Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Stewart incident may mean fewer passes

Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2002 | 10:14 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at bh@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4089.

NASCAR officials will look into the issue of who gets garage passes to its Winston Cup races in the wake of a fan's allegation that driver Tony Stewart shoved her after a race at Bristol Motor Speedway last month.

Drivers have long complained about the large numbers of fans that swarm the garage area at tracks -- including Las Vegas Motor Speedway -- each race weekend.

"We could all say that we got assaulted every weekend," Dale Jarrett said. "I've been pushed around and knocked down more times than I could tell you."

Jim Hunter, NASCAR's vice president of corporate communications, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the sanctioning body was contemplating stepping up security for drivers because of the glut of fans in the garage areas.

"That's one of the things we have to look at -- how we manage the security in the garage area and around the haulers, where fans have access in our sport that they don't have in other sports," Hunter said. "We need to figure out how to provide better security for the athletes in our garage."

Actually, the average fan cannot purchase a garage pass; each track is given 700 garage passes, which are distributed to media, teams and sponsors for that weekend's race.

An unidentified female fan last week filed an assault complaint with the Sullivan County (Tenn.) Sheriff's Department alleging Stewart pushed her against a trailer in the garage area following the Aug. 24 race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Stewart and team owner Joe Gibbs said Saturday that they are cooperating with the investigation and Stewart denied shoving anybody after the race.

"They need to get started with the project as soon as they can after we run there on Sunday," Wallace said. "They're going to have to come in there and bulldoze the place; they're going to have to rebuild the track, reconstruct the turns.

"They need to come in there and put some banking in the turns and make it a permanent fix, not just the band-aid-type approach that's been going on there for the last couple of seasons."

The sixth annual UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 Winston Cup race will be held March 2 and the seventh annual Sam's Town 300 Busch Series race will be March 1. Tickets for the Pennzoil World of Outlaws Series races on Feb. 28 and March 1 also will go on sale Monday.