LVMS chief: Some accidents unavoidable

Tuesday, July 28, 1998 | 11:24 a.m.

When Richie Clyne first began designing the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the safety of drivers and fans was his top priority.

All the safety precautions notwithstanding, the LVMS chairman said there really is nothing a track operator can do to prevent a tragedy such as the one that occurred Sunday when three fans were killed by flying debris at Michigan Speedway.

In addition to the fatalities, six other spectators were injured when driver Adrian Fernandez hit the wall in turn four on lap 175 of the CART FedEx Championship Series U.S. 500. The right-front wheel, tire and part of the suspension from Fernandez's car sailed over a 15-foot-high fence and into the grandstand.

Like Michigan and most major league tracks, the grandstand seating area at LVMS is protected by a catch fence, a chain-link fence reinforced by steel cables, that is designed to stop cars and debris from hurtling into spectator areas in the event of a crash.

"No matter how high you build a fence, it's not going to stop a tire," Clyne said Monday. "You could build a 50-foot (catch fence) and it's not going to stop everything. There have been tires bouncing 60, 70 feet in the air sometimes, that's the bad part about it.

"The industry is pretty much standard (in terms of safety precautions). Michigan Speedway is a state-of-the-art facility, it's one of the best in the world. It's just a tragedy what happened. It's a bad day for the industry."

Sunday's fatalities were the first at a CART race since the 1987 Indianapolis 500, when a tire came off of a car and was struck by another car driven by Roberto Guerrero. The tire bounced to the top row of the grandstand, killing a fan.

While Clyne said he feels comfortable with the safety measures in place at LVMS, he said he and his staff are continually looking at ways to improve upon spectator and driver safety.

"Any time there is any kind of an accident, we always look to see how we can improve things; you're always constantly looking," he said. "At every single race, safety is number one in any promoter's eyes.

"What we have in place is the best we can do, really. It's comparable to Michigan -- we're not any better than Michigan and I don't believe that Michigan is any better than we are.

"(What happened Sunday) was just an act of God."