That a young mans life ended in a blind rage is the sad part, I feel for his family and friends, such a terrible waste caused by uncontrolled anger, life is so much more.
I am by no means defending Stewart, this was avoidable by both of the involved parties. Unfortunately it cost one his life. If this were Jimmie Johnson or another mild mannered driver it would be talked about how it was a tragic accident. But, Stewart being the speak your mind and holier than thou attitude he was instantly incriminated by the media and fans. Driver quarrels are always hyped and often glorified by the media, look for rules to change on all circuits requiring the driver to stay in the car until track safety personnel are on scene unless imminent danger exists. IMO it looked like Stewart wanted to sling mud on Ward for daring to criticize his driving. The hit to the wall didn't look to be Stewart's fault, just a typical dirt track squeeze play. Between Stewart burping the gas and Ward still advancing toward him contact and the end result occurred. Stewart made a poor decision by not staying low on the track, and Ward made a poor decision by exiting the vehicle. It happens so often it has become more commonplace to do so, we were just shown how dangerous it really is. It's a bizarre situation and was completely avoidable. Here's my opinion on what will happen. Stewart will not be charged with criminal charges. He will be sued in a civil court for wrongful death and lose. This incident is going to change more than just race protocol. The last 3 deaths on track in Nascar Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin and Dale Earnhardt, prompted questions on why on track deaths are not investigated the same way as any other deaths. Really came to light with Earnhardt and eventual sealing of his autopsy report. With this being the first on track death as a possible negligent act it's likely nothing more than civil action will result. Which is why you'll probably see some sort of laws changed with the way on track deaths are handled. There's three sides to every story. His version, the other sides version and the truth. We'll only hear two of them.
Getting out of your car on a hot race track is a bad idea. Yeah you are pissed, I get it. But to start running around waving your finger on the track away from your car in a black suit at night is idiotic. I don't think that Stewart tried to hit the guy. But everyone knows Stewart has a hot head. Did he try and "buzz" him to try and scare him a little bit? Plausible. I'm guessing there will be a civil suit filed by the family soon to try and get a large payday. Just a tragic situation and is probably a shared fault with several bad decisions in a row by both guys. [video=youtube_share;_QJdBd0437U]http://youtu.be/_QJdBd0437U[/video]
My thoughts exactly. I also think he misjudged where ward was because ward was moving, and the outlaw sprints tires stick out 2 feet further from the body of the car.
IMO Tony was driving a sprint car on a dirt track, he did not accelerate to spray mud he accelerated into the corner because that is how you steer the car, with the throttle.
Just for the record, the first post I see in this thread is: The thread shows being started by you but it's not showing you initial comments. Your "first" comments in this thread is this one. Anyway, on topic, I think it was stupid for Ward to get out of the car and I think from the video Tony clearly accelerated (maybe to fling mud or to buzz by him) which spins the tires and causes the car to drift up the track. My opinion is that both are at fault, but clearly killing Ward wasn't Tony's intention.
I've watched the video a couple different times and honestly you can't really see what happened until after the hit. So because of that I won't speculate if he swerved toward or away from the guy that got him. You can see that he almost got hit by the first car and then looked go step into or pretty close to in front of where Stewart would of been coming around the corner. The car is sliding in the direction of where the dude was standing on the track but it's hard to tell if that was on purpose or was caused by running over the guy or trying to swerve around him. Lesson learned don't play in traffic. Why would you get out and walk toward or into the path of a moving vehicle of any kind. Either way it's a bad deal.
A lot of videos got removed throughout the night. Not sure if it's the ones that had sound or not, but you could hear Stewart burp the throttle just as he was passing Ward. The original video was the one shown on espn but it had audio. The guy with the phone/camera says something to the effect of "Stewart just hit that guy". Then people started taking the videos and altering the sounds making it appear that Stewart gassed it well in advance making it appear he ran him down. I think that's when they started removing some videos or maybe all with sound. Haven't watched but the one
The one that's posted earlier in this thread was only one I've found. Either way the dude should of stayed in his car. He's running around and in front of passing cars, the first one barely missed him from the way it looks and the second didn't. It's really hard to say and I don't think blame can be put on one person. The whole thing started from a pretty clean incident that happens all the time in dirt track racing. Sent from my SM-G900R4 using Tapatalk
