Beech Tree News Network

On Father's Day, one vital part of the celebration for five-year-old Charlie Leffler was missing. His dad, former NASCAR regular Jason Leffler, wasn't there. He was killed last Wednesday night racing on a .60 mile dirt track in New Jersey. Jason Leffler was 37.

Anyone that straps into a race car on a regular basis knows the risks. Whether it be on the high banks of Daytona, on the drag strip at Beech Bend, or at a dirt track like Cedar Ridge Speedway, the looming, always present specter of death is as much a part of the sport as bad hot dogs, tire smoke, and tech lane arguments. In racing death is the black sheep of the family. Nobody talks much about it, but everyone involved with the sport knows that fatalities still occur.

A dozen years ago everyone got a rude slap in the face on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. Seven-time champion and NASCAR icon Dale Earnhardt, Sr. died in a seemingly 'routine' crash. In the months and years that followed NASCAR and the safety industry made a world of changes to make the sport safer. Energy absorbing 'soft' walls were installed at all NASCAR tracks. Use of head and neck restraints and closed face helmets were made mandatory.  Even the cars got a makeover with safety in mind. Like most advances made at the top of any industry the new technology trickled down to grass roots racers and tracks, and much trumpeting was done to herald in a new, safer age of racing.

However racing will never be safe, only safer.  The mindset that death has been all but eliminated from the sport is not only inaccurate, but dangerous.

In the dozen years since NASCAR's darkest year since the 1960's there have been no fatalities at any of the sanctioning bodies top three divisions,but deaths have occurred. NHRA top fuel dragster driver Darrell Russell died in 2004 when shrapnel from his disintegrating race car went thru the back of his helmet. John Force's protege Eric Medlen died testing a funny car in 2007. In that incident a deflating tire caused his 7,000 horsepower machine to have a violent tire shake. The forces were so severe that Medlen was literally beaten to death inside the cockpit from his head repeatedly striking the safety cage. Scott Kalitta  died on live TV in 2008 during a qualifying run in his NHRA top fuel funny car. Kalitta's engine exploded, tearing most of the body off his Toyota. The resulting damage caused his parachutes to fail to open, and Kalitta died when his car struck a safety net anchor pole while traveling approximately 150  mph. The force of that impact was so severe that Kalitta's car struck an ESPN camera suspended more than 30 feet above the end of the track. Before Leffler, the most recent high-profile racing death occurred in 2011 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway when Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon died in an horrific accident on the 11th lap of the season's final race. That crash so traumatized drivers and fans that the race was abandoned and never concluded.

In 2000 and 2001 Dale Earnhardt wasn't the only driver killed in NASCAR, but his was the highest profile death. Beginning with Adam Petty's death in the spring of 2000 NASCAR actually lost four drivers; Petty, Kenny Irwin, Jr, Blaise Alexander, and finally Earnhardt. Nobody clamored to 'fix' the dangers of racing when Petty, Irwin, and Alexander died. It took losing the Babe Ruth of stock cars live on FOX to shine a light on the safety concerns of the sport.

Leffler's death last week not only reminds us that death is the ultimate price of failure in motorsports, but shows there is a long way to go toward truly making the sport safer. Reigning NASCAR champ Brad Keselowski doesn't race at dirt tracks and bullrings on his off nights, unlike many of his peers. Why? Because he and his dad think the risks are too high. Brad's dad, Bob Keselowski all but forbids his son to race on the tracks that he once ran to put food on the table. He claims that most of the short tracks in America haven't changed any, if at all, since the 1970's.

A dozen years after we watched Dale Earnhardt die at Daytona racing isn't really safer. If anything it's more dangerous, and more deadly, than ever. Speeds increase every year, and risk increases with them. Racers and teams constantly push their bodies and machines to the limit. Test pilots call that pushing the outside of the envelope, and they know that just across that mystical speed barrier waits fame and fortune, but also injury and death. They also understood that for every eventuality that could be planned for, it was in the unexpected occurrences that the true danger awaited.

Such was the case with Jason Leffler. He had a head and neck restraint. His car was built to the most exacting specifications, and his safety systems were top notch. Truth be told, Leffler's equipment and driver safety devices were probably better than most of the cars at the track that night, thanks to the resources at his disposal and his contacts within the sport. And yet they helped him little if at all.

The initial coroner's report says that Leffler died due to blunt force external trauma to the neck. In layman's terms something hit his neck and broke it during his accident. It could have been a piece of his race car, part of the catch fence, or any number of other things.

What it was doesn't matter.

The bottom line is that something that wasn't foreseen and probably couldn't have been planned for happened and killed Charlie Leffler's daddy four days before Father's Day. It is a sobering reminder that with speed comes death, and that racing will never be a safe sport.

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