Tonight's Tony Stewart/Kevin Ward Jr. incident

Is it manslaughter if you hit someone running down the center of the interstate at night wearing all black?

That kind of racing looks like I'd spend my whole time trying to avoid big cars on unstable surfaces going fast, in the dark, with a lot of stuff around my peripheral vision. Not watching for someone running down the middle of the course gesturing at me aggresively.

Not sure how accurate this video game view is, but visibly doesn't look great to me.

I just watched the video again, Ward got out of the car and ran, not walked, towards hot traffic. Holy E36 M3, what an awful situation.

SVreX wrote: Who's "everyone"? You mean the "alleged witnesses"? (that's what they are referred to in your link)

"Tyler Graves, a sprint-car racer and friend of Ward's, told Sporting News in a phone interview that he was sitting in the Turn 1 grandstands and saw everything that happened"

He could be biased being a friend of Ward, but I'll take his opinion of the events over any guestimates from people watching a video at this point.

Even if no charges ever stem(which wouldnt surprise me since I agree it wasnt all his fault), at least show some tact. He's completely failed to do that so far.

lnlogauge wrote:

SVreX wrote: Who's "everyone"? You mean the "alleged witnesses"? (that's what they are referred to in your link)

"Tyler Graves, a sprint-car racer and friend of Ward's, told Sporting News in a phone interview that he was sitting in the Turn 1 grandstands and saw everything that happened" He could be biased being a friend of Ward, but I'll take his opinion of the events over any guestimates of watching a video.

Even if he did gun it, do we all understand that these cars are steered as much with the trottle as they are with the steering wheels? If you were put into a panic situation- you would react as your gut tells you to do. So it's possible that Tony DID see him, paniced, and tried to miss him.

Possible.

And lets all realize that all of the possibles posted here (and they are all reasonable possibilities) will be part of the investigation to decide what happened, and then what to do about it.

Either way, someone will think that the result is a conspiricy, even if the result is 100% truth.

Terrible.

to your nija edit- outside of Stewart's PR team, what actually has Tony done to display any class or lack of that? He's been very quiet, personally. Should he speak out, should he not? If he speaks, some will be mad, if he does not, some will be mad. Lose, lose.

This is what my friend who is a huge dirt track fan said to me:

Really I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner on these local short tracks. Every week there's new video of guys acting like idiots The kid shouldn't have ran out there that soon. Most of the field had less than a half lap under yellow. That and the move Stewart made on him wasn't something to get that pissed off about. He cleared him by about 80%. He should have lifted and let him go. It's not so much the idiots, it's that nothing gets done to punish these guys when they do do E36 M3 like this. Their racing for $1200 and act like its the friggin Indy 500

alfadriver wrote: to your nija edit- outside of Stewart's PR team, what actually has Tony done to display any class or lack of that? He's been very quiet, personally. Should he speak out, should he not? If he speaks, some will be mad, if he does not, some will be mad. Lose, lose.

I say him as a whole, including his PR team. There's nothing he can say personally to make things any better. If he doesn't have anything to do with his PR team, he needs to fire them. Waiting till the negative backlash to decide not to race doesn't seem like a PR decision.

I've actually met Tony a couple of times, not at a race track, and he's a really nice guy. He does a massive amount of charity work people don't really know much about. I imagine he will speak about it, but I think it will take some amount of time. If you killed someone, it would take you a while too. After watching the video several times, I'm gonna have to say unfortunately that the blame lies mostly to the poor guy that was killed. You're told repeatedly at these tracks to stay with your car in case of a spin or crash. He ran into the lane and maybe Tony did or did not see him. I doubt Tony was upset about the initial contact and considered it a racing incident. Given this, I doubt there was animosity on Tony's part. The kid however probably saw as a chance to race a known racer and make his mark.

Unfortunately everything ended badly. I'm sure it's going to be a terrible time for all involved.

lnlogauge wrote:

alfadriver wrote: to your nija edit- outside of Stewart's PR team, what actually has Tony done to display any class or lack of that? He's been very quiet, personally. Should he speak out, should he not? If he speaks, some will be mad, if he does not, some will be mad. Lose, lose.

I say him as a whole, including his PR team. There's nothing he can say personally to make things any better. If he doesn't have anything to do with his PR team, he needs to fire them. Waiting till the negative backlash to decide not to race doesn't seem like a PR decision.

Judge, jury, and execution all in less than a day. no need to dig into the situation, and know the whole story, that's for sure.

Could it be that they actually didn't know he died that fast? That's not possible at all?

Regarding the initial "incident"...

As previously noted, I am not certain there was any contact. It looks like Stewart had the right line, Ward got high in the soft, and when Stewart got close, his rear wheel hit the wall, not Stewart.

He should have lifted.

Inloguage, what makes you think it was Stewarts car that you hear the engine of, and not one of the cars on the front stretch at the time? Are you telling me a cell phone up in the grandstands accurately picks out ONE single motor on the backstretch???

alfadriver wrote: Could it be that they actually didn't know he died that fast? That's not possible at all?

It was publicized that he died around 1am last night. at 10am, it was business at usual and he was starting, so not really.

racerfink wrote: Inloguage, what makes you think it was Stewarts car that you hear the engine of, and not one of the cars on the front stretch at the time? Are you telling me a cell phone up in the grandstands accurately picks out ONE single motor on the backstretch???

I'm not going by that video, I'm going by the driver sitting in the stands not far away from it, as I mentioned in the previous post.

There were no stands on the backstretch.

racerdave600 wrote: ...... He ran into the lane and maybe Tony did or did not see him. I doubt Tony was upset about the initial contact and considered it a racing incident. Given this, I doubt there was animosity on Tony's part. The kid however probably saw as a chance to race a known racer and make his mark. Unfortunately everything ended badly. I'm sure it's going to be a terrible time for all involved.

That's kind of what I was thinking, the kid wanted to make a name for himself by instigating something with big bad Tony.

Don't take this as me taking Tony's side, I find those NASCAR/dirt track antics stupid, and demeaning to all racers.

If I were a team owner, I wouldn't keep a driver around if he were prone to letting the Red Mist control them, even a front runner like Stewart (IIRC, he's not the worst offender). I realize that dirt trackers are mostly privateers or family operations, but somebody needs to clamp down on the hotheads, and get them in line, or off the track.

In reply to lnlogauge:

So send them all to jail, then.

Tony, and more importantly, his PR team.

Instead of letting things work themselves out.

In reply to HappyAndy:

Do you REALLY think that Tony did some thing intentionally? As in teach a lesson?

Being that Ward did nothing to Stewart's car, except not hit him and go up into the wall, then walked/ran down on the track to "challenge" Stewart, Tony would teach him a lesson of some type? Does that make any honest sense at all?

Based on the orignial incident, I would even wonder if Stewart knew that the accident was even related to him in the first place.

If we see some kind of evidence that the two drivers were going at each other for much of the race, that would be one thing. But if it was just that incident, and then expect Tony to react like that, that's a strong assumption.

I think you're mis-interpreting his post, Alfa.

racerfink wrote: I think you're mis-interpreting his post, Alfa.

Could be, but the post mentions Red Mist specifically about Stewart. Which implies that HIS red mist issues had anything to do with this accident. And I'm trying to figure out how Tony's well known hot head contributed to this incident. I honestly didn't see that in either the first or second incident.

This points at Stewart pretty directly-

If I were a team owner, I wouldn't keep a driver around if he were prone to letting the Red Mist control them, even a front runner like Stewart (IIRC, he's not the worst offender).

In reply to lnlogauge:

You're not going by the video evidence but by the opinion of somebody emotionally involved in the incident?

Probably not the best use of your time and makes you just as biased as the friend.

On another note.....

Everyone keeps referring to Ward as a kid, which greater victimizes him and vilifies Stewart. That's bullE36 M3. He was an adult with 16 years of racing experience, not some 12 year old child stepping foot on a race track for the first time. We send younger adults into harms way everyday to defend our country, protect us in our neighborhoods, and to take care of us when we are in need.

He knew better.

Stewart has been doing this long enough that I highly doubt another racer could enrage him to the point of purposefully running him over.

Civilly I think Stewart is going to pay because some bottom feeder attorney(read-The downfall of society) will see to it.

Criminally nothing should come from this but if it does it's because as a society we no longer accept responsibility for our own actions

All I can say is that someone let their ego and their anger cloud their judgement. A lapse in judgement/common sense is likely what led to this tragedy. I feel horrible for all parties involved. I highly doubt Stewart had any intentions of hurting this kid let alone what transpired.

People calling for Tony's head need to relax and consider all possibilities.

In reply to alfadriver:

I wasn't implying that Tony instigated anything this time. The Red Mist was all, or at least mostly Ward's in this incident. But, if Tony didn't have a certain reputation, people would be viewing this incident differently (or so I think).

Sorry if my previous post was confusing.

HappyAndy wrote: In reply to alfadriver: I wasn't implying that Tony instigated anything this time. The Red Mist was all, or at least mostly Ward's in this incident. But, if Tony didn't have a certain reputation, people would be viewing this incident differently (or so I think). Sorry if my previous post was confusing.

ok- I do totally agree that people's preception of Tony is biasing their judgement.

It could be that he was mad. But let's let the investigation find that out.

From the news reports, it sounded like Tony Stewart ran the guy down in cold blood. Then I saw the video, and saw no evidence of that. I saw a guy on foot charging down the middle of the track in the path of mutiple racecars, still moving at a good clip. It looked to me that the car didn't veer and hit him, but veered because it hit him. The guy was dressed in black, in the dark, and was positioned between Tony's car and his disabled race car- which was a good match to his drivers suit. I also wonder if Tony would even have been looking in his direction. I was always taught to look where you are going, where you want to be. I don't think professional race car drivers rubberneck at wrecked cars they go by like morning commuters.

I too think Stewart's car veered as a result of hitting Ward, not as a move in and of itself. But there could be another view that says otherwise. It's best that the people investigating be left alone to try to determine this rather than for it to be 'decided' all across the internet.