20 years ago

VaDirt

VaDirt

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Twenty years ago, Watkins Glen claimed the life of journeyman driver JD McDuffie. I remember everything about this incident and watching it live. Scared to death when Jimmy Means started frantically waiving his hands for the safety crew to come over, floored by the announcement of JD's death as the field started rolling again, and really touched by the words of Benny Parsons.

 
My brother and I were there that day in turn 2, at the bottom of the hill. The wreck was at the end of the back straight, far out of our view. Nobody in the stands around us new exactly what had happened. There weren't many in the stands back then with headphones. I don't know that they were saying anything anyhow. At one point they returned his car to the garage area on a flatbed pickup traveling backwards on the track past us and then up into the exit of the pits. It was covered with a tarp and that was when we had our first clue that something terrible had happened. We still did not know who it was until the end of the race. Sad, sad day indeed.

By the way, that was 20 years ago.
 
I recall Linda Petty's tearful plaint.. "Why did ol' JD want to come down here.."

:(
 
Not to be nit-picky, but shouldn't that read;

Twenty years ago, (August 11, 1991) Watkins Glen claimed the life of journeyman driver JD McDuffie.
 
Whizzer said:
Not to be nit-picky, but shouldn't that read;

Twenty years ago, (August 11, 1991) Watkins Glen claimed the life of journeyman driver JD McDuffie.
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Yeah, I remember this incident but I thought I had gone through some wormhole of time.
 
I worst part of that video is how ESPN kept showing the accident scene. Even when the crew guys started building that barrier with the while blankets so nobody could see. You knew just then that it was not good. Poor Bob and Jerry kept trying to stay positive and give hope that he was ok, but damn ESPN just stayed on that scene.
 
Yeah, I remember watching this race, too. Here's a different angle of the crash I found some years ago.

 
StewartHaas-Gibbs Racing said:
R.I.P. that was such a hard hit, thankfully we have come along way in safety.
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I can only imagine how much the roof crumpled on landing.

Curious, what was the COD? The impact with the wall, or the landing upside down?

As I watch the Tommy Kendall video, but help but think: Exact same broadcasters as Grand-Am has now. 21 years of broadcasting, if not more, for those two. Amazing. Fact Check?
 
Magnethead said:
I can only imagine how much the roof crumpled on landing.

Curious, what was the COD? The impact with the wall, or the landing upside down?

As I watch the Tommy Kendall video, but help but think: Exact same broadcasters as Grand-Am has now. 21 years of broadcasting, if not more, for those two. Amazing. Fact Check?
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You know, after all this time, I wasn't so sure either. So I looked it up earlier and found this 2001 article from the Los Angeles Times:

At least 12 of the 15 drivers killed in major auto racing since 1991 died of injuries caused by violent motion of their inadequately restrained heads in crashes.

At least nine, and four of the last five, suffered a syndrome called basal skull fracture.

At least eight died specifically of it: NASCAR's J.D. McDuffie in 1991, the U.S. Auto Club's Jovy Marcello and NASCAR's Clifford Allison in '92, Formula One's Roland Ratzenberger in '94, the Indy Racing League's Scott Brayton in '96, CART's Gonzalo Rodriguez in '99 and NASCAR's Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin in 2000.


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Scroll down to the end of the article and it tells you what a basal skull fracture is in layman's terms.
 
So, I'm guessing the initial impact with the wall/tire barrier.
 
so it's basically the neck muscles pulling down on the base of the skull, and the G-forces pulling on the mass of the skull...interesting.
 
Interesting - but mostly eerie - that the article was written just a week before the 2001 Daytona 500.
 
Magnethead said:
so it's basically the neck muscles pulling down on the base of the skull, and the G-forces pulling on the mass of the skull...interesting.
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That's why Jimmy Means (and in Earnhardt's case, Schrader) was frantically waving his hands; JD was raining blood out of his cranial orifices.
 
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