallace told The Indianapolis Star: "One thing everybody needs to understand is that there was not a problem with the seat belt. I think there was a bigger problem with the way it was maybe in the car or the way that Dale wanted it.
"Ultimately, the seat belt failed, but I don't think you could say it was the seat belt's fault. I would say it was more the way it was installed in the car. They (the team) probably had it that way their whole life, and maybe Dale wanted it that way. But, unfortunately, it bit them."
NASCAR is conducting its own investigation into the crash and
the results are to be released in August. Griffin said NASCAR
officials continue to believe that the seat belt was separated. Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
|
|
|
|
