With Sadness Comes Suspicion

If you’re driving around town, it is entirely likely that you’ll pull up next to a car--probably a Chevy--with a No. 3 decal stuck on its side. Or behind an SUV with a message in the rear window, “We miss you, Dale.”

Out at the track, the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, there is a planted floral display on the outside of Turn 4, a huge No. 3, and above it the legend, “3 In Memory of a Champion 3.” In the pits, a home-made bouquet is stuck through a chain-link fence, a piece of ruled notebook paper attached, saying, “Memory of Dale.”

There are “In Memory of a Champion” posters mounted in strategic locations, and about every third person is wearing some kind of Dale Earnhardt memorabilia--a cap, a jacket, occasionally a faux driving suit.

An Air Force squadron flies a missing-man formation in Earnhardt’s memory, the first time, according to the announcer, a civilian has been so honored.

There is no question that the death of super-driver Earnhardt two weeks ago in the Daytona 500 has had a profound effect on those who follow stock car racing.

It has also stirred up a hornet’s nest, involving a broken seat belt and how it did or did not affect the head injuries that killed Earnhardt, the photos made during the Earnhardt autopsy and how they should or should not be released to a newspaper, and whether NASCAR, the sanctioning body that has run stock car racing into the most successful sport in the country, is conducting an honest inquiry into the circumstances of Earnhardt’s death, or is indulging in massive spin control.

Actually, these diverse-sounding issues all come down to the same thing--did Earnhardt die of an impact head injury, the result of his chin’s hitting his steering wheel when his seat belt broke as his car hit the wall at 180 mph, or was he already dead of a head-whip skull fracture when the belt broke?

If it turns out that he died of an impact injury resulting from the broken belt--NASCAR’s explanation so far--NASCAR can say it was strictly a racing accident, that its mandated safety precautions are adequate and that it will take its time--as it has been doing--studying head-restraint systems readily available and already adopted by at least one other racing body.

On the other hand, if Earnhardt died of a basal skull fracture caused by extreme head movement, his would be the eighth such death in NASCAR’s last nine--four of them in less than a year. That would make NASCAR’s stance on head restraints very hard to understand.

The autopsy report is not entirely clear, citing both blunt-force injury and basal skull fracture consistent with head whip.

NASCAR is not talking.

“We’re still gathering data,” said Danielle Humphrey, manager of communication. “There’s nothing conclusive yet.”

Nor, many suggest, is NASCAR allowing anyone else to talk, unless it’s to repeat the party line.

A week ago, at Rockingham, N.C., driver Jeff Burton, with support from Bobby Labonte, was talking freely about safety issues and possible NASCAR deficiencies in that area. Here this weekend, he wouldn’t discuss those things.

Drivers Jeff Gordon and Michael Waltrip talked at length about safety issues and said they would use the HANS--head and neck support--device in Sunday’s race but both warned against jumping to conclusions and mandating the use of head restraints without proper study, saying that NASCAR was vitally concerned about their safety and was going about its business exactly as it should.

Richard Childress, owner of the car Earnhardt was driving, would not talk about the broken seat belt, although David Hart, director of communication for the Childress team, said the team had seen the belt and that it had, indeed, broken. He would not say, however, if the nylon-webbing belt had been frayed, or melted. Some have suggested that Earnhardt, for the sake of comfort, customarily had his belts anchored farther behind his seat than usual, which could allow for wear in a 500-mile race.

Sunday morning, an hour before the race, Teresa Earnhardt, Dale’s widow, with driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. seated silently beside her, made an impassioned plea for people to contact Florida officials, asking them to prevent the release of the autopsy photos to the Orlando Sentinel. Neither she nor Dale Jr. took questions.

“Even people in the public eye have a right to privacy,” she said. “This right is more important than the desire to exploit a tragic situation, especially when no public good is being served. There is nothing to be gained by the release of these images from Dale’s autopsy. . . . Ask [Florida legislators] to protect the privacy of citizens by preventing the publication of autopsy photos.”

There already is an injunction against the release of the photos but that will expire eventually. And it would seem there is little doubt that the paper will eventually get access to the photos, because Florida’s “sunshine laws”--government in the light of day--make legal documents available to all who want to see them. The Sentinel, however, has no intention of publishing them, the paper said in a statement Sunday.

“We express our sympathy to Teresa Earnhardt and her family,” the statement said. “We have never once sought to publish the autopsy photographs; we have never once sought to copy the autopsy photographs.

“We want to have a national expert review these photographs to determine whether the physical evidence is consistent with NASCAR’s explanation of Dale Earnhardt’s death. We want our expert to examine the failed seat belt theory.”

Ed Hinton, Tribune Co. motor sports writer who works out of the Orlando Sentinel, recently conducted a six-month investigation into auto racing safety, then wrote a two-part series that appeared in The Times.

“What we want is for a renowned neurosurgeon, Dr. Philip Villanueva of the University of Miami, to see the photos in a courtroom setting, under the scrutiny of a judge,” he said. “[Villanueva] would not copy or remove the photos from the courtroom; he probably wouldn’t even touch them.”

Hinton said that head injuries were Villanueva’s area of expertise and that by viewing the photos he would see things a pathologist might not recognize and be able to determine whether Earnhardt had died of an impact injury or the basal skull fracture.

That’s where things stood Sunday, as Gordon won the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400, the second Winston Cup race run without “the Intimidator,” perhaps more controversial in death than he was in his controversial life.