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Friday, May 4 Drivers 'comfortable' with NASCAR Associated Press RICHMOND, Va. – NASCAR president Mike Helton reiterated Friday that Dale Earnhardt's seat belt was found separated right after his fatal crash and said NASCAR isn't interested in outside opinions. "We have no vendetta. We have no masterminded cover-up," Helton said at Richmond International Raceway. Helton declined to take questions during a news conference, which followed his meeting with Winston Cup drivers and car owners about safety. He also met with the Busch Grand National teams Thursday night. "There's no question in our mind that at the end of that accident, that that belt was separated," Helton said of Earnhardt's 180 mph crash on the final lap of the Daytona 500 Feb. 18. "This investigation is to find out why, when and what, if any role, it played in the accident." Questions about Earnhardt's crash have festered since the crash, with seat-belt manufacturer Bill Simpson demanding that NASCAR retract its remarks blaming the seat belt and others offering differing opinions. An emergency worker on the scene said Earnhardt's seat belt was intact after the crash. In addition, a court-appointed medical examiner who studied the seven-time champion's autopsy photos said that restraint failure did not appear to have played a role in Earnhardt's death. Simpson declined to comment at the track Friday, but several drivers and car owners said that they were satisfied by the meeting that NASCAR was doing all it could to answer their safety questions. "The biggest thing is there's communication that maybe we haven't had before," Winston Cup driver Ricky Rudd said of the meeting. "Maybe NASCAR's been penalized or been scrutinized and it looked like they weren't doing anything, but I'm comfortable there's a lot going on behind the scenes right now, more comfortable now with the meeting than I was before." Richard Petty, a seven-time champion whose grandson, Adam, was killed in a crash last year, said many drivers had questions during the meeting, but that NASCAR said it would get answers and the drivers believed them. Adam Petty was one of four drivers to die in crashes in the past year. "Now that NASCAR has made the commitment to find out about this stuff, the next time they come with rules, there's going to be some teeth in the rules," Petty said outside son Kyle's hauler. "They're going to know whether it helps or hurts instead of just doing something." Michael Waltrip expressed "1,000 percent" confidence in NASCAR. "I think it's more important to take your time and come up with the right answer than to satisfy a bunch of people with cameras and microphones who just want to hear something," he said. "This is my life and I have to be comfortable with what I'm doing and I have to be comfortable with what they're doing, and I've been comfortable all along." "We are not going to go beyond what we've already stated, and we're not going to take on any outside opinions or speculation," Helton said. NASCAR is standing by a statement it made April 9, "to bring together different professional disciplines to investigate, to understand, to experiment, to re-create, to evaluate, to research all the things that we needed to do" to determine what caused Earnhardt's death, Helton said. "That's what we're doing and we're not going to have it distracted by responding to any speculations going on beyond this investigation," he said. "We're not going to make any speculations on anything until we know cold hard facts and can deliver those to the best conclusion possible." Earlier, Ward Burton expressed his support for NASCAR and Simpson in the wake of his own serious accident last week. Burton, who was in traction for 17 hours in a California hospital after his crash near the end of the NAPA Auto Parts 500 at California Speedway, said he knows safety answers won't come quickly. "NASCAR has learned a lot and digested a lot in a quick time span, and I think they're going to continue to adjust things and not ignore things and make the sanctioning body better and make this sport better for everybody," said Burton, who was cleared to race again this weekend. "I can't expect them, and I don't think anybody can, to fix everything in a moment." NASCAR has promised the results of its probe by August.  Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
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