Racing Tony stewart involved in on track fatality

SHELBYSALEEN

Bench Warmer
By now most of you have learned of the accident last night at Canandaigua Motorsports Park. Tony was involved in a accident which left Kevin Ward jr deceased.

What started as just another rubbin is racing moment ended IN a life altering event for all involved.

Tony and Kevin got tangled which left kevin in the wall. Kevin got out of the car and started to show his displeasure with Tony.

Even under caution these cars tend to be going quickly. From the video that has flooded you tube and twitter it appears that Tony accellerated and his car fishtailed slightly. In the process his car hit 20
year old kevin ward jr and he was DOA.

The sherriff of Ontario county said Tony was fully cooperating and the investigation was not a criminal one.

Track officials are holding off on comment until later today. They also asked that everyone hold off on speculation until the investigation is done.

Well we all know that is not going to happen. In a day where social media is King and everyone gets to voice their opinion to the world Truth tends to take a back seat. Even when the truth is revealed there will be many yelling cover up,conspiracy etc.

What is known without doubt is kevin ward got out of his car tony hit him and kevin is dead.

The questions are why did Tony accellerate what were his intentions and what went wrong?

The other without a doubt part of this is Kevins life ended, his familys life will never be the same, Tonys life will never be the same.

Some of the opinons out there are calling for Tony to be banned from NASCAR forever. Others are yelling for him to go to jail also forever. They are saying Tony hit him intentionally. Look at his past he knew what he was doing.

Other opinons are saying It was just an accident, he was proably just trying to sling dirt on the kid as to say go away kid your bothering me.

Even the media with headlines that read Tony Stewart Kills another driver. you do not read accident until later in the articles.

My opinion is it was a truly awful accident. An accident that could have been possibly avoided by tony if he had not accellearated [for any reason]. An accident that could have been avoided definatley if Kevin Ward had stayed in his car and not confronted Tony. You see in the video another car going by driving quickly. What if Kevn had slipped and fallen under his car. What if Tony had accellarated for the sole purpose of just going by the kid and hit a slick spot on the track. The following is not meant to be funny but from the moment I saw the video all I could think about was happy days. Most of us have seen the one where Pinky gets out of her car and the malochi brothers hit her. Yea its TV but the point of it was stay in your car. What if Tony really did not see kevin until the last second and the reason he accellerated was to dodge him.

More information will pour out today. Fallout from this will continue for months. What will NASCARs reaction be, will they ban Tony. I doubt it. If he is not held criminally liable there would be no basis. Will they try and ban their drivers from racing different series to prevent NASCAR receiving a black eye for one of their drivers/stars that is a possibly.

There will almost guaranteed be a lawsuit. When people are hurting they want others to hurt. If I cant send you to jail for this I will make you pay. I am not saying that is what the ward family is thinking. I am sayin that is what a lawyer somewhere is going to be trying to tell them. Will they win, no matter what the outcome of a possible trial is you can never say they will have won. In NC they probably would not win due to contributory negligence laws. I do not know about New York.

In a sport that is all about winning there will be no winners in this.
 
sad.... I watched the video.... looks as if Ward was stepping in front of Smoke's car as it was going by.

Stewart has to live with this for the rest of his life.

Prayers going out to all involved.
 
Some aspects that I saw in the video was
Kevin stepped out to confront Tony in the nighttime while cars are running after a crash that looks like he should have had an injury simply because it was an impact that he almost flipped over so how Kevin even got out from the car without an injury is memorizing

Kevin should have been more careful



But now Tony won't be able to race because of all of the shock he went through

Now just watch twitter go with #Smokewillriseagain
 
I just saw the newsclip. Yes, Ward should have stayed in his car, but it really looks like Stewart hit him intentionally. I'm going to guess he goes down for manslaughter, can't say it was intentional murder.
 
Very sad day indeed. I saw this on the news a little while ago. The first thing I thought when I saw it was...I wonder if Ward sustain a head injury and his judgement was impaired. It was dark, there were a lot of cars moving by quickly under caution and it would seem unlikely that someone would be wandering around the track. I would think that would be the last thing a driver would be expecting to see. I honestly, don't think Stewart saw him until it was too late...at least that was my initial impression.

I am not really a racing or Tony Stewart fan...so I don't feel that I have a bias either way. But, my gut tells me that this was a very unfortunate race related accidental death and nothing more.
 
Seriously? These are the kind of statements that will fuel the fire for a hanging.
It looked that way to me. Just an opinion. Several other cars passed by before Stewart hit Ward. The other cars seemed to swerve to avoid Ward, while Stewart seem to aim straight toward him. I hope other videos which will give more perspective of the accident will come up.
 
Not gonna comment on what happened, or my opinion, as I've only seen it twice, but I will say it was a very sad, and tragic incident, and my thoughts, and prayers go out to Kevin, and his family during this horrible time. What I do question is what the heck Stewart is doing racing these events in the first place? I get the whole love for the sport, and desire to race whatever, and whenever, but didn't he learn his lesson last year when he hurt his leg? If I'm his sole sponsor, no way he's doing these events. His responsibility is to the Stewart/Haas Racing teams, and that should be his only focus, IMO.
 
Good point Troy! The big boys need to stay away from these events... Let the "kids" enjoy their time in the minor league without the big boys trying to steal the spotlight.
 
...and good point Peter.... But we all have opininions. I have watched two different videos and it is going to be a 50/50 call.
 
Not gonna comment on what happened, or my opinion, as I've only seen it twice, but I will say it was a very sad, and tragic incident, and my thoughts, and prayers go out to Kevin, and his family during this horrible time. What I do question is what the heck Stewart is doing racing these events in the first place? I get the whole love for the sport, and desire to race whatever, and whenever, but didn't he learn his lesson last year when he hurt his leg? If I'm his sole sponsor, no way he's doing these events. His responsibility is to the Stewart/Haas Racing teams, and that should be his only focus, IMO.
From a financial standpoint, I completely understand what you are saying. But, I suppose this is one of the benefits of owning his own team...he has a lot more say in what he does.
 
The only video I've seen, so far, is from a distance and doesn't show me what Tony was doing until a split second before impact.

A few notes:

The initial incident that caused the crash is, IMO, typical of drift-racing. Tony's car had the center track and Kevin was on the outside of him during the turn. Tony was significantly in front of Kevin's car during the turn. Slight contact, between the right-rear of Tony's car and the left-front of Kevin's car apparently occurred. As a result, Kevin lost control of his car and spun-out.

The track is dirt, and significantly higher on the outside than in the inside, again typical.

Kevin got out of his car on the high-side and made his way to the center of the track. As Tony passed, just under the center-track, Kevin attempted to jump out of the way, but failed. That's tough to do when trying to jump uphill.

Let's be clear here. Kevin attempted to get close to Tony's car, in an effort to point Tony out for causing the crash.

I can't tell if Tony steered slightly into Kevin from the video, though it appears he accelerated a split-second before contact.

At contact, Tony's car veered right due to the force of the contact, as I see no indication that his front wheel's were anything but straight. Again, the video doesn't show me enough of the approach to say whether or not Tony steered into Kevin at all, but it does clearly show Kevin attempting to get close to Tony's car.

I've had two moments in my life that were similarly dumb, but I was four and seven at the time, so I cut myself some slack...even if it was idiotic at the time. I lived, Kevin didn't. He made a fatal mistake, even if it's proven to me that Tony intentionally steered a foot or two closer to Kevin than he should have. However, if Tony did indeed veer slightly right during that moment, then Tony made a mistake that took a life.

Until I see more information proving otherwise, I consider the bulk of the blame to be on Kevin.
 
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