I would like to state my opinion on the recent West car fire that took place at Stockton 99 Speedway.
Ken Clapp is an employee of Nascar but the role he was he playing when he opened his gates for practice last Friday morning was not as a Nascar employee it was that of a promoter.
It is not common place for promoters to pay for an ambulance and fire crew to be on the job on open practice days. It is the responsibility of the team. This was no more than another day of practice for S99. Clapp, like all the rest of us at the track, may have thought that Nascar was providing its own safety. And he did have some safety crew as well as a trained paramedic.
More than likely Clapp is deeply hurt by what happened. It was Nascar that put him in this situation. Nascar overcharges the tracks for races and then tries to make it up to them by allowing them to charge for practice. It is a good idea. The only thing wrong is that with 40 cars the risk of something bad happening increases.
People, if we continue complaining and pointing the blame at Clapp we are hurting another of our short tracks. We need S99 and we need the Friday practice.
My suggestion is for us to call Don Hawk. He said he wants our ideas. Let’s give him our ideas. Mine is to have the Nascar suits that go to these Friday practices trained and equipped to handle these Nascar organized practices. Good things can come from this. We can be positive about the future if we work together with Nascar. It could be Nascar will support us and supply the tracks with the safety and training needed to prevent another Nascar practice calamity.
There was a lot of good stuff that went on at S99. We should not let what happened hurt us.
