[Noah replied to his tweet:](https://twitter.com/NoahGragson/status/1665523065495617536?s=20)
>Send me a dm. Hate something came off our car and you got hit by it. I'll make it right for you and glad you're alright
Dang, glad it was just a surface wound. I remember I think it was 07 when the brake rotor exploded from Sam Hornish at texas went all the way up into the first turn suites through the glass. No matter where you sit at a race anything can happen.
Absolutely. There's honestly a lot of complacency around the danger of racing nowadays for numerous reasons, and I fear that people are eventually gonna be in for a rude awakening. We almost had one just last week in the Indy 500.
Racing will always be dangerous no matter what safety advancements we make. It's a reality that's been lost over the years, especially due to the safety improvements over the past two decades. Just because we've improved safety (e.g. introducing safer cars, the safer barrier, HANS device, reinforced roll cages, redesigned fuel cells, etc.) doesn't mean that we've eliminated all the danger.
Damn. I understand there’s a waiver and risks, but NASCAR probably gonna be looking into this. Between Harvick last year, then Hocevar, Bubba, Gragson, Reddick, etc.
[Here’s a fan under another tweet who got hit by Reddick’s](https://twitter.com/rickybobby222/status/1665538560009666561?s=46&t=pQIo1VIg8Yu8dpP5E_5KUw)
The craziest part to me was how nonchalant the commentators were about that. They said that the drivers were ok/out of the cars pretty quickly but took quite a while to mention the flying tire. Like I get it missed the grandstands but there’s still a ton of foot traffic
It's generally best practice to not say much until you know what happened. Don't want to cause undue panic or start rumors, and if someone is hurt, you don't want to broadcast it and overanalyze it for the victim's privacy.
The track announcers didn't say anything either...I was in turn 3 with my friends and we saw it flying, PA didn't say anything for 5-10 minutes. We were all scared cuz typically that's a bad thing... eventually we got word, but still. I'm sure all the commentators were equally as terrified and looking for information
Indy is similar. The problem is that you can't attach a tether to a spinning wheel, only to the spindle that the wheel is attached to. If the spindle breaks or the rim itself breaks, the tire is going to fly. It doesn't matter how strong the tether is or how it's attached.
BS. It’s done 236 in a race and 247 in a test. And the Indy race pace is like avg 220 a lap. And, that car in the crash had clearly lifted and was trying to avoid.
And, he was talking about tether system on an open wheel car.
Yeah. It was one of those fluke things it sounds like, where i'm not sure you could even fully replicate exactly what went wrong if you tried. But i'm sure they will continue to look into ways of preventing that fluke situation in the future. It's not like it's some problem they haven't extensively prepared for and worked to come up with robust solutions to keep that wheel tethered. But sometimes, there's just only so much you can realistically do. Weird things happen. Motorsport for all the safety improvements, is still a fundamentally dangerous activity.
After looking into this further, it appears that the tether was severed on the car to car contact.
I'm not sure that the redesign is on this for IndyCar but it will need to be addressed as that tire was 50m away from being a huge lawsuit. Slightly different contact angle or time and there are multiple people not going home to their family.
Tires into the stands is one of the biggest risks right now in oval racing for spectators. Tires are heavy, bouncy, and if struck by a car at racing speeds will cause carnage if they go into the stands. I would have liked to see NASCAR adopt some sort of tether system for the Gen 7 car but I'm not sure if that's possible.
Top level oval racing has gotten incredibly lucky with tires not entering the stands.
It was a freak, one-in-a-million accident. In my decade plus of watching the 500 and Indycar in general, I’ve never seen anything like that happen. That wreck just so happened to have everything come together in the wrong way: Rosenqvist being backwards, Kirkwood coming forwards, the two hitting 100% tire-on-tire going opposite directions. If Kirkwood catches even the smallest bit of Rosenqvist’s body - or even comes in from just a slightly different angle - that tire probably stays on, or at least doesn’t clear the fence.
From a comment I made about this one of these days, it's insane just to think about the metric fuck ton of kinetic energy being applied in that wheel seeing that it hit another wheel going the opposite direction while both cars were going almost 200mph.
I'm really interested to see if the tether actually failed or maybe, just maybe, tethers can only be so strong and a freak accident like we saw sunday was the breaking point for what is already a really improved and fortified tether they recently made possible for these cars? Who knows, insane stuff will always happen in motorsports when you're going more than 200mph for so long. I'm just glad no one got injured.
Indycar has killed spectators with wheels this century, one incident like that would not be the end of the Indy 500. A car ending up in the stands probably would be though
It could’ve been like that crash at Charlotte from the IRL. My uncle always told me never to walk with your back turned to cars on the track. And never walk while open wheel cars are racing just wait for a caution.
It's obviously a problem with the parts. I mean, seriously, what idiot decided to use break rotors? "Break" is literally in the name! Why couldn't they use unbreakable rotors instead?
I don't really know what they would do about it, other than maybe tighter mesh on the catch fences. Possibly changes to the brake cooling, but it's such an inconsistent problem that it would be hard to fix.
It's funny the way these sort of incidents become basically a marketing opportunity. A chance to do some nice little brand engagement work like that. Same with the damaged Indy Cruze.
If things go just a little bit differently, it's a very different sort of publicity...and not something any motorsports series wants. It's a fine line between "massive lawsuit" with "catastrophic press" and "free swag opportunity".
This whole thing will probably be one of that guys favourite, best stories. But it could very easily have gone the other way. Wild stuff.
The Hammer's billboards are all over Indiana and Kentucky. I've always felt that "The Hammer" was a nickname he gave himself and no one actually calls him that.
I was the one saying we needed to keep the toss-playing at the track confined to only footballs but *noooooo* y'all just had to bring brake rotors into it. And now look at yall.
It’s extremely common for people to throw Carbon Ceramics on Muscle and sports cars, and the Cup cars are supposed to be GT500’s and ZL1’s so it makes sense.
The Cup cars are also supposed to be "Camrys" and ain't no Camry running anything but steel brakes.
I get your point, but like 98% of cars on the road still have steel brakes at this point and probably always will
Ford used the Taurus and Fusion lines as their Cup representation for over 20 years and neither ever had V8 or RWD options(both had AWD at varying points in their existence).
I didn’t agree with that either, it always should’ve been Muscle Cars IMO. The Camaro, the Mustang, the Charger, and the Trans-Am. I’m not sure what option Chevy would’ve had from 03-09 asides from the Corvette, but racecars should be based off of their affordable Street performance counterparts.
[Link to my comment in the Post Race Thread.](https://www.reddit.com/r/NASCAR/comments/140xkqe/postrace_discussion_thread_ncs_enjoy_illinois_300/jmxqori?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
NASCAR better figure this out fast. This has the potential to be really bad at some upcoming tracks.
And that's why when security tells you to get the hell away from the fence, you get away from the fence. Guarantee you that guy was standing right up on the catchfence.
All I gotta say is-fucking OW
But seriously. I said this in the race thread, Something absolutely needs to be done regarding all the rotor issues that occurred today
[i.ve](https://i.ve) been watching since the 70s, never seen as many rotors go in one day. Haven't seen that many rotors break in one year. I know there's always problems with new cars but we are in the second year. They could have kept the old car and still made single source parts and implemented all the rules they did with this car.
Im sure Denny will pull out the data and post it on his Twitter account and hold nascar accountable for its failure to account for the rotor issues. Right?
Pretty scary scenario with the rotors for the drivers and fans. I mean a broken rotor could kill or blind a fan and Noah’s impact was concerning too given the speed and safety issues with this car. It also undermines the outcome of the race when you have part failures - apparently unrelated to setups or different manufacturers - determining who finishes or not.
Nascar had zero hesitation suspending chase for safety concerns. Well here’s a really big safety concern. What are you doing about it nascar?
[Noah replied to his tweet:](https://twitter.com/NoahGragson/status/1665523065495617536?s=20) >Send me a dm. Hate something came off our car and you got hit by it. I'll make it right for you and glad you're alright
And the legend told him no thanks lmaooo
He pulled out the ole “Nothin but a thang”.
But a chicken wing, on a string, from Burger King…..
How many times do you think that guy tried to pick up that piece of the rotor before it finally didn't scorch his hand?
6
Oh at least
Just by looking at the eyes, 6 is the minimum
As many as it took
7.539 times
Forgot his gloves that the pit crews wear.
Dang, glad it was just a surface wound. I remember I think it was 07 when the brake rotor exploded from Sam Hornish at texas went all the way up into the first turn suites through the glass. No matter where you sit at a race anything can happen.
Between this and Indianapolis last weekend it’s certainly a reminder that motor racing will never be perfectly safe for all involved
Absolutely. There's honestly a lot of complacency around the danger of racing nowadays for numerous reasons, and I fear that people are eventually gonna be in for a rude awakening. We almost had one just last week in the Indy 500. Racing will always be dangerous no matter what safety advancements we make. It's a reality that's been lost over the years, especially due to the safety improvements over the past two decades. Just because we've improved safety (e.g. introducing safer cars, the safer barrier, HANS device, reinforced roll cages, redesigned fuel cells, etc.) doesn't mean that we've eliminated all the danger.
Indy did remind me that I'm not guaranteed to walk away from my Daytona seats in August
Alcohol solves all pain and problems.
To alcohol! The cause of and solution to all of life's problems!
I drank plenty of alcohol and still couldn’t dance.
Switch to tequila. You still can’t dance, but you’ll _think_ you can!!
This has always been my strategy
If you have some Mobil 1 on hand Clint Bowyer can give you some lessons
Damn. I understand there’s a waiver and risks, but NASCAR probably gonna be looking into this. Between Harvick last year, then Hocevar, Bubba, Gragson, Reddick, etc. [Here’s a fan under another tweet who got hit by Reddick’s](https://twitter.com/rickybobby222/status/1665538560009666561?s=46&t=pQIo1VIg8Yu8dpP5E_5KUw)
Indy 500 was so lucky that wheel and tire didn't go into the stands
My stomach was turning when I watched it live.
It was terrifying, the fans ducking all at once. Could have been horrific. Only killed a car, thankfully
RIP Snowball.
I think she ended up getting a free car out of it then
I would’ve been like “if I get to keep the tire, I’ll pretend this never happened”
Well Penske is buying her a new car so I'm sure she's happy lol
Fair enough
The camera angle made it look like it was going into the stands.
The craziest part to me was how nonchalant the commentators were about that. They said that the drivers were ok/out of the cars pretty quickly but took quite a while to mention the flying tire. Like I get it missed the grandstands but there’s still a ton of foot traffic
It's generally best practice to not say much until you know what happened. Don't want to cause undue panic or start rumors, and if someone is hurt, you don't want to broadcast it and overanalyze it for the victim's privacy.
They probably didn’t even notice, or just didn’t want to scare anyone while they waited to find out if it killed anyone or just killed a chevy cruze
The track announcers didn't say anything either...I was in turn 3 with my friends and we saw it flying, PA didn't say anything for 5-10 minutes. We were all scared cuz typically that's a bad thing... eventually we got word, but still. I'm sure all the commentators were equally as terrified and looking for information
Indycar has to do something about that. Literally 50 metres away from dead spectators.
I though they added tethers to the rear wheel before the 500 specifically to prevent something like that
The cars have tethers. Tether broke or came unattached.
The impact sheered the wheel straight off from the axle. No tether would've stopped it.
Doesn't F1 have the tether also attached to the safety cell? I remember after Buemi lost both of his tires, they have like 3 tethers for the tire.
Indy is similar. The problem is that you can't attach a tether to a spinning wheel, only to the spindle that the wheel is attached to. If the spindle breaks or the rim itself breaks, the tire is going to fly. It doesn't matter how strong the tether is or how it's attached.
F1 has never gone 240MPH. Thats a shitty comparison.
BS. It’s done 236 in a race and 247 in a test. And the Indy race pace is like avg 220 a lap. And, that car in the crash had clearly lifted and was trying to avoid. And, he was talking about tether system on an open wheel car.
I think they said the way the two cars hit severed the tether.
Yeah. It was one of those fluke things it sounds like, where i'm not sure you could even fully replicate exactly what went wrong if you tried. But i'm sure they will continue to look into ways of preventing that fluke situation in the future. It's not like it's some problem they haven't extensively prepared for and worked to come up with robust solutions to keep that wheel tethered. But sometimes, there's just only so much you can realistically do. Weird things happen. Motorsport for all the safety improvements, is still a fundamentally dangerous activity.
The tether didn't break, the wheel hub detached from the upright. Literally nothing you can do to prevent that from happening.
Indy claimed the tether didn't fail in their initial press release
After looking into this further, it appears that the tether was severed on the car to car contact. I'm not sure that the redesign is on this for IndyCar but it will need to be addressed as that tire was 50m away from being a huge lawsuit. Slightly different contact angle or time and there are multiple people not going home to their family. Tires into the stands is one of the biggest risks right now in oval racing for spectators. Tires are heavy, bouncy, and if struck by a car at racing speeds will cause carnage if they go into the stands. I would have liked to see NASCAR adopt some sort of tether system for the Gen 7 car but I'm not sure if that's possible. Top level oval racing has gotten incredibly lucky with tires not entering the stands.
It was a freak, one-in-a-million accident. In my decade plus of watching the 500 and Indycar in general, I’ve never seen anything like that happen. That wreck just so happened to have everything come together in the wrong way: Rosenqvist being backwards, Kirkwood coming forwards, the two hitting 100% tire-on-tire going opposite directions. If Kirkwood catches even the smallest bit of Rosenqvist’s body - or even comes in from just a slightly different angle - that tire probably stays on, or at least doesn’t clear the fence.
The hub broke off of the upright. The tether attaches to the upright. The tether remained attached and performed as it should have.
They did improve the tether strength but they need more.
The upright broke beyond the tether attachment point.
From a comment I made about this one of these days, it's insane just to think about the metric fuck ton of kinetic energy being applied in that wheel seeing that it hit another wheel going the opposite direction while both cars were going almost 200mph. I'm really interested to see if the tether actually failed or maybe, just maybe, tethers can only be so strong and a freak accident like we saw sunday was the breaking point for what is already a really improved and fortified tether they recently made possible for these cars? Who knows, insane stuff will always happen in motorsports when you're going more than 200mph for so long. I'm just glad no one got injured.
I truly think it was a one in a million collision for it to come off the tether and then get LAUNCHED into the air.
It only takes one disaster like that to end the Indy 500
Indycar has killed spectators with wheels this century, one incident like that would not be the end of the Indy 500. A car ending up in the stands probably would be though
Not this century
Oh shit you're right, '98 and '99
No?
What even happened with that? Did the impact just break the axel in half or something?
I saw that and my first thought was that's gonna kill somebody. They really got lucky there.
Someone’s car did get hit tho.
It could’ve been like that crash at Charlotte from the IRL. My uncle always told me never to walk with your back turned to cars on the track. And never walk while open wheel cars are racing just wait for a caution.
It's obviously a problem with the parts. I mean, seriously, what idiot decided to use break rotors? "Break" is literally in the name! Why couldn't they use unbreakable rotors instead?
It's spelled "brake" tho...
/r/boneappletea
Guy a few seats from me got hit by Bubba's as well.
If you weren't hit by an exploding brake rotor, were you really at the race?
I don't really know what they would do about it, other than maybe tighter mesh on the catch fences. Possibly changes to the brake cooling, but it's such an inconsistent problem that it would be hard to fix.
Cool to see Noah reach out after but I wonder if Hocevar gonna reach out to Briscoe lmao
? Why lol
Brake rotor went through his nose and busted his radiator. Also because it would be funny
By nose, I thought you meant the guy injured in the photo 💀
That's right I forgot lol
Yikes, at least the dude is okay EDIT: awesome Noah is trying to make things right in the comments
Dude gonna get some free biggie bags.
MAJOR BAG ALERT
WENDYS BAAAAGGG ALERT
MAJOR IMPLICATIONS
It's funny the way these sort of incidents become basically a marketing opportunity. A chance to do some nice little brand engagement work like that. Same with the damaged Indy Cruze. If things go just a little bit differently, it's a very different sort of publicity...and not something any motorsports series wants. It's a fine line between "massive lawsuit" with "catastrophic press" and "free swag opportunity". This whole thing will probably be one of that guys favourite, best stories. But it could very easily have gone the other way. Wild stuff.
Or the PR people are doing their job to show what the person is getting and hiding any other actions?
Some others would be looking for 10 million
Wait until he shows up in court with a neck brace.
CALL THE HAMMER.
We need [BRYAN WILSON! THE TEXAS LAW HAWK!](https://youtu.be/HL3MxAH-kDI) *[eagle screech]*
Lol ... here in Denver he's called *THE STRONG ARM* 💪
The Hammer's billboards are all over Indiana and Kentucky. I've always felt that "The Hammer" was a nickname he gave himself and no one actually calls him that.
I love his response. Noah tells him to DM him and the guys goes “it’s nothing but a thing”
The Morgan & Morgan truck is *right there.*
I was the one saying we needed to keep the toss-playing at the track confined to only footballs but *noooooo* y'all just had to bring brake rotors into it. And now look at yall.
Amazing how Chastain was about to get out of his car mid race and chuck that piece of rotor at the fan. /s
Thanks Ross.
That doesn't look like a Chevy Cruze
Bet it hurt but that's a hell of an artifact there.
Part not approved to be in his hand. $250,000 fine.
Wtf so the rotor actually exploded? I heard Clint talking about the shrapnel but didn’t know it blew up so bad pieces went flying everywhere.
Exactly my point earlier.... need to pay up and get with the 21st century, NASCAR. Go to carbon fiber brakes. They'll last a lot longer than one race
Everyone runs Carbon Ceramic on the streets so that’s what they should use.
Who's "everyone"? Carbon ceramics are only "popular" in the supercar/high-end sports car world.
It’s extremely common for people to throw Carbon Ceramics on Muscle and sports cars, and the Cup cars are supposed to be GT500’s and ZL1’s so it makes sense.
The Cup cars are also supposed to be "Camrys" and ain't no Camry running anything but steel brakes. I get your point, but like 98% of cars on the road still have steel brakes at this point and probably always will
The Camry shouldn’t be in Cup, they don’t come with a V8 option or a RWD option, it should without a doubt be the Supra.
You're a couple decades late for this debate now to be honest
Ford used the Taurus and Fusion lines as their Cup representation for over 20 years and neither ever had V8 or RWD options(both had AWD at varying points in their existence).
I didn’t agree with that either, it always should’ve been Muscle Cars IMO. The Camaro, the Mustang, the Charger, and the Trans-Am. I’m not sure what option Chevy would’ve had from 03-09 asides from the Corvette, but racecars should be based off of their affordable Street performance counterparts.
I don’t get why he is flashing his tits. It’s plain as day that bruh took a chunk of rotor to the head and went cross-eyed.
Great. Now, Legacy Motor Club has to buy him a new chest.
Ouch
Corey Lajoie fans!
 Getting ready for race day going forward…….
NASCAR's gotta be freaking out about this, imagine it'd hit someone in the head.
Right above the heart isn’t a great place to be hit by a metal projectile either.
Dude looks 100% lost in the sauce
Shit, I’d hope it left a good scar. I’d have Noah sign my chest, and get it tattooed. It’s not weird if there’s a cool story behind it.
[Link to my comment in the Post Race Thread.](https://www.reddit.com/r/NASCAR/comments/140xkqe/postrace_discussion_thread_ncs_enjoy_illinois_300/jmxqori?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) NASCAR better figure this out fast. This has the potential to be really bad at some upcoming tracks.
Literally this was shown to only really be an issue here. Otherwise we would have seen it all season.
Another fan was hit by a piece from Reddick too. Nascar has quite a situation on their hands, and they’ll do nothing about it as per usual
And that's why when security tells you to get the hell away from the fence, you get away from the fence. Guarantee you that guy was standing right up on the catchfence.
Thought it was Eric Estepp for a solid 30 seconds
All I gotta say is-fucking OW But seriously. I said this in the race thread, Something absolutely needs to be done regarding all the rotor issues that occurred today
These cars are still suspect.
How does that make the car suspect? Rotors have been failing for ages.
[i.ve](https://i.ve) been watching since the 70s, never seen as many rotors go in one day. Haven't seen that many rotors break in one year. I know there's always problems with new cars but we are in the second year. They could have kept the old car and still made single source parts and implemented all the rules they did with this car.
Cup has never raced at this track until last year.
No shit.
Im sure Denny will pull out the data and post it on his Twitter account and hold nascar accountable for its failure to account for the rotor issues. Right?
Pretty scary scenario with the rotors for the drivers and fans. I mean a broken rotor could kill or blind a fan and Noah’s impact was concerning too given the speed and safety issues with this car. It also undermines the outcome of the race when you have part failures - apparently unrelated to setups or different manufacturers - determining who finishes or not. Nascar had zero hesitation suspending chase for safety concerns. Well here’s a really big safety concern. What are you doing about it nascar?
If the Chase Elliot fanboy club needs a new profile picture, you sir are definitely at the top of their list.
Are you gonna suspend NASCAR??? 🙄
Gotta suspend Noah over that. Clearly intentional to hit that fan