While I love the safety improvements that have been added over the years, I truly believe that this sort of racing is a direct result of safety improvements and nearly totally enclosed cockpits. While it is still dangerous, the "fear" of being seriously injured or killed is mostly gone. I have no interest in going back to the days of seeing a weekly death notice on the cover of Speed Sport News, but the risk of injury or death had a tempering effect on the aggressive moves that were made by the drivers.

This is a big part of it. I also think the lack of good ole fashioned pit justice comes into play often times also. In the old days, knuckleheads would get a knuckle sandwich & get brought back in line (or keep getting knuckle sandwiches). Nowadays, any sort of physical retaliation is frowned upon & an offender runs risk of being suspended, fined, etc.

I think your point is especially true in modern day Nascar. Look at how those restrictor plate races are. Rolling demo derbies with blocking like crazy. 30 years ago, those pileups could send you to the morgue so there was a lot more decorum.

It is great that the sport is generally much safer than the old days, but there was a certain soberness that was brought to on track behavior when most everyone with experience had attended funerals for fellow drivers.

TMez original interview was Slide or die, sorry bout his luck. But did later apologize on Social Media after being told by the slidey he had no class. BTW I think the 84 driver just became USAC legal at 15.5 years. So a fight was not in order.

Kinda what the momentum classes have become. People eat it up a them two 600/speedster tracks in the east. One runs before a full house ever weds and it's four or five guys throwing sliders every corner of every lap.

This has happened since the slider became the proffered way to pass. I remember late 80s early 90s CRA at Eldora and Hewitt did the same thing to McSpadden and put him hung up in the fence. Of course Jack said he screwed up. But it was basically the same thing, Hauling it in there and hope it sticks..

At the end of the day we are all human an make mistakes. If anyone thinks Thomas did that intentionally, they obviously don't know how he races. You put 24 midgets on an 1/8 mile and you are going to have some unavoidable contact. Thomas and Ryan talked and they have no issues so people need to stop trying to stoke the fire

What did you expect on a 1/8 mile track ?

Looked to me like Timms came down off the cushion more than T-Mez was expecting. Same thing but more obvious happened with KTJ last night.

In the end T-Mez had a good weekend and can pay bills and feed his daughters. Timms can go home, go to school, and tell dad we need to send CBR more money to pay for the crash.

What would your analogy be if the situation was reversed?

To me most drivers take chances that may or may not workout. It boils down to the frequency and severity and who you collide with!

With all his experience, I think T Mez should have known it was not gonna work. I agree with the previous posters who think that he said to himself, "If this is the way they're gonna play, have at it!"
Thats more or less what he said in his interview...

Charles,
As I type this I'm looking at the sequence photos of the Hewitt and McSpadden crash at Eldora on my wall,definitely a nasty crash.

Here's a little story about the aftermath of the crash,
When Jack came to our pit after the crash to apologize he says to me and my father " I can't believe you guys aren't kicking my ass right now" to which I replied that I'd seen him fight before and didn't want to go that route. He says back "i'm knocked pretty silly right now you probably could get the best of me" And I told him that an injured animal is always at their most dangerous, to which we all laughed.

The year that happened was 1991,Jack drove a second car for us many times after that incident and became a good friend of mine and my fathers.