Safety equipment on McClure’s car worked: While the steering column did move quite a bit toward driver Eric McClure during his nasty crash Saturday at Talladega Superspeedway, the TriStar Motorsports team did not see anything out of the ordinary when inspecting the car after the accident, crew chief Wes Ward said Thursday. Ward, who has spent 22 years in the sport, and NASCAR officials looked over the car Monday at the TriStar shop to determine if any of the safety features failed. ‘The steering column went up quite a bit’ Ward said. ‘But from what they’re telling me, that’s pretty common with a frontal impact like that. & From what they’re telling me, I don’t think he actually hit the steering wheel that hard. It just kind of moved up. His helmet or face didn’t really go down into it that hard because of the HANS and the seat belts. There wasn’t anything in the car that we could say was bad. Everything did what it was supposed to do and everything held up.â The car was originally built at Rusty Wallace Racing, where Ward was shop foreman. The seat was manufactured by MasterCraft.(Sporting News)(5-10-2012)
