NASCAR Cup Series

Darrell Waltrip: 'NASCAR has to save us from ourselves'

Published Aug. 16, 2016 5:51 p.m. ET

foxsports

For fans of Dale Earnhardt Jr., watching NASCAR's most popular driver miss four consecutive races is a tough thing to sit through, especially when there's no word when he might return to the cockpit of the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.

But the fact that Earnhardt is willing to do so -- with the strong backing of team owner Rick Hendrick -- is a testament to how much attitudes have changed about injuries and specifically head injuries in NASCAR.

Tuesday at the NASCAR Hall of Fame I asked Darrell Waltrip and Ricky Rudd about injuries back when they raced. Frankly, their answers were shocking.

Through most of their careers, there were no SAFER barriers, no HANS devices, no foam door padding, and no injury waivers.

"I can't count how many concussions I had over the years," said Rudd, who ran the 1984 Daytona 500 with his eyes duct-taped open after a savage rollover crash in the Busch Clash preliminary race.

"I can't count how many times I woke up in the back of a helicopter looking around and (saying) 'Where am I? What am I doing in the back of a helicopter?' It happened more than once, unfortunately."

"Our sport was so different not so terribly long ago," said Waltrip, the three-time Premier Series champion and NASCAR Hall of Fame member. "If you missed a race, you were done. You couldn't miss a race and win a championship. Because you miss one race, that's 185 points and it's hard to make that up.

"So we got in those cars -- I know I did, Dale (Earnhardt) did, Rusty (Wallace) did, Bill (Elliott) did -- when shouldn't have been in them. But we had to," said Waltrip. "We didn't have any choice.

"The way that things are set up today, they're set up to take care of these drivers," said Waltrip. "NASCAR has to keep us (drivers) from hurting ourselves, because we'll get back in the car no matter what. We'll get back in the car with a broken leg, broken arm, concussion, whatever."

And that's why Waltrip supports NASCAR adoption of a waiver system that lets driver miss races and still make the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

"NASCAR has to save us from ourselves a lot of times," Waltrip said. "As much as we don't like it, and you think 'Oh, that's not fair, I didn't have it that way,' in all honesty, it's the best it's ever been."

Rudd, too, applauded NASCAR's recent safety initiatives, including the waivers".

"It's good to see that they've caught up with the other sports now," Rudd said of NASCAR. "A driver didn't used to have the luxury or option of sitting out a race. Your championship season was over if that happened."