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Inside Jake Neuman's nasty sprint car crash at Lakeside | Daily 4-13-2023

Jake Neuman's crash at Lakeside was nasty, and today I'll talk you through what happened to cause the incident and give you a little sprint car 101. Let's go!

It's Thursday, April 13th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

It's been an interesting last 24 hours in the aftermath of the Jake Neuman crash at Lakeside on Tuesday night. From everything we're hearing, Jake should be okay on the other side of this thing, but he is banged up pretty good. I've been sent a whole bunch of photos and the team has been looking into the cause of the crash, and it seems like there is clear evidence for what occured. I've had several conversations today with sprint car people who know this stuff better than I do, and I wanted to dive into this a bit to show what the problem was for those who maybe don't understand. It's sparked more safety conversations on social media, and today we've seen guys like Paul McMahan, Chad Kemenah, Scotty Thiel, and Brian Brown weigh in. When it comes to safety, I think there needs to be a constant dialogue going on because we always need to be finding ways to make things better. And that means tracks, specific safety pieces and gear, car stuff, all of it. This stuff is difficult and complicated and it can't ever stop. One note, I said yesterday on the show that Jake crashed in hot laps, and I said that because the screen on FloRacing said it was hot laps. Apparently it was actually qualifying, not that it matters, but it's the internet and people love to tell you when you screw up.

Anyway, so here's what we know. Jake crashed on entry to turn three at Lakeside during the High Limit event, and it was pretty clear at the moment that something big went wrong. You don't normally see cars spin around towards the front and hit the wall left side first. In looking at the various photos and video, the evidence seems to point towards the right front torsion bar backing out of the tube and getting into the right front wheel. Check out this incredible photo from Lisa Burlington. She took this right before the incident, and you can see the torsion bar backed out of the tube and into the right front tire and wheel. Torsion bars on a sprint car are basically the springs, so in this instance you effectively had the right front under no spring tension, plus the double whammy of the arm and bar in the wheel. From that point, Jake was just a passenger. The front suspension of a sprint car includes two torsion bars, one for each side. They are connected on one end to a torsion arm that lays on top of the axle tube, and the other end is held in place by a torsion stop. As the car travels around the track, that torsion bar twists inside the tube and the tension or torsion on the bar is what provides the spring pressure for the suspension. The arm and the stop that are connected to the bar are held in place by pinch bolts, and the ends of the bar are splined so the bar can't twist inside the arm and stop. Where things go sideways is when those pinch bolts come loose, the bar can then move out of the tube and cause problems. In response to that, locks were developed to fit inside the bar on each end to help keep everything in place and there are a few different styles of locks available. Some are basically held in place by compression. They have gnurling inside and they expand when tightened down. Others are thredded, and can basically just be screwed into the ends of the bars, as most bars now are threaded on the inside to accept these locks. And yet a third style has basically a rod that runs through the entire torsion bar, with the idea being that if the locks themselves come undone, the rod will keep them in place as a last resort. All three styles have their pros and cons, and you can find people who have thoughts on all of them. In Jake Neuman's case, as I've been told, the car did have locks in place and they were the compression style. Somewhere along the way, the stop and the lock for the right front bar failed to do their job, which led to the issues. At this point I don't believe there is anyway to know how or why things failed, but when you're dealing with metal and loads and race car stuff, sometimes the teams can do everything right and bad stuff still happens. It's again a reminder that racing is a dangerous activity. At this point, the major sprint car players mandate some sort of torsion retainer, and the Outlaws for example allow for either the rod type or the insert, and the insert can be the thredded design or expanding design. It's on page 52 of the Outlaw rule book under chassis and frame specs. You can find the rulebook over at dirtcarmembers.com. So there is your synopsis of what happened to Jake Neuman and your bit of sprint car 101 for the day. This stuff is messy and complicated and things like liability throw a wrench in all of it, and I hope we can find ways to be more proactive. Motorsports as a whole has been pretty reactive, with changes usually only happening when something bad occurs. Everyone has an opinion though, and it's difficult to move the needle when a bunch of people are sitting around a table all talking at each other. We need tracks and series to do better absolutely, but we also need drivers and teams to take more responsibility for what's on their race cars. If you don't feel safe behind the wheel, or something isn't right, do something about it. Drivers and teams have power in these cases to improve things. We are all thankful though that Jake is on the mend. Big thanks also to the tech guys, drivers, and crew members I chatted with today to better understand all of this. Your help is much appreciated.

Alright, moving on to a few other items. At Delaware last night Mike Gular was a $4000 modified winner over Jordan Watson and David Schilling. He got by Watson with three to go and drove on to the win. Kyle Hardy beat Trevor Collins and Max Blair in the night's RUSH late model feature. And at Millbridge last night, Cannon McIntosh swept the micro victories. He beat TJ Smith in the winged show, NASCAR driver Daniel Suarez finished fourth in that one. And Cannon Mac beat Trevor Cline and Cole Dewease in the non-wing show. That one had a huge crash right at the start with several guys getting upside down including Sheldon Creed and Brandon Jones. All drivers were okay.

Tomorrow on the show we'll get you ready for another busy racing weekend, and I've got a few bits of race track news that we'll get into. Some of it good, some of it maybe not good. But we'll get into all that on Friday.

Finally today, happy trails to driver Jason McDougal. He announced via his social media channels yesterday that he is stepping away from driving race cars. He said he will focus on quote "building frames and having something consistent in his life." He made sure to thank people and said his heart will always be in racing. McDougal was a regular sprint car, midget, and micro competitor and he'll always be known for his incredible I to D run at the Chili Bowl in 2021. He'd been making scattered starts the last several seasons in both sprint car and midget competition, racking up plenty of top fives and top tens along the way. I'm sure he'll still find his way to race tracks on a regular basis.

Five more items today across the streaming services, with four of them on FloRacing. They've got the MLRA late models from Davenport, and racing from Georgetown and Marshalltown plus Flo 24/7. There is also DIRTVision Now. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.

Hope you guys have a good Thursday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow.