Mark Harrah, one of the owners of Dave Blaney’s team and an engineer, said that NASCAR should change the way it has teams attach the wheel tethers to keep them from flying off the cars in a wreck. A wheel off Ryan Newman’s car flew over the wall at Talladega and hit a car in the parking lot.( Winston Salem Journal )(4-12-2003) UPDATE: In response to a wheel and tire that went sailing over the wall at Talladega last weekend, NASCAR issued a technical bulletin Saturday revising its policy on tethering wheels in the Winston Cup series. Under the revised guidelines, distributed to teams Saturday at Martinsville Speedway, two fiber cables must be used on each front spindle of the car on all tracks 1¼ miles or more in length, excluding the two road courses. In addition, steel cables will no longer be permitted. The new guidelines go into effect April 23. Last weekend, Ryan Newman lost the left-front wheel of his #12 Dodge during a 27-car accident on Lap 4. The entire wheel assembly sailed over the Turn 2 wall and landed in a parking lot. It was later recovered by NASCAR officials.( ThatsRacin.com )(4-12-2003)
