Remembering Kenny Irwin
Kenny Irwin, 30, died Friday morning from extensive injuries in Loudon, New Hampshire at 11:23 am when his #42 Bellsouth Chevrolet hit the turn three wall, flipping his car. This tragedy came eight weeks to the day of the death of Adam Petty. Eerily, his accident came in nearly the same place of the same track.
"It makes everything else not really seem to matter," said a particularly teary-eyed Dale Jarrett, who in 1998 and '99 was a teammate of Irwin's on the Robert Yates Racing Team. "It's just very unfortunate. I'm just glad to be able to say I knew him as a teammate, but more than anything else, he was a friend and we've all lost a good friend."
Let's all take a moment to remember Kenny Irwin, his accomplishments, his potential, and what he meant to his friends and his sport. He was a great friend to most, and a great inspiration to those who knew him well. All my thoughts and prayers go out to his family. Hopefully he's in a better place than this, smiling down on the sport and friends he knew so well.
ThatsRacin.com Report
Born: Aug. 5, 1969
Birthplace: Indianapolis.
Resided: Charlotte.
Winston Cup career:
Year...Car owner.....Races..Wins..Top-5s..Top-10s..Poles..Money won 1997...David Blair.....4.....0......0........1.......0.......$71,730 1998...Robert Yates...32.....0......1........4.......1....$1,459,867 1999...Robert Yates...34.....0......2........6.......2....$2,125,810 2000...Felix Sabates..17.....0......1........1.......0......$949,436 Total.................87.....0......4.......12.......3....$4.606,943
Other career highlights: Ran first race at age 6. ...Formally started his USAC career in midget cars in 1991. ...1993 rookie of the year in USAC sprint car series. ...1994 Silver Crown series rookie of the year. ...Second in the 1995 Silver Crown points race in 1995. ...USAC midgets series champion in 1996. ...Ran five NASCAR Truck series races in 1996, winning the pole for his second career start. ...Ran full Truck schedule in 1997, winning twice and scoring seven top-five finishes on his way to a 10th-place finish in point and rookie of the year title. ...Announced in August of 1997 as choice to replace Ernie Irvan as driver of No. 28 Fords for Robert Yates Racing for start of 1998 season. ...Ran four Winston Cup races late in 1997 season, starting second and finishing eighth in his debut at Richmond. ...Won 1998 Winston Cup rookie of the year honors by 13 points over Kevin Lepage. ...Won first career pole at Atlanta for the season's final race and became the first Winston Cup rookie to earn $1 million in a season. ...Opened the 1999 season with a third-place finish in the Daytona 500, which would turn out to be his best career finish in 87 Winston Cup starts. Finished fifth at Richmond later in the season. ...Won poles at Texas and Darlington. ... Moved to Felix Sabates-owned Chevrolet for 2000 season.
Ricky Rudd was hired to drive the No. 28 Fords in 2000 while Irwin was hired to take over the No. 42 Chevrolets owned by Charlotte businessman Felix Sabates, making Irwin a teammate to Winston Cup veteran Sterling Marlin.
Another article, courtesy of www.thatsracin.com
Just 8 weeks later, tragedy hits us again; Richard Petty had just told the owner of New Hampshire speedway that his grandson's death was not the track's fault--then it happened again.
By ED HINTON
The Orlando Sentinel
LOUDON, N.H. -- Not five minutes earlier, Richard Petty had put his lanky, tired arms around Bob Bahre, the widely beloved owner of New Hampshire International Speedway, in a gesture that showed there was no blame for his grandson Adam Petty's death. And the King had said an odd thing.
"We just hate it happened to y'all," the head of the Petty family said to the head of the Bahre family, which had suffered no fatalities at the rustic one-mile oval that opened in 1990, before Adam Petty was killed in a crash during practice for a NASCAR Busch Series race, eight weeks ago Friday, to the day.
Not four minutes earlier, Bob Bahre, the aging Maineman who came up hard, honest and fair, had walked away from Richard Petty feeling a lot better.
"It means a lot," Bahre said. "It bothers the hell out of us that it happened here. On this oval, that was the first fatality. I hope it's the last."
Not three minutes earlier, Bahre had said of the track he built short and flat -- just over a mile in circumference with only 12-degree banked turns--to preclude dangerous speeds, "We thought we had a good safe track.. And we still feel that we have."
Then, at 11:23 a.m Friday . . .
Wham.
Against the same concrete wall.
In the same turn.
In the same spot.
On the same little track that for nearly a decade had seemed relatively safe, compared to monster tracks such as Daytona, Talladega, Texas . . .
Kenny Irwin crashed.
And died.
Two young drivers--Adam Petty, 19, and Kenny Irwin, 30 -- two bright futures snuffed, in precisely 56 days, minus a few minutes.
And the third turn of Bob Bahre's little showplace had become a killer corner.
When Richard Petty heard that Kenny Irwin was dead, he turned his head and stared at nothing in the distance through his sunglasses, and he attributed it all to "circumstances beyond human control."
He had come here solely as a goodwill gesture to Bob Bahre and to the race fans of New England, so they'd know the Pettys of Level Cross, N.C. bore no hard feelings.
"It was kind of hard to make the decision to come at all," Richard Petty had said, not 20 minutes before Kenny Irwin crashed. "But the Bahre family has been s-o-o-o nice."
He meant not just in the aftermath of Adam's death, but down through decades. Bahre has known Petty since 1966, and for many years before he opened NHIS was arguably the most beloved Yankee among the NASCAR competitors, as the organizer of vastly popular and successful Busch Series races at Oxford, Maine.
Bahre has always been one of those unlikely looking millionaires in open collars with rolled up sleeves, wingtips worn at the heels, and some teeth missing.
Kyle Petty, Richard's son and Adam's father, could not bring himself to come where Adam died just yet. Kyle will sit out Sunday's New England 300, with Steve Grissom substituting in his car.
But the Pettys wanted the Bahres to know.
"So I said, 'O.K., I'll go on and face everybody,"' said Richard Petty, "and just face the circumstances, I guess. These people up here have been really, really nice.
"We can't blame the track; we can't blame them," he continued "It just happened here."
Still, it was terribly hard for the King to see the place this time.
"You just feel empty," he said. "I came in last evening about six o'clock and sort of wandered around a little bit. I just kind of settled down, I guess. I'm not that emotional, but this is an emotional deal. If I ever get emotional, it is something like this."
Richard Petty has chosen, since two days after Adam's death, to believe his grandson's time had come, his number was up, and that he'd have died May 12 whether he was in a race car or a swimming pool or a plane.
But twice in eight weeks. "It's too weird," said Scott Pruett, who last year as a CART veteran suffered through two driver fatalities--Gonzalo Rodriguez and Greg Moore -- and this year is having terrible d1/2eacute3/4j1/2agrave3/4 vu as a NASCAR rookie.
Rusty Wallace pointed out that there's a bad bump in the NHIS track just before Turn 3, and that you hit that bump "flying." He said he even sets up the chassis of his car with that bump in mind.
Stuck throttles were suspected in both the Petty and Irwin fatalities. "Hung" or "stuck" throttle linkages are not uncommon in NASCAR, because crewmen custom-make them and sometimes the rods connecting the accelerator pedal with the throttle arm on the carburetor can become jammed as other parts are moved or changed underneath the hood.
Most of the time, at tracks with wide, sweeping turns, drivers with stuck throttles have margin to maneuver. At NHIS and at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia, due to disproportionately long straightaways and sharp, tight turns, "stuck throttles are bad news," Mark Martin said.
But all in all, "As a driver, you really don't care to know much about what happened mechanically," Dale Earnhardt Jr. said of the tragedies in Turn 3 at NHIS. "The fact of the matter is, it happened."
With Kenny Irwin dead, Richard Petty still wouldn't blame the track.. He blamed the horrific G-spike, the deceleration syndrome, of hitting hard at a blunt angle at any track: "Your body just can't stand it. That's what happened."
Whatever has happened, Bob Bahre said Friday as he left his little track that seemed so safe for so long, "It ties some knots in your gut, I'll tell you that."
Kenny Irwin bio and pictures provided by www.thatsracin.com.