Defending champion Tony Stewart wonders why NASCAR doesn’t have a traveling safety team. While NASCAR has made changes to improve safety, it has not created a safety team that goes from race to race. Both the Indy Racing League and CART have a trained team of safety workers to respond to each accident. NASCAR has a medical liaison at the track while relying on local firefighters and emergency workers to go to the accident scenes. “I’ve tried to get NASCAR to get their own safety crew,” Stewart said. “When I ran in the IRL … you always felt comfortable knowing that if you were in an accident you knew who the people were who were coming to get you out of the car. You knew they were trained properly. Having the medical liaison there each week is a step in the right direction. At times it’s frustrating that we haven’t gone any farther than that, but at the same time I kind of applaud NASCAR for at least using their heads. They don’t do things very fast a lot of times but when they do get something done it’s been well thought out, and I think they’re looking at that now. I’m praying for the day I show up at the race track and we see a bunch of guys in uniform that are the same guys we see the week before in the previous race and the week before that.”( Roanoke Times )(4-23-2003)
