NASCAR meets with BGN drivers: NASCAR president Mike Helton met with drivers and car owners from the Grand National series Thursday night to speak of safety concerns raised by a number of media reports over the past week involving the death of Dale Earnhardt. The group left the infield of Richmond International Raceway about 6:20 p.m. in a caravan of vans to a location outside the track and returned at 7 p.m. The Grand National series held qualifying Thursday night in preparation for Friday night’s Hardee’s 250. (Matt Kenseth won the pole). Helton said Thursday night’s meeting was one of two planned for the weekend – a similar meeting will be conducted Friday morning with owners and drivers from the Winston Cup garage. “It was just a conversation with drivers and owners about the current headlines and our issues that we wanted to make sure they knew where we were coming from,” Helton said. “It wasn’t a conversation about us being in a (peeing) match with anybody and it wasn’t a conversation about down-playing anything. It was a very frank conversation between NASCAR and the core of the sport – the drivers and the owners – about where we stood and about why we were doing things the way we were doing them and did they have any questions. We owe them answers. That’s basically what it all boiled down to.” Jeff Green, last season’s Grand National series champion, called Thursday night’s meeting “very productive.”(That’s Racin’)(5-4-2001)
