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Austin Dillon says severity of wreck hit when he talked to brother
Austin Dillon started looking at videos of his crash not long after he emerged from the infield care center on Monday morning.
Dillon's car launched into the catchfence at the end of the rain-delayed Coke Zero 400 at Daytona. After making contact with Denny Hamlin's car, Dillon's car flew over two lanes of cars and slammed into the fence above the wall. Five fans were treated for minor injuries from his car, which came to rest upside down between the track and pit road.
Dillon said Tuesday his groin and tailbone are sore, but that he doesn't have a headache from the crash. He started to watch the videos of his crash after he showered following the race and the severity of the wreck became apparent when he talked to his brother Ty, who drives in the Xfinity Series.
"I watched a lot of videos, and just watching it in live speed, it is violent looking," Dillon said. "It's a wicked crash. When you see the fence just – the thing just blows apart. But for me, I think it kind of set in when I got to talk to my brother. He wasn't – after the race, I already got into the infield care center, I was pretty much fine. I wasn't shaken, and I was just kind of telling my parents, I'm okay, I'm okay, and talking to them. You could see how upset they were, and I hadn't seen the real footage of the wreck. I knew it was bad but I didn't know how bad.
"When I talked to my brother ... it was another level because he was upset, and hearing him on the phone upset was – it was like, man, I'm going to have to watch this, because he's a tough guy, and to hear him be upset about it and worried about me, it was like, all right, I need to look at this wreck, and I did, and you can see where a guy watching it from home not knowing how I was and the pit crew kind of running out to the car, it was pretty dramatic right there for 30 seconds, 38 seconds or so."
A broken radio cord added to the drama after the race. As crew members from various teams rushed towards Dillon's car to see if he was OK, his team was radioing him and asking him if he was OK. But Dillon's radio was not working. He could hear his crew but they couldn't hear them.
"And then also, the worst part for family members is you want to let them know you're okay after a wreck through the radio because they're listening, and the radio cord had ripped or something had ripped to make it ... The steering wheel had done its job, it kind of had released and was up in the roof. I grabbed it and pulled it back to me and keyed the mic to let them know I was okay, but they weren't able to hear anything. ... I was saying I'm okay, I'm okay, but it wasn't going through, and I could hear in their voice how scared they were, and they were saying, 'Talk to me, Buddy, talk to me,' and I couldn't respond to them. So that was a time for them I'm sure it was just painful because they didn't know how good I was. Luckily the guys had gotten there fast enough, gave everybody the thumbs up to let them know that I was fine."
NASCAR vice president Steve O'Donnell said the sanctioning body would not punish the crew members who exited their pits to rush to Dillon's aid but would like to talk to them about the incident. Cars were still coming towards the finish line after the accident as Dillon's car came to a rest following the incident.
Four of the fans treated for minor injuries from debris from Dillon's car were treated on-site at Daytona. One fan was taken to the hospital and released a short time later.
"I think we need to, and we can [prevent cars from flying in the air in crashes]," Dillon said. "And that's why I said that they've taken the car to NASCAR and they'll look at the car and figure out ways to keep them on the ground. I think we're trying to keep them from getting in the air, and we'll do what we can.
The way the racing is set up now ... it breeds these kind of wrecks. It's three-wide pack racing, and at Daytona it's tighter than Talladega, there's less room. I think if you're at Talladega, this wreck might not happen because it's a little bit wider. But it's just a part of the racing that we're in right now.
I think we can do things to help slow down some of the wrecks and might keep us from catching air, but we'll just have to see the direction that NASCAR goes, and maybe they'll ask the drivers their opinions, and we can give them a good opinion to kind of go together to make the racing still stay the same. I feel like we can create good racing because up until that wreck we had some really good racing Monday morning, but I think the wreck kind of tarnished a great race."
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!