Chase Briscoe took a look at what was left of the crashed Christopher Bell car on Monday at the Joe Gibbs Racing facility and was ‘blown away’ by it.
The impact was the worst since this car’s debut in 2022 and at least a decade. And while it left Bell with a fractured left wrist, one he will attempt to race through, it had the appearance of something that could have been much worse.
Bell revealed that the impact recorded 63Gs but didn’t know, nor care to know, what the Delta-v was when asked on Saturday. Similar to what Bell said, Briscoe was just relieved that every safety component seemed to work as intended.
“I was just like blown away, at just some of the damage, I guess, in a good way,
Briscoe said. “Like, it did what it was supposed to do, right? I’ve been around the Next Gen car for four years now or whatever, and I’ve never seen one look like that. It was just unique to see one, kind of twisted up and do the things that it did.
“I went and looked at it and then I talked to Christopher a lot.”
Briscoe said he texted with Bell on Tuesday and just couldn’t comprehend how his teammate was able to walk away from it. It made him want to see if there’s something he could do to further improve his own safety process.
“He has a broken wrist and stuff, but I mean, it could have been really, really bad,” Briscoe said. “So just trying to see if looking at my crash videos and I know what kind of the G’s were in mine, compared to what he had and just trying to see if maybe I need to do something different in my stuff because I feel like to be able to get out of that impact, especially like from a head standpoint, like to not have a concussion, like he’s got something right with his helmet or head rest or whatever. So yeah, I was definitely, you know, curious about it everything.”
Even though Bell received mostly good news, safety is a continually moving target, and Erik Jones knows from experience that NASCAR will do a deep-dive and provide drivers post-crash analytics.
“I went through that process a little bit with them in the Talladega wreck and know from myself, my own experience, kind of how they go about it and what their process is going to be,” Jones said. “So, I know it takes them some time just to gather that data. At the end of the day, it seems like everything worked pretty well.
“Christopher is in one piece pretty much and is here racing. So, I think that says a lot, but as far as the real nitty-gritty and what can be better about his stuff and what can be better going forward. I’ll just wait for NASCAR on that.”
William Byron has a similar mindset.
“I really don’t get to involved in that,” Byron said. “I feel like everyone on social was surprised that the frame cracked, but the frame cracked for us, the front clip broke for us at Talladega just from the right front impact, so they’re meant to do that.
“It was obviously a huge impact. I was just concerned in the moment that Christopher was okay. It was good to see him get out. His wrist injury was unfortunate, and you want to race against him because we all have so much respect for him, and that’s why we all reached out to him.
“And really, anyone involved in a crash like that, we would be concerned for. But I’ll personally just watch from afar. I wouldn’t say I’m not concerned but nothing changes my approach for this weekend.
His teammate, Kyle Larson, echoed that sentiment.
“It doesn’t change you race,” said Larson in response to a question from The Athletic in a media scrum. “But it was a huge hit. Seeing it happen out of my windshield, there was concern if he was going to get out, not tragically or anything like that, but if he was going to be hurt. It says a lot about the car.
“The big impacts like that, the car is much safer than it used to be, but it’s the medium sized impacts that happen a lot more frequently that hurt more than the other car.”
The incident transpired on Lap 148 last Sunday when Chase Elliott lost traction over a bump in Turn 3 and slid up into Bell while they were racing for second. The contact shot Bell into the wall, that impact requiring a 21-minute repair to the SAFER Barrier, but also a secondary shot when Elliott came back up the track into the left side of Bell’s car.
Elliott was extremely remorseful, which Bell appreciated but held no animosity over, and reached out to his longtime peer several times throughout the week.
“He kept me posted on how he was feeling and he even told me, ‘hey man, look, that’s racing’ and showed a lot of mutual respect towards me, even though it was my fault, and I appreciated that,” Elliott told The Athletic.
Elliott also told RACER that he hasn’t seen any data or analytics from NASCAR yet on his car but knows everything Bell knows.
“I think anytime those things happen, there are lessons to be learned about how do we make it better, even though the outcome was relatively positive given the circumstances,” Elliott said. “I do think there’s room to improve and hopefully we can make the best of a bad situation and apply those things moving forward.”
Denny Hamlin said he hasn’t looked at the No. 29 car yet but also believes some of the best safety-minded things with this car have already been applied and it’s what kept Bell from additional harm.
“Obviously, that was a super massive hit and a very awkward kind of position where he doesn’t probably have very much time to change his posture or prepare for it either because it happened so quick,” Hamlin said. “He got out of the car, other than his wrist, he felt okay. I feel like we’ve made some good, good strides in the safety department, because certainly before they started cutting on the chassis and starting to make it weaker like we wanted in the beginning that would have been a very, very tough impact to the body itself.”
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