When I pulled in and was directed to park over on the MotoX course, and I noticed right away that people had, or were in the process of, parking on the hillside outside turns 1 & 2. It immediately crossed my mind then, that this was 1) crazy for someone to park their vehicle there, and 2) what would happen if a race car went over the wall and clobbered one of these vehicles sitting there. This was all before I even paid to get in, or new anything about a possible safety situation.
I just happened to take this photo at that time.
What you can’t see in the picture is a 6 ft high pole that was among the cars parked there. There was also a set of bleachers sitting there, and at that time the track crew was using a tow truck to pull the bleachers way from the track/wall. They later would request that these cars be moved, and when I went out after the heat races to move my car from the MotoX whoop de Doo I was parked on, I noticed that there were still two vehicles that had not been moved from the area, and that the pole that was there had hay bales built up around it.
Here is a photo I took of that
These were some of the safety concerns, along with the aforementioned problems.
Some issues cropped up on race night (parking cars in harms way), and they were addressed, the other problems should have been taken car of weeks ago.
The USAC office is only an hour drive to Liberty and someone from the USAC office should have visited the track, knowing that there had been questions about safety issues in the past. If the USAC officials had some questions at that time, they should have gone back to UCS with a few drivers to get their opinions. This should/could have been done weeks ago.
I, like everyone else, was disappointed that a majority of the cars pulled out, but as they say Poop Occurs, and its on to Bloomington tonight!!
Here is a photo of the facility. The calm before the Storm!!
