Those who witnessed stock car racer Neil Bonnett's deadly wreck are trying to determine what happened.
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Apparently there was no videotape of racing veteran Neil Bonnett's fatal crash at Daytona International Speedway Friday.
From the black skid marks left on the track, it appeared that the back end of Bonnett's car spun out, but when the front end hit the flat apron at the bottom of the banked turn, the car yanked around and hurtled front-first back up the banking and straight into the wall.``It sounded like dynamite going off when he hit the wall,' said racing fan Kevin Wright of Franklin, Vt., who was sitting on top of his pickup truck inside of turn four when Bonnett crashed. ``He started getting loose right here and overplayed it and just went into the wall.'
Rescue workers cut a hole in the roof of the car to remove Bonnett. The ambulance did not come to the infield care center, but took Bonnett directly to Halifax, which is a few blocks from the track. The wrecked car, covered by a colorful pink and yellow Country Time car cover, was hauled to an off-limits impound area behind the infield care center.
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Immediately after the crash, there were reports that Bonnett had spun in oil on the track that NASCAR officials had failed to notice.
Some drivers said they saw oil, but most didn't.
``There was nothing that hadn't been out there before and everybody had run through that,' said Dale Jarrett. ``The track was loose, but that's because it's hotter here today. But it was not that bad.'
``I was one of the first cars out there to practice (after the crash) and there was a dark streak right in the middle of the groove,' said Brett Bodine. ``It had to be oil.'
``There was oil on the track, but not until after the accident,' said Morgan Shepherd.
A few minutes before the crash, NASCAR had thrown a red flag to stop practice because Sterling Marlin's Chevy had, in fact, lost some oil in turns one and two.
``Practice on the track had been stopped and the safety crews had gone out and cleaned it up,' said NASCAR spokesman Chip Williams.
As the red flag flew, Rick Mast's Ford lost a driveshaft on the backstretch. But Mast said if his car spewed any oil, it wasn't in the groove because he was already down on the apron when he reached turn three.
In any event, Winston Cup Director Gary Nelson ``told me he personally went out and checked on turns one and two especially, but three and four also,' Williams said.
The track was reopened and drivers had run about five laps when Bonnett crashed.
``Our indications are that he lost control of the car,' Williams said. ``As best we can tell, it was driver error.'
Although Bonnett died at 1:17 p.m., speedway officials did not announce his death until 5:24 p.m.
``Susan Bonnett (Neil's wife) was driving from Hueytown to Daytona today and she left out of there at 7 a.m. this morning and has been on the highway ever since. Until we were able to make sure all the notifications had been done and the family had been informed, we just couldn't release anything. We didn't want her to hear it on the radio.'
Balewski said Susan Bonnett arrived at the medical center shortly after 5 p.m.
The crash occurred 22 minutes after the first Winston Cup practice of the season had begun (not including January testing).
Practice was supposed to start at 10 a.m. Friday, but was delayed until 12:23 p.m. in the wake of a crash here Thursday that was almost identical to Bonnett's.
During qualifying for Sunday's ARCA 200, driver Andy Farr lost control of his car in turn four and spun. When the car hit the apron, it shot back up the track and slammed head-on into the wall, gouging a 3-foot hole in the concrete and tearing out 75 feet of fence.
Farr suffered a broken sternum and was expected to remain hospitalized at Halifax at least until today.
``He's in a lot of pain and is on morphine for his sternum,' team publicist Tim Geitzen said.
The track was closed after Farr's crash and the wall and fence were repaired overnight. But since Farr was only the third ARCA driver to try to qualify Thursday, nearly the entire ARCA qualifying session had to be postponed until Friday morning, which delayed the start of the Winston Cup practice.
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