|| *Comments on the 2001 South Carolina 200:* View the most recent comment <#32> | Post a comment <#post> Tweet 1. Johnny posted: 02.21.2005 - 7:31 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Steve Park was hurt in a wreck with Larry Foyt he missed the rest of the 2001 Cup races and the first 4 races of 2002 2. Matthew Sullivan posted: 12.22.2005 - 4:18 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Park's steering wheel came loose under caution coming to the green flag. Larry Foyt was moving to the front of the lap down cars when Park's car suddenly swerved in front of him. 3. Anonymous posted: 09.03.2006 - 11:12 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) One of the most bizarre incidents I have ever seen. Park's never really recovered. 4. JJ Lehto posted: 10.16.2006 - 4:16 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) I think Park was a decent driver. This wreck definetley ruined him. 5. Potato posted: 10.28.2006 - 3:17 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Park really could have been something had this wreck, and the Atlanta '98 wreck not happened. 6. chad posted: 12.29.2006 - 9:15 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) that was a hard crash for steve park 7. chad posted: 12.30.2006 - 8:45 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) i was at that race 8. most posted: 03.31.2007 - 7:04 pm Rate this comment: (0) (4) confused... anyway, being mean here but it is a shame that Larry Foyt who was not a good driver basically ended the career of a possible future superstar! 9. 3fan4eva posted: 04.28.2007 - 9:40 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Poor Steve Park.....those two crashes really hurt a promising driver. I also belive if DEI hadnt of totally dismantled his team I belive he woulda been a top-ten pts contender 10. biffle16 posted: 05.07.2007 - 2:16 am Rate this comment: (1) (2) RIP Steve Park's career. Also, Kevin Harvick got his ass kicked in the garage area after the race, when he picked a fight with Chad Little for no reason at all. 11. Anonymous posted: 08.17.2007 - 6:04 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Yeah, biffle16 I'm sure that's exactly what happened. 12. Anonymous posted: 12.14.2007 - 12:59 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) What was even more bizzare about Park's wreck was that the race had just been through a rain delay and they were getting ready to take the green flag. Definately wasn't Larry's fault, just bad luck caused that wreck. 13. Senninha posted: 01.06.2008 - 1:44 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Kevin Harvick ended up getting fined $10,000, Chad Little $5,000, Scott Wimmer and Rich Bickle got fined $2,500. After the race, Scott Wimmer was angry with Jeff Green. He flew around the track after the checkered flag and when Greg Biffle came off of the banking to enter the garage area, Wimmer plowed into him and his car actually leapt onto Biffle's right-rear quarter. Wimmer said it was an accident and that he wasn't angry with Biffle at all. He was fined, however, as stated above. 14. Douche Bagolow posted: 01.24.2008 - 11:02 am Rate this comment: (0) (1) It is, Anonymous. I remember reading it on Sports Illustrated Online. 15. The Real Biffle16 posted: 09.07.2008 - 8:53 pm Rate this comment: (0) (2) STOP IMPERSONATING ME!! 16. Mike D posted: 06.18.2009 - 10:06 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) The race that killed Steve Park's career. What a crazy accident, the steering wheel comes off and he shoots right into Larry Foyt who happened to be in that exact spot coming on a makeup lap. Crazy 17. JakeTV370 posted: 09.18.2010 - 11:46 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) He suffered damage to his brain, another reason why he never accomplished of being a star at NASCAR. 18. Schroeder51 posted: 07.19.2011 - 2:15 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Steve Park had his competitive Cup career utterly destroyed by this accident. Which is a damn shame. I believe he would have won anywhere from 5-10 races in his career had it not been for that. 19. David posted: 02.11.2012 - 10:05 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Tina Gordon's entry in the 96 car was a Pontiac. 20. Biscuits in a Red Bull posted: 09.04.2012 - 10:40 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) On a slightly happier note, this was the only Busch start for Ricky Sanders. 21. We need more Onion posted: 02.22.2013 - 1:23 pm Rate this comment: (1) (0) To this day, I still believe that Steve would have died if Foyt didn't hit the brakes and swerve to the right at the last second. 22. Luke posted: 11.25.2016 - 7:40 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Mike McLaughlin was in the 18 for this race, not the 20. 23. Anonymous posted: 03.05.2018 - 7:12 am Rate this comment: (0) (0) Was Steve Park wearing a HANS device at the time? 24. KyleBrown posted: 05.04.2020 - 8:52 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Top 36 qualifying (from bgnracing): 1 02 Ryan Newman 29.056 169.246 2 21 Mike Skinner 29.595 166.163 3 57 Jason Keller 29.607 166.096 4 35 Lyndon Amick 29.619 166.029 5 10 Jeff Green 29.650 165.855 6 1 Jimmy Spencer 29.709 165.526 7 48 Kenny Wallace 29.740 165.353 8 92 Jimmie Johnson 29.755 165.270 9 17 Matt Kenseth 29.755 165.270 10 18 Mike McLaughlin 29.767 165.203 11 26 Bobby Hamilton, Jr. 29.781 165.125 12 27 Jamie McMurray 29.795 165.048 13 37 Kevin Grubb 29.884 164.556 14 2 Kevin Harvick 29.892 164.512 15 31 Steve Park 29.895 164.496 16 32 Dan Pardus 29.903 164.452 17 98 Elton Sawyer 29.921 164.353 18 60 Greg Biffle 29.992 163.964 19 54 Kelly Denton 29.998 163.931 20 14 Larry Foyt 30.025 163.784 21 43 Jay Sauter 30.056 163.615 22 7 Randy LaJoie 30.058 163.604 23 34 David Green 30.065 163.566 24 9 Jeff Burton 30.072 163.528 25 46 Ashton Lewis 30.109 163.327 26 74 Chad Little 30.143 163.142 27 59 Rich Bickle 30.161 163.045 28 66 Geoffrey Bodine 30.178 162.953 29 91 Stanton Barrett 30.187 162.905 30 25 Randy Tolsma 30.216 162.748 31 49 Andy Kirby 30.260 162.512 32 36 Hank Parker, Jr. 30.269 162.463 33 23 Scott Wimmer 30.302 162.286 34 11 Ron Hornaday 30.316 162.211 35 63 Shane Hall 30.470 161.392 36 33 Tony Raines 30.639 160.501 Provisionals (from https://images.cbssports.com/nascar/results/nationwide-series/2001/025): 37 77 Brad Teague 31.324 156.991 38 8 Michael Dokken 31.037 158.443 39 52 Ricky Sanders 33.548 146.584 40 44 Mike Harmon 32.040 153.483 41 22 Drew White 39.328 125.041 42 96 Tina Gordon 34.712 141.669 43 30 Mark Voigt 34.273 143.483 25. TheDewCrew posted: 05.13.2020 - 4:29 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) What in the Wide World of Sports was that crash? That was a freak accident 26. wisconsinracefan posted: 05.13.2020 - 5:10 pm Rate this comment: (0) (1) @23, Nope. Steve park did wear restraint system at the time the Darlington Crash happened. Driver's picked between the Hans Device and the Hutchins Device before NASCAR mandated the Han's Device. The Hutchins device is belt system that was designed for controlling head movement,reducing head and neck injuries due to whiplash. You can not blame Steve Park's injuries on the Hutchin's device because Jerry Nadeau wore a Han device when he had his career ending head injury crash at Richmond in 2003. The real problem with Steve Park's crash and Jerry Nadeau's crash was there were no safer barriers up at either track at the time. 27. wisconsinracefan posted: 05.13.2020 - 6:21 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) I'm going to answer why Darlington did not have a safer Barrier yet in 2001 since I think people will ask it due to head and Neck restraints not making a difference in the cases of Park and Nedeau outside of keeping them alive. Back in 2001, the safer Barrier focus was on Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Indy Racing League was involved with creating barriers for 2 or 3 years before NASCAR did. The race track experimented with the Peds barrier in 1998 and 1999 with mixed results. The Safer Barrier work for IMS started before Dale's death, but it was not done at the time Dale Earnhardt died at Daytona. They had to complete the work on the safer barrier for IMS to see it if work like it supposed to completely in theory before putting it on other race tracks. The other thing was NASCAR was not involved with Peds barrier at all. NASCAR only got involved with the Safer barrier after Dale Earnhardt's death at Daytona. What I remembered was the Safer barrier was added to NASCAR tracks by track sized in terms of the order for getting them installed. If IMS was done sooner, Darlington would not have safer Barriers installed yet. That is caused by the size of the track and NASCAR not being involved in barriers before Dale's death. If there were any safer barriers at a NASCAR if IMS was done sooner, I would be guessing Daytona or Talladega. 28. possum posted: 05.13.2020 - 7:22 pm Rate this comment: (2) (0) @27 - that's pretty close to right. The SAFER barrier was a project of Tony George and the Speedway, not something the IRL was directly involved in. Initially NASCAR was very opposed to the SAFER barrier (I'm not sure if it was for cost reasons or simply "not invented here"), it was really the SMI tracks that drove it's adoption in NASCAR. The order of tracks getting SAFER was fairly random, and was driven as much by the SAFER manufacturing process as anything - the barrier is custom-designed to suit the corner radius and banking angle, which meant that once one of the cookie-cutters had the barrier all the others could use the same design, but a unique track like Dover had to wait until the SAFER team could create a new design (Dover and Bristol, because of their short-radius corners and steep banks, were the two hardest to put SAFER barriers on). 29. JSPorts posted: 05.13.2020 - 8:13 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) It's crazy how much the SAFER barriers have helped the sport become safer in the past 20 years. In 2001, you could barely find it anywhere, and now, NASCAR basically won't race at a track unless pretty much all its walls have the SAFER technology. 30. TheDewCrew posted: 06.06.2020 - 1:06 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) @26 Park's injuries were not caused by an impact to the concrete wall. Something on his car broke, and his car swerved left right into the path of the oncoming Larry Foyt. Foyt T-Boned him right in his driver's side door, slid down into the inside wall, but being at such a slow speed, it didn't affect him 31. Corey posted: 06.06.2020 - 1:32 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) @30 I remember it was his steering wheel that came off. With the way the cars were set-up, it hooked dead left right into the path of Larry Foyt. You're right in that a SAFER barrier would have done nothing for him. 32. Jim4Bill posted: 10.21.2020 - 2:49 pm Rate this comment: (0) (0) Yeah - the injuries sustained by Park were due to how much Foyt's car intruded into the driver's side of the car. Going slow - as Park was under caution - just increased the speed difference since Foyt was going pretty fast to catch the inside line for the restart. I am sure some changes were made to address that in how cars were built in 2001 - but the biggest change came with the Gen6 COT (and similar changes on the Xfinity side) where they added foam, a more robust door structure and moved the driver's seat several inches further to the center of the car. Seems like the biggest weak point now is head injuries (concussions due to hard crashes) and leg injuries - like Kyle Busch had at Daytona. Back injuries are also still an issue if the car gets in the air and lands hard - but those typically don't shorten careers. The thing that scares me the most today is when they get above the SAFER and start clipping the catch fence cables and poles - those just slice cars apart. Fortunately it does not happen often. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Post a comment:* Your comment may not appear immediately - all comments must be approved by the moderator. Name: Comment: