[John DiBartolomeo]

First of all, there was something going on with the track surface at Atco that no one could understand. I've never seen that track surface look like that in all the years and times I've been there. Both Joe Sway and Bob Lang did everything they could to "fix" the problem to no avail. I was the unfortunate "test dummy" Friday night to go down the track before they pulled the plug and I can tell you I thought I had a Top Fuel dragster and the clutch malfunctioned because when I came off the stop, the tires went right up in smoke. I walked the track with Bob Lang and others immediately after the run and no one could understand the reason.

However, I believe there's a bigger issue here and that is driver safety. We've always crashed cars. I don't know the statistics but I wouldn't be surprised that there are any more cars crashing now then in any other year. My concern is that I don't care why the car crashed (obviously I care and want to know why), I just want to make sure the driver walks away. We're always going to crash cars. This is racing and it's dangerous. But we have to assure that the driver can walk away, something Tom Giordano wasn't able to do Saturday night for whatever reason. There are investigations into all accidents and I'd like to know why the results aren't known. When Woodro Josey ran into Lake Gainesville (or whatever that was), shortly thereafter there was a Tech Directive telling us to check our brake pedal rods. Why can't this be done with every crash? I don't want to hear about legal anything. We're dealing with lives here. This to me is the bigger issue. As I said, cars will crash, tracks will be junk, parts will break. We just have to find a way to make sure the driver is able to get out without injury.