It was most definitely not a minor crash. The damage to the car shown in the photos was clearly from a rough right side impact due to a blown tire. That kind of hit was hurting drivers well into the early 2000's, so you take out 25+ years of safety improvements and then wear an open-faced helmet with the padding taken out of it... and this fatality just doesn't seem all that shocking to me. It tracks.
@@SMIFFTV I mean, where the right front wheel should have been was basically shoved into the firewall. Padding or no padding in his helmet, that would be a sketchy wreck regardless. I remember hearing this story when I was a kid so I always made sure my helmets had plenty of padding out of habit, as if that was ever actually going to be real issue. The things that follow us around in our youth
@@therobbinsnestAutosportDamage does not always mean the driver gets hurt. More damage can mean you survive sometimes because the car absorbs more of the impact than the driver.
I never thought Dale Earnhardt's wall hit looked all that bad either. Truth is, most of us never experience the violence of that kind of speed stopped by a wall.
Dale Earnhardt died because his seat belts broke becuse he had them configured diffrent and he had an open face helmet and his head hit the steering wheel.
The crash didn't kill Dale Earnhardt. He released his lap belt for comfort he was well known for doing this.. If his belts were tight he'd of waked to victory lane on his own 2 feet. Jr. has admitted in a interview but tried to catch him self.. Dale caused his own death.
@MRBAMBAM1959 He actually released his lap belt for comfort they all did it back in the day he just chose to keep doing it.. Dale Jr. Admitted it in an interview in 2006 he tried to change the subject real quick but we all heard him say it.
That was a HARD lick. The photos tell a different story. It was worse then they thought it looked. Thank you for these videos. I enjoy learning a lot from your channel. -An old Canadian.
That's just it, though - they thought it looked serious until word came down that he was dead. Then, all of a sudden, it looks like a minor wreck to them. Why did the narrative change?
I honestly am not sure how people thought it wasnt that bad of a wreck at the time. That car is absolutely demolished and you can really see how bent and twisted it is when you show the photo at 8:14
This one always perplexed me too but I have the benefit of hindsight. I just always assumed Basilar fracture. Which is pretty close to unsurvivable pre HANS. I’m sure you how the nascar lucky drivers who lived but ppl forget Mika was about a dozen seconds from death from his 1995 wreck the Grand Prix doc speculated having to perform an on the spot tracheotomy the impact was so devastating. And even with the HANS it can still get rough. I know F1 carries bigger loads but I remember the Hungarian Defense Department confirmed Massa still got a rear base fracture accompanying his fractured forehead from that nut that beamed his crash helmet back in 2009. Glad you were the one to cover the nuance of this. It’s a tricky one to tell right and someone else likely wouldn’t have done it justice.
This is the story that the reference in Days of Thunder comes from where they talk about Harry Hogge's former driver, Buddy Brotherton, saying he heard voices telling him to "Get out of that race car..."
@@glasair38sr “visions” are mentioned several times in the Bible. In the New Testament Joseph Jesus’s earthly father got visions from God in Dreams telling him to flee to Egypt to escape the wrath of King Herod. Also several times God communicates to us in dreams. Who says God doesn’t warn people nower days in similar ways. He doesn’t want harm to fall upon us. Anyone. Rich or Poor. Right or left. It doesn’t matter. He wants what’s best for us. Or gives us warnings like these to maybe deter us from this course of action.
He really hit that wall hard. I have a feeling and a theory that he was running the bottom right by the white line and when whatever let go actually did. He just shot straight into the wall like Ernie Irvan did at Michigan. This definitely wasn't a freak accident. He hit with tremendous force
Agree. Running bottom, puts more strain on tires, which talladega is well known for. Drivers always say they like running at the top, cause if something happens the wall will protect you not kill you.
Brock I have no idea how much time you spend creating these, but it has to be a ton. Kudos to you. You are truly one of the great independent journalists of the sport, covering long forgotten stories with amazing detail.
Thank you for this video. I grew up no more than 1000 feet from his old race shop, and would plunder around in it from time to time with neighborhood friends. We always knew it had been a race shop, but only learned the drivers name later on. Sadly the shop has been gone for years, torn down to expand a section of road in the small town of Whitnel. You’ve put together a lot of the info I’ve wanted to research myself for the past couple of decades. Again, thank you!
I was at Talladega that week crewing the car that won that race... #22, black Plymouth Roadrunner driven by Dick Brooks. Smith's pit was one away from ours; John Green was indeed there. The impact occurred right in front of us and the car DID NOT heavily strike the wall just as the video clearly illustrates. Smith had been running near the wall and the "crash" was literally more like a brush against / along the wall than an "impact". Fans / crew members hardly raised an eyebrow. The physical damage was primarily caused by the right front wheel / suspension / body work collapsing along and under the front clip as it slid along, scraping against the wall. Look at the pictures... note the RF tire / rim are turned out fully. It definitely was NOT a hard crash. Later I saw the inside of Smith's car in the garage area and, exactly as Greg Moore describes, the "inertia reel" to which the shoulder harness was attached had failed allowing the shoulder harness to go slack. Smith's torso pitched forward the instant the car touched the wall with Smith's head struck the roll bar above the steering wheel. He DID NOT have any padding removed from his helmet; that's laughable and he would never have been allowed on track if he did. I watched Smith put his helmet on and climb into his car on the grid... that helmet looked in tact to me. NASCAR was pretty hush-hush abut the reel failure and that setup was banned very soon after Smith's death.
Well your IP shows your address and history! So I've determined that you weren't at the race and never worked in racing! I see your arrest record and family history! This is normally where I say something like but Maury has determined you are the father of your sisters child after I expose you trash liars but I wont do that I will say we will be meeting soon! I have some questions about something you where involved in! You will be answering some questions!
Thank you for this first hand account. People read false stories and pass on that information as the truth. These days that happens at light speed with social media. When I saw this video on Smith's wreck the first thing that came to my mind was Dale Earnhardt's fatal wreck. That also looked like a relatively soft impact.
@@Spenvic54 Thanks. DE had a bad habit of relaxing his shoulder harness especially during caution laps. IMO that's what allowed his chin & forehead to spike the steering wheel and also the rollbar above the front windscreen. He was dead instantly upon impact. The video fools us because all the cars are traveling roughly the identical speed and the track seems wide. Neither is the case. The other thing to note is another car also struck DE's right side almost at the instant he collected the wall. It was a a viscous impact with forces acting on #3 from two different directions. Tough film to watch even if you know the outcome.
I've had a borderline obsession with this wreck for years...mostly due to all the differing viewpoints and opinions on what exactly happened and why. It's fascinating to me how there could still be, to this day, so many unanswered questions about this accident. A lot of the newspaper clips around that time spoke of his "score to settle" with Talladega and shared a lot of the same photos, including one of him being stretchered away. Two things I recall reading that weren't specifically mentioned here: First, there was a rumor that he had somehow lost consciousness in the car prior to the crash. There was a crewman who claimed that, from pit lane, it appeared that he was slumped over prior. I doubt this was ever verified, as it was just one person's account. The second thing is that the examining doctors not only confirmed prior skull fractures, but noted he had an abnormally soft skull. I don't know if it was a result of those previous fractures or a pre-existing thing, but it certainly couldnt have helped his chances of possibly surviving that crash. (Again...not presenting these as facts...just some things ive read over the years...) With that said...there's only a limited amount of information out there about this incident, so I had to temper my expectations...but you did an OUTSTANDING job on this. Bravo, sir. 👏
How could anyone know anymore about it "all these years later"? It's not like a homicide investigation, all the evidence that could be examined using modern technology has spun off into the universe, it was all destroyed and thrown away years ago, aside from the grainy old TV footage there's nothing left to examine, the tires, the car, all of it's gone.
@@extragoogleaccount6061 No, most likely the doctor was just confirming the signs of the previous skull fractures for the autopsy as they constitute a variation from normal body conformation for an adult male of that age.
What do you mean died of a minor crash? Dude, his right front tire was shoved past the X center of the car. I wouldn’t call that a minor crash. If Smiths crash was minor, Earnhardts was a scraping of the wall.
still have no credence in DE death in that crash, imho, nascar faked it to garner more fan interest. totalo agree on your take on larrys car,cheers mate. robert in italy
@@ror312gallery19Yea, they killed the guy whose death drove off millions upon millions of fans from watching the sport to garner popularity. Big brain on this one. Stick to spaghetti.
@@BANGITSME87 But Nascar actually did gain in popularity and ratings for a few years after his death. The X-Games crowd got interested because his death made them realize that people could still get killed doing this. After a few more years when no other drivers had died and the old fans like me were run off by headlight and dual exhaust decals and common templates, the ratings really took a nosedive.
If a 1970s car folded that way, that’s about as violent a wreck that could happen at the time. Those things were tanks without much give. There really shouldn’t be speculation on helmet padding or harnesses or previous injuries, that impact had basal skull fracture written all over it. Only 2 drivers I’m aware of survived them, Ernie irvan in practice at Michigan and Stan Smith at talladega.
Your comment is b.s the material strength was not strong enough as speed increased safety equipment didn't advance with it .all the good Ole boys had it in their heads it won't happen to me .didn't waste money on safety issues. Spent it on going faster.
@@ronclaman156the only BS is coming from you. The strength of the material (whatever material that would be) had nothing to do with his death. It was the sudden deceleration that killed him causing a basal skull fracture. That is what caused the deaths of Dale Sr., Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin, Jr., and the truck series driver (I think his last name was Rogin or Rogers). The only kind of safety equipment that would have saved him would have been a HANS device and/or the safer barrier walls that NASCAR uses now. It was estimated that Dale Sr experienced between 45-50 Gs when he hit the wall in Daytona and the human neck just cannot withstand an impact like that. You are correct about the technology not keeping up with the speeds, to some respect. Those involved in stock car racing at the time didn’t think about things like the HANS device or safer walls. Hell, street cars back then didn’t even have crumble zones. And most people didn’t even wear their seatbelts back then, nor were the seatbelts all that good then. At that time one gave much thought about how a wreck that has such a sudden deceleration would affect the driver. If someone had actually thought to look into the mechanics involved that caused the basal skull fracture, there might have been more advancements in head/neck restraints and even making safer walls/barriers. Who knows, something like the HANS device might have been developed in the late 70s instead of in the late 90s. And I am not sure why you felt the need to criticize those racing at that time, I would guess that you are some city boy who watches F1 and drinks sparkling water (and probably voted for Harris). What those racing stock cars, at that time, were doing about safety was really no different t than any other form of racing. And as I mentioned, most all of the car manufacturers were not designing cars with safety features like they do now. Times were much different all around when it came to safety. Those were the days of people not wearing seatbelts, riding around in the back of pick ups, and not wearing helmets when riding a motorcycle. And that was happening all over the country, not just in the south with them good ole boys.
I was sitting in the infield, between turns 1 and 2, at the 1993 DieHard 500. I witnessed the crash involving Stan Smith and watched in horror as Jimmy Horton's car was launched over the retaining wall. This was also the race where Neil Bonnett went airborne and took out the catch-fence on the front stretch, injuring nine spectators. That was a very long and stressful day at the track. I was so relieved, and thankful, that no one died that day.
I was at the Talladega race in 1973, the race in which Larry Smith lost his life in a crash. The #92 Black Label Beer car struck the outside wall in turn one. The Mercury was battered on the right front and side by heavy impact. The car simply got into the wall and slid down to the track apron. The crash wasn’t that different from that of Grant Adcox at Atlanta or Dale Earnhardt at Daytona. Big impact with the outside wall at high speeds. The results were all the same, death due to head injuries (Basilar Skull Fracture) from impact with steering wheel and roll cage inside the driver’s compartment. These crashes led to safety investigations and ultimately safety improvements for all drivers. Any loss of life in the sport of automobile racing is a tragedy. Larry Smith was a racer who was doing what he loved when he passed away on that racetrack in Alabama in 1973.
It's definitely an interesting story about this driver. He was just another driver working hard to get competitive, but in the end, like too many others before and after him, he paid the ultimate price with his life, I feel bad for not only his family, but Lillian Vandiver, knowing that she had those dreams and those signs, it's unfortunate, knowing it will probably follow her for the rest of her life.
Those "inertia reel" shoulder harnesses were a killer. Should never have been allowed but you'll see them in many NASCAR Sportsman & Grand National cars in museums etc. I NEVER used them.
Thanks for the great upload. I remember hearing on the radio when he died, but have never really known any of the facts or details about his crash and death. And I remember that Carling magazine ad that was in my Atlanta race program from 1973. I love those 1970-71 Torinos that he had previously driven and the Mercury Cyclones of the same years, like the one he was running in 1973 at Talladega.
The speeds at Talladega have always been crazy fast. My friends and I were sitting in the old grandstands on the back straight in 1975 when Tiny Lund was t-boned and killed in front of us. It's an unforgiving track.
It would be a whole lot higher were it not for restrictor plates. Rusty Wallace was involved in a radio test, around 2008 IIRC, when after the radio tests were completed, he took the unrestricted car out on the track. The car hadn't been set up and tuned for extreme speeds, but was able to lap at 235mph. Rusty said at the time, if properly set up he thought the car would be capable of lapping at 250 mph.
I was sitting in the stands coming out of Turn 4. Since it happened on the backstretch, I didn’t see the crash. But I remember hearing on the radio on the way home that Tiny had been killed.
After doing some research after going through obscure NASCAR forums, apparently Larry Smith before he had began the race, he had removed the soft material from the inside of his helmet because it made him "uncomfortable", so when he hit the wall, he was killed instantly due to the inside of his helmet not protecting his head and killing him. Of course i could get this info wrong but this is what ive gathered so far.
No, it was the sudden deceleration that killed him and Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin Jr, Tony Roper, and Dale Sr. Most all basal skull fractures are the result of a sudden impact I which the head is suddenly whipped forward or backwards while the body remains mostly restrained. Think of it as a large ball being on top of a thin stick that you are swinging forward and you suddenly stop. The weight of the ball will want to continue to move forward and may either break the stick or crack it. It was estimated that Dale Sr experienced between 45-50 Gs when he hit the wall in Daytona. The human neck just cannot service that kind of force. The only factor that the rigidity of the car played was the fact that there was no “cushion” when he hit the wall. Even today, NASCAR race cars are extremely rigid in construction. They are built to survive impacts so that the car can continue to race if they have some contact with another car or the wall. Unlike modern street cars that have crumble zones to lesson the impact, the race cars have a very rigid chassis with multiple cross bars to prevent damage to the engine and suspension. Instead of having a crumple zone built into the car, NASCAR has made crumple zones on the walls with the “safe walls”. Add in the fact that all drivers have to use a HANS device, and the likely hood of a driver suffering a basal skull fracture from a crash has been reduced greatly. It could still happen, nothing is 100%.
Great vdeo👍🏼 The poor guy hits a wall in an open faced helmet, the car is just destroyed yet people are confused on how he died. Richard Petty was a voice of reason, but that man did that a lot.
I was told by a friend who was there as a crew member for another team that Larry had a Moon Equipment Co. tank mounted behind the seat for an oil tank. When he hit the wall the tank broke loose from where it was mounted, came up and hit the back of Larry's head and that was what caused the basilar skull fracture. I remember in the video they said the head rest on his seat was broke. That kinda makes sense. And Larry was born in Wilkes County, N.C. (even though he grew up in Lenoir) and is buried there.
9:23 We'd see that level of care in 2003 with the accident involving Japanese rider Daijiro Kato, with very similar lack of medical care by the Suzuka track workers. And given how much medical science and track safety had improved in the three decades since...
As always, it's great to hear about the back story of a driver who otherwise would be considered as just a driver who died. That has definitely cleared up some of the questions I had with regards to what happened. That damage definitely doesn't add up to "a minor crash" in my mind
One thing that seems off to me is that the radio team seemed to think the wreck was actually pretty serious - until word of his death got to them. Then their narrative became that they thought it was minor. Why? Why change the narrative mid-race like that?
13:30 says exactly what I thought.. the inertia traveling through the car from a 180mph, even a glancing blow, would translate to, and scale up to, major damage to meat and bone. Essentially his head hit the side of his helmet, which hit the inside if the car, which hot the wall... the rest is history. I don't really like NASCAR but I've subbed and liked because this is obviously an excellent channel.
The Roanoke Times.....I wonder if it's Roanoke, VA??? If so, that would be so cool and a little piece of history I could have potentially discovered via this awesome video!!!
I was at the track when Larry Smith was killed. It didn't seem like a hard crash but, It doesn't have to be a huge hit to put you in big trouble. Also, Dale knew about the HANS device In November the year before he was killed. He refused to wear it, stating and I quote. "I'm not wearing that noose around my neck". I liked them both and I still miss them and others who have left us under similar circumstances.
I was a crew member on a Grand National team back in the late 70s (started a couple years after this). A couple of points; this was not a "minor" hit. The RF of the car is destroyed (look at the still pic at 12:25). Look at the still pic at the :06 second mark, Smith is obviously way forward in the car. The accepted fact in the garage was always that the inertia reel failed and a driver I knew who was in the race said that when he went by under caution after the wreck, Smith wasn't in the seat. Regarding the helmet padding, I have no idea what is true on that but I'm not sure a perfect helmet would have saved him. I don't believe he ran two laps on an inner liner at Talladega. We once blew a rear tire at Talladega and it blew the quarter panel off the car and nearly jerked the bolt through the heim joint on the Panhard rod and that was a 1" diameter bolt. (Fortunately, ours blew on the straightaway, so no crash). A tire blowing, especially at that speed, has tremendous force. So I believe Greg Moore's assessment. He was always a straight up guy.
I was listening to this on the radio. There was a lot of speculation at first. I believe in ‘74 when one driver had a massive heart attack from what I recall.
Looking at the pictures of the wrecked car, a basilar skull fracture makes the most sense to me. Much like DE, a bad angle combined with a poor choice of seatbelt lead to the hangman's break claiming another life...
Larry was a friend' I lived in the next town over Morganton NC' He was several years old than me' I met him through my wife which was a friend of to his wife Patty back then. I had just bought a trail bike Larry and his friend Rick invited me to go riding with them' We would ende up riding 2/3 times a month. One particular time when riding, we came up on a very long steep hill.... alot steeper than the hills we had been climbing' when it came Larry's turn to climb the hill' he rode about 100' straight up it and all the sudden jumps off his bike and hugged a tree laying on his back. We had drank a few beers before' I thought he was clowing around like we always did. Nope he was serious it took us a good 10/15 minutes to coax him back down to the bottom of the hill and that's when he told us he had severe vertigo and had been bothered with it all his life. Makes me wonder how he dealt with it driving a race car. Was this ever talked about amongst the family.
This race winner was Dick Brooks, his only Cup win. Drove the #22 Crawford Brothers Plymouth. Last win for Plymouth. The info about previous head injuries causing the driver discomfort and him removing padding from the helmet was attached to this story from the start. If Greg Moore (Bud's son) said something, believe it. Same for Richard Petty. Old seat belts and shoulder straps and them not being used properly, also true. Having shoulder belt attachment points near the floor on the bar behind the seat was a common issue. The belts need to be kept as short as possible to decrease stretching on impact. Driver seats not being properly mounted also. See: Terry Schoonover, Grant Adcox, Ricky Knotts, etc.
What's the mystery?? Hard right front impact with a concrete wall at high speed. Basilar skull fracture. Did I describe Larry Smith's wreck or Dale Earnhardt's at Daytona in 2001? Both! Circumstances almost identical. So, what's the mystery?? 🤷🏼♂️
That Black label ad is brilliant... Today advertisers aren't allowed to even reference the fact that alcohol is drinkable. This guy was all about "Wanna get loaded without the bloat, drink Black Label"
... his car's right front looks about as bad as Blaise Alexander's at Charlotte, and none of the commentators thought anything was up ... most of the basal/basilar skull fracture crashes I've seen impact the right front, and they admittedly don't look that bad to the layperson
Very well said. I agree. I was at Charlotte in 2001 and witnessed Blaise Alexander's crash. The immediate concern was Kerry Earnhardt, sliding upside down and on fire. When he scrambled from his car right in front of us, we were all relieved. Then we looked left and wondered what the frantic commotion was about. I witnessed a safety worker pounding his fist on his own vehicle in obvious frustration and sorrow. That told me all I needed to know. I knew Blaise was dead before any official announcement. Earnhardt Sr., Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin, and Tony Roper. All killed in the 18 months prior to Blaise's accident. I remember it was a big WTF moment. I remember thinking at the time, concrete walls?? How come there isn't a fatality every week? Soft walls became a no-brainer solution.
That was in absolutely no way a “minor” crash. The damage done shows it was an extremely hard impact, in an era where the cars had little to no give in them. This meant a hit like that was almost entirely absorbed by the driver- with frequently fatal results.
Yeah them metal plates if they gave him headaches by wearing a normal helmet, then what did they do when his head was launched violently forward seems rather obvious to me
Talladega was and is dangerous place. These cars were not safe and it is a miracle more guys didnt die. This wreck was worse than Earnhardts and he had half the safety precautions
I do not know how someone would call it a minor crash. Looking at the car in that one picture, that thing is tore up bad. Roof is buckled, windshield is about to come out etc. And that's not a small car it's a Mercury. Larry hit that wall a ton maybe blew a right front... Whatever it was, it's terrible. GOD BLESS him.
Routine? I don’t understand anyone downplaying this crash, look at the photo! It’s shortened up clear to the center of the hood, the roof buckled! Cale said it looked pretty bad.
The only controversy is because too many people, who knew very little, made stupid comments. The first being that the crash didn’t look that hard. Just looking at the damage to the car shows that it wasn’t just a simple brush with the wall, that much damage created a tremendous amount of G force to the driver. How in the hell his crew chief/mechanic thought that he could have continued in the race after seeing the car is dumbfounding. Someone with no experience in racing would be able to see that the car was damaged well beyond the point of being fixed. And the announcers keep saying it didn’t look that bad, but then they would go on and say that the front end looked like it went through a meat grinder. WTF? And no one should take advice about a person’s physical health from Richard Petty, I don’t believe he has any knowledge of medicine. As for his helmet being the cause, it didn’t matter if it was a basal skull fracture. That is what killed Dale Sr, and it wasn’t because of the type of helmet he was wearing. When you are going nearly 200 mph and suddenly hit a concrete wall, the sudden stop (or rapid deceleration) will basically snap your head off at the base where the spine attaches. That is why after Sr’s death, NASCAR mandated the use of a neck/head restraint (HANS device) for all drivers. And it is doubtful that the ratcheting retaining device he had been using had anything to do with his death either. If anything, being allowed to move forward would have lessen the chances of a basal skull fracture. If the gears were stripped during the contact, he would have had somewhat of a “cushion” instead of simply having his head go forward while the rest of his body remained secured by the seat belts/harness. Basal skull fractures are almost always the result of sudden impact that allows the person’s head to either move forward or backwards with a lot of force. Hitting your head on the roll bar wouldn’t cause a basal fracture in most any case. And his helmet wasn’t cracked, so he didn’t hit anything with enough force to cause the fracture. What caused the accident, who knows but it was most likely a flat or blown tire or something in the front end broke. Both would be hard to confirm since the car was so heavily damaged in the wreck. It might have been a blown engine, but there would have been oil on the track leading up to where he hit the wall. As for his girlfriend having a dream or a feeling, who knows. She only said it after he was killed, so maybe she embellished a bit. It is surprising that there haven’t been more deaths due to basal skull fractures in NASCAR. Maybe if someone actually looked into how he died, the mechanics of what caused the basal skull fracture, a device like the HANS device might have been invented in the mid to late 70s. There is nothing mysterious about his death, only the fact that too many people had no clue about the mechanics involved to cause it.
Tiny's crash wasn't a minor crash either. He got hit in the left door and the car was narrowed up quit a bit. There were still pictures of the left side of the car, post crash.
If Larry had $29K, that wasn't going towards a house. In 1971 in Lenoir that would have bought a nice house, the land, and a couple cars, all paid in full. I bought a house in Hickory in 1991, and it was only $40K.
Even with a fastened seatbelt. People seem to forget when a car has little to no crumple zones, that energy gets transferred where? That's right. Directly to the driver
To me it spunds like an industry at the time trying to downplay the severity of the wreck since Big Bill's giant temple of speed was getting all sorts of flack. Greg Moore's accounts about it being a seat belt failure is probably the closest to what happened. Riding around on the inner liner like that would have been impossible, it wasnt a glancing blow, and padding removed i dont think would have played much into him essentially snapping his neck, a broken seatbelt would be the leading cause instead.
The people who said it didn't look like a bad wreck clearly hadn't seen the close up pictures of the car or the wreckage when it was recovered into the pits. In the close up pictures of the car in this video you can see it really pounded the wall. The front end is reduced to nearly half its' width which isn't nothing, but the distortion to the rest of the shell is the real giveaway, there are bends and wrinkles in panels that couldn't possibly have been directly involved in the impact and it looks very much like the rollcage has been pushed well over to the left of the car which, even then, would have taken huge force. If you look at the oil running down the track from under the wreck it looks like there are fairly large pieces of what look like metal there too, which wouldn't be part of the dry sump oil system which is mostly light weight so I would suggest the impact broke the right bank cylinder head or maybe the block, which certainly wouldn't be normal for a wreck even then. I would like to present a hypothesis for this crash based on what I can see from the pictures, and this is only a theory, but one supported by the pictures. Larry suffers a jammed throttle approaching turn one with the brakes at that time not being able to overcome the 500+ horses still being sent to the road, so the car goes up the track and pounds the wall a ton, with the curvature of the wall increasing the angle of impact until it reached a critical angle ("the Earnhardt angle.") The inertia reel on the harness is overcome by energy of the impact, again showing how energetic the crash was as to break an inertia reel even then takes a huge force, so Larry's body continues at the same speed as before the impact while the car slows down, until the reel runs out of harness bringing Larry's body up with a massive jolt as it's thrown to his right, breaking the headrest and very likely seeing his head impact part of the dashboard and the rollcage. In all likelihood the fatal basal skull fracture is the result of the shoulder harness running out of strap. The wrecked car and dead driver then come away from the wall and run down the track still with enough speed to make the announcers think Larry is still trying to drive out of the way and maybe even back to the pits, which really shows how much speed the car carried into the crash as wall strikes like that usually take away almost all of the car's momentum so it's only really gravity moving them away from the wall and down the track. Exit Larry Smith and the inertia reel shoulder strap. It's pretty much the Dale Earnhardt crash, just with the crash energy being imparted by a stuck throttle rather than another car wedged in the right side, and 30 years before...
Way too many similarities to Iron Head's deadly crash. I'd like to know exactly what NASCAR checks n their physical to clear a driver to race.........they obviously DIDN'T ask important questions nor take Xrays.
Taking the padding out of your helmet is probably not going to end well. That's the story I've always heard. Btw, that car was absolutely destroyed. What's the old story about Dega being built on an old Indian burial ground? Any validity to that?
A guy that worked on the crew from Lenoir told me that he had been having real bad headaches and had a doctors appointment on Monday after the race. He beleived the Larry had an Aneurysm and was passed out are already dead when he hit the wall.
My Brother in law ran 51 cup races and he was there that day. He always told me his head was cacked like an egg shell and came apart inside his helmet.
I actually just heard this race on the motor racing network classic races. Even though this was many years ago, it's still saddened me when I heard it. I'd like to know how his girlfriend at the time is doing today.
Agree. Running bottom, puts more strain on tires, which talladega is well known for. Drivers always say they like running at the top, cause if something happens the wall will protect you not kill you.
Just like the supposed routine crash and should've walked away just reminds me soooo much of the dale sr crash. But we now know more about head and neck injuries 😢
Wasn't there a Reddit post showing a woman working on a car talking about it being their Grandpas car that his grandma worked on and helped him win the 1972 rookie of the year?
@Lemmon714 Carling Black Label was a favorite of mine along with a few buddies around that same time. We all switched to it finding that it had a pleasant, slightly different taste to it. I could be wrong about this, but wasn't it a bit hard to find? Meaning, you could not find it stocked at most stores? That was all so long ago now that I don't remember much of anything else about CBL. Thanks, and later.
Go back in the video and look at the photos of the crash... You can clearly see a white helmet where the steering column would normally be... His head DEFINITELY rammed the steering wheel hard enough to kill
@TheMrtgamer I've always seen what you're seeing, but the issue with that is that he was actually wearing a black helmet! So what are we looking at? I've never quite figured it out.
When Vance took out Hersel midway through the third quarter he would’ve got at least 400 yards if he left him in I’m just saying go dogs Hershel was the greatest
It was most definitely not a minor crash. The damage to the car shown in the photos was clearly from a rough right side impact due to a blown tire. That kind of hit was hurting drivers well into the early 2000's, so you take out 25+ years of safety improvements and then wear an open-faced helmet with the padding taken out of it... and this fatality just doesn't seem all that shocking to me. It tracks.
agreed!
@@SMIFFTV I mean, where the right front wheel should have been was basically shoved into the firewall. Padding or no padding in his helmet, that would be a sketchy wreck regardless. I remember hearing this story when I was a kid so I always made sure my helmets had plenty of padding out of habit, as if that was ever actually going to be real issue. The things that follow us around in our youth
Definitely agree with @SMIFFTV. That was a vicious hit.
Wasn’t he the guy who had a seat belt failure?
@@therobbinsnestAutosportDamage does not always mean the driver gets hurt. More damage can mean you survive sometimes because the car absorbs more of the impact than the driver.
I never thought Dale Earnhardt's wall hit looked all that bad either. Truth is, most of us never experience the violence of that kind of speed stopped by a wall.
Dale Earnhardt died because his seat belts broke becuse he had them configured diffrent and he had an open face helmet and his head hit the steering wheel.
The crash didn't kill Dale Earnhardt. He released his lap belt for comfort he was well known for doing this.. If his belts were tight he'd of waked to victory lane on his own 2 feet. Jr. has admitted in a interview but tried to catch him self.. Dale caused his own death.
@MRBAMBAM1959 He actually released his lap belt for comfort they all did it back in the day he just chose to keep doing it.. Dale Jr. Admitted it in an interview in 2006 he tried to change the subject real quick but we all heard him say it.
@@Wilkins22pictures show a broken belt latch plus a torn belt.
@firewatch814 yes the belt was still linked but not latched
That was a HARD lick. The photos tell a different story. It was worse then they thought it looked.
Thank you for these videos. I enjoy learning a lot from your channel.
-An old Canadian.
That's just it, though - they thought it looked serious until word came down that he was dead. Then, all of a sudden, it looks like a minor wreck to them. Why did the narrative change?
I honestly am not sure how people thought it wasnt that bad of a wreck at the time. That car is absolutely demolished and you can really see how bent and twisted it is when you show the photo at 8:14
This one always perplexed me too but I have the benefit of hindsight. I just always assumed Basilar fracture. Which is pretty close to unsurvivable pre HANS. I’m sure you how the nascar lucky drivers who lived but ppl forget Mika was about a dozen seconds from death from his 1995 wreck the Grand Prix doc speculated having to perform an on the spot tracheotomy the impact was so devastating. And even with the HANS it can still get rough. I know F1 carries bigger loads but I remember the Hungarian Defense Department confirmed Massa still got a rear base fracture accompanying his fractured forehead from that nut that beamed his crash helmet back in 2009. Glad you were the one to cover the nuance of this. It’s a tricky one to tell right and someone else likely wouldn’t have done it justice.
This is the story that the reference in Days of Thunder comes from where they talk about Harry Hogge's former driver, Buddy Brotherton, saying he heard voices telling him to "Get out of that race car..."
Lesson of the story if there are voices in your head telling you to get out of the car. Get out. It might be a warning from God.
Could also be schizophrenia. Just sayin… 😂
@@glasair38sr “visions” are mentioned several times in the Bible. In the New Testament Joseph Jesus’s earthly father got visions from God in Dreams telling him to flee to Egypt to escape the wrath of King Herod. Also several times God communicates to us in dreams. Who says God doesn’t warn people nower days in similar ways. He doesn’t want harm to fall upon us. Anyone. Rich or Poor. Right or left. It doesn’t matter. He wants what’s best for us. Or gives us warnings like these to maybe deter us from this course of action.
@@glasair38sreither way probably best not to be behind the wheel at that point
No - That was Bobby Isaacs - He was running good at Talladega - halfway thru Bobby drove into the pits and retired -
He really hit that wall hard. I have a feeling and a theory that he was running the bottom right by the white line and when whatever let go actually did. He just shot straight into the wall like Ernie Irvan did at Michigan. This definitely wasn't a freak accident. He hit with tremendous force
Agree. Running bottom, puts more strain on tires, which talladega is well known for. Drivers always say they like running at the top, cause if something happens the wall will protect you not kill you.
Brock I have no idea how much time you spend creating these, but it has to be a ton. Kudos to you. You are truly one of the great independent journalists of the sport, covering long forgotten stories with amazing detail.
I'm pretty sure he only does the voice overs for these here.
Still a lot of work, though.
Yea, like where do these guys dig up 50 year old beer commercials and stuff like that?
They gotta have alot of time in making these things.
Thank you for this video. I grew up no more than 1000 feet from his old race shop, and would plunder around in it from time to time with neighborhood friends. We always knew it had been a race shop, but only learned the drivers name later on. Sadly the shop has been gone for years, torn down to expand a section of road in the small town of Whitnel.
You’ve put together a lot of the info I’ve wanted to research myself for the past couple of decades. Again, thank you!
I was at Talladega that week crewing the car that won that race... #22, black Plymouth Roadrunner driven by Dick Brooks. Smith's pit was one away from ours; John Green was indeed there. The impact occurred right in front of us and the car DID NOT heavily strike the wall just as the video clearly illustrates. Smith had been running near the wall and the "crash" was literally more like a brush against / along the wall than an "impact". Fans / crew members hardly raised an eyebrow. The physical damage was primarily caused by the right front wheel / suspension / body work collapsing along and under the front clip as it slid along, scraping against the wall. Look at the pictures... note the RF tire / rim are turned out fully. It definitely was NOT a hard crash. Later I saw the inside of Smith's car in the garage area and, exactly as Greg Moore describes, the "inertia reel" to which the shoulder harness was attached had failed allowing the shoulder harness to go slack. Smith's torso pitched forward the instant the car touched the wall with Smith's head struck the roll bar above the steering wheel. He DID NOT have any padding removed from his helmet; that's laughable and he would never have been allowed on track if he did. I watched Smith put his helmet on and climb into his car on the grid... that helmet looked in tact to me. NASCAR was pretty hush-hush abut the reel failure and that setup was banned very soon after Smith's death.
Well your IP shows your address and history! So I've determined that you weren't at the race and never worked in racing! I see your arrest record and family history! This is normally where I say something like but Maury has determined you are the father of your sisters child after I expose you trash liars but I wont do that I will say we will be meeting soon! I have some questions about something you where involved in! You will be answering some questions!
Thank you for this first hand account. People read false stories and pass on that information as the truth. These days that happens at light speed with social media. When I saw this video on Smith's wreck the first thing that came to my mind was Dale Earnhardt's fatal wreck. That also looked like a relatively soft impact.
@@Spenvic54 Thanks. DE had a bad habit of relaxing his shoulder harness especially during caution laps. IMO that's what allowed his chin & forehead to spike the steering wheel and also the rollbar above the front windscreen. He was dead instantly upon impact. The video fools us because all the cars are traveling roughly the identical speed and the track seems wide. Neither is the case. The other thing to note is another car also struck DE's right side almost at the instant he collected the wall. It was a a viscous impact with forces acting on #3 from two different directions. Tough film to watch even if you know the outcome.
I've had a borderline obsession with this wreck for years...mostly due to all the differing viewpoints and opinions on what exactly happened and why. It's fascinating to me how there could still be, to this day, so many unanswered questions about this accident. A lot of the newspaper clips around that time spoke of his "score to settle" with Talladega and shared a lot of the same photos, including one of him being stretchered away. Two things I recall reading that weren't specifically mentioned here: First, there was a rumor that he had somehow lost consciousness in the car prior to the crash. There was a crewman who claimed that, from pit lane, it appeared that he was slumped over prior. I doubt this was ever verified, as it was just one person's account. The second thing is that the examining doctors not only confirmed prior skull fractures, but noted he had an abnormally soft skull. I don't know if it was a result of those previous fractures or a pre-existing thing, but it certainly couldnt have helped his chances of possibly surviving that crash. (Again...not presenting these as facts...just some things ive read over the years...)
With that said...there's only a limited amount of information out there about this incident, so I had to temper my expectations...but you did an OUTSTANDING job on this. Bravo, sir. 👏
Prior skull fractures that he did not know about?
How could anyone know anymore about it "all these years later"?
It's not like a homicide investigation, all the evidence that could be examined using modern technology has spun off into the universe, it was all destroyed and thrown away years ago, aside from the grainy old TV footage there's nothing left to examine, the tires, the car, all of it's gone.
Larry Smith having an abnormally soft skull would gel with his record of skull fractures.
@@extragoogleaccount6061 No, most likely the doctor was just confirming the signs of the previous skull fractures for the autopsy as they constitute a variation from normal body conformation for an adult male of that age.
What do you mean died of a minor crash? Dude, his right front tire was shoved past the X center of the car. I wouldn’t call that a minor crash. If Smiths crash was minor, Earnhardts was a scraping of the wall.
still have no credence in DE death in that crash, imho, nascar faked it to garner more fan interest. totalo agree on your take on larrys car,cheers mate. robert in italy
Maybe watch the video before commenting. The reports say it “seemed normal”. Announcers said it too. Pay attention.
@@ror312gallery19Yea, they killed the guy whose death drove off millions upon millions of fans from watching the sport to garner popularity. Big brain on this one. Stick to spaghetti.
@@ror312gallery19 I'm as big of a conspiracy theorist as you'll ever find, but there's no way that happened.
@@BANGITSME87 But Nascar actually did gain in popularity and ratings for a few years after his death. The X-Games crowd got interested because his death made them realize that people could still get killed doing this. After a few more years when no other drivers had died and the old fans like me were run off by headlight and dual exhaust decals and common templates, the ratings really took a nosedive.
That MRN feature was really cool
If a 1970s car folded that way, that’s about as violent a wreck that could happen at the time. Those things were tanks without much give. There really shouldn’t be speculation on helmet padding or harnesses or previous injuries, that impact had basal skull fracture written all over it. Only 2 drivers I’m aware of survived them, Ernie irvan in practice at Michigan and Stan Smith at talladega.
Rick Carelli as well
@@wrongcheese Don't forget Larry Pollard
Your comment is b.s the material strength was not strong enough as speed increased safety equipment didn't advance with it .all the good Ole boys had it in their heads it won't happen to me .didn't waste money on safety issues. Spent it on going faster.
@@ronclaman156the only BS is coming from you. The strength of the material (whatever material that would be) had nothing to do with his death. It was the sudden deceleration that killed him causing a basal skull fracture. That is what caused the deaths of Dale Sr., Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin, Jr., and the truck series driver (I think his last name was Rogin or Rogers). The only kind of safety equipment that would have saved him would have been a HANS device and/or the safer barrier walls that NASCAR uses now. It was estimated that Dale Sr experienced between 45-50 Gs when he hit the wall in Daytona and the human neck just cannot withstand an impact like that.
You are correct about the technology not keeping up with the speeds, to some respect. Those involved in stock car racing at the time didn’t think about things like the HANS device or safer walls. Hell, street cars back then didn’t even have crumble zones. And most people didn’t even wear their seatbelts back then, nor were the seatbelts all that good then. At that time one gave much thought about how a wreck that has such a sudden deceleration would affect the driver. If someone had actually thought to look into the mechanics involved that caused the basal skull fracture, there might have been more advancements in head/neck restraints and even making safer walls/barriers. Who knows, something like the HANS device might have been developed in the late 70s instead of in the late 90s.
And I am not sure why you felt the need to criticize those racing at that time, I would guess that you are some city boy who watches F1 and drinks sparkling water (and probably voted for Harris). What those racing stock cars, at that time, were doing about safety was really no different t than any other form of racing. And as I mentioned, most all of the car manufacturers were not designing cars with safety features like they do now. Times were much different all around when it came to safety. Those were the days of people not wearing seatbelts, riding around in the back of pick ups, and not wearing helmets when riding a motorcycle. And that was happening all over the country, not just in the south with them good ole boys.
I was sitting in the infield, between turns 1 and 2, at the 1993 DieHard 500. I witnessed the crash involving Stan Smith and watched in horror as Jimmy Horton's car was launched over the retaining wall. This was also the race where Neil Bonnett went airborne and took out the catch-fence on the front stretch, injuring nine spectators. That was a very long and stressful day at the track. I was so relieved, and thankful, that no one died that day.
I've never been all that shocked that this was a fatal crash, that car is an absolute wreck.
That was the most honest beer commercial ever made. ' It starts off tasting great!' I wonder what the 19th one tasted like?
Who cares?
After 19 it doesn't matter a whole helluva lot😂😂😂.
My grandfather would give me sips of his Black Label when I was a kid. I would love to taste it again and I don't even drink.
I was at the Talladega race in 1973, the race in which Larry Smith lost his life in a crash. The #92 Black Label Beer car struck the outside wall in turn one. The Mercury was battered on the right front and side by heavy impact. The car simply got into the wall and slid down to the track apron. The crash wasn’t that different from that of Grant Adcox at Atlanta or Dale Earnhardt at Daytona. Big impact with the outside wall at high speeds. The results were all the same, death due to head injuries (Basilar Skull Fracture) from impact with steering wheel and roll cage inside the driver’s compartment. These crashes led to safety investigations and ultimately safety improvements for all drivers. Any loss of life in the sport of automobile racing is a tragedy. Larry Smith was a racer who was doing what he loved when he passed away on that racetrack in Alabama in 1973.
A good start to this Friday at work. Thanks for making these videos.
It's definitely an interesting story about this driver. He was just another driver working hard to get competitive, but in the end, like too many others before and after him, he paid the ultimate price with his life, I feel bad for not only his family, but Lillian Vandiver, knowing that she had those dreams and those signs, it's unfortunate, knowing it will probably follow her for the rest of her life.
Nascarman history…. You are the man! 👊
3:27 this comes before "drink responsibly"
This channel has the best NASCAR content anywhere! 👏
Those "inertia reel" shoulder harnesses were a killer. Should never have been allowed but you'll see them in many NASCAR Sportsman & Grand National cars in museums etc. I NEVER used them.
Thanks for the great upload. I remember hearing on the radio when he died, but have never really known any of the facts or details about his crash and death. And I remember that Carling magazine ad that was in my Atlanta race program from 1973. I love those 1970-71 Torinos that he had previously driven and the Mercury Cyclones of the same years, like the one he was running in 1973 at Talladega.
The speeds at Talladega have always been crazy fast. My friends and I were sitting in the old grandstands on the back straight in 1975 when Tiny Lund was t-boned and killed in front of us. It's an unforgiving track.
It would be a whole lot higher were it not for restrictor plates. Rusty Wallace was involved in a radio test, around 2008 IIRC, when after the radio tests were completed, he took the unrestricted car out on the track. The car hadn't been set up and tuned for extreme speeds, but was able to lap at 235mph. Rusty said at the time, if properly set up he thought the car would be capable of lapping at 250 mph.
I was sitting in the stands coming out of Turn 4. Since it happened on the backstretch, I didn’t see the crash. But I remember hearing on the radio on the way home that Tiny had been killed.
Great video-Thank You for all the time&effort&for a great history lesson!
After doing some research after going through obscure NASCAR forums, apparently Larry Smith before he had began the race, he had removed the soft material from the inside of his helmet because it made him "uncomfortable", so when he hit the wall, he was killed instantly due to the inside of his helmet not protecting his head and killing him.
Of course i could get this info wrong but this is what ive gathered so far.
Car was so rigid the energy went straight to him. Same with Adam Petty
No, it was the sudden deceleration that killed him and Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin Jr, Tony Roper, and Dale Sr. Most all basal skull fractures are the result of a sudden impact I which the head is suddenly whipped forward or backwards while the body remains mostly restrained. Think of it as a large ball being on top of a thin stick that you are swinging forward and you suddenly stop. The weight of the ball will want to continue to move forward and may either break the stick or crack it. It was estimated that Dale Sr experienced between 45-50 Gs when he hit the wall in Daytona. The human neck just cannot service that kind of force. The only factor that the rigidity of the car played was the fact that there was no “cushion” when he hit the wall. Even today, NASCAR race cars are extremely rigid in construction. They are built to survive impacts so that the car can continue to race if they have some contact with another car or the wall. Unlike modern street cars that have crumble zones to lesson the impact, the race cars have a very rigid chassis with multiple cross bars to prevent damage to the engine and suspension. Instead of having a crumple zone built into the car, NASCAR has made crumple zones on the walls with the “safe walls”. Add in the fact that all drivers have to use a HANS device, and the likely hood of a driver suffering a basal skull fracture from a crash has been reduced greatly. It could still happen, nothing is 100%.
Very Interesting Video,Well Done!
Great video, this was a new story to me.
Great video, well done! RIP Larry Smith
Great vdeo👍🏼 The poor guy hits a wall in an open faced helmet, the car is just destroyed yet people are confused on how he died. Richard Petty was a voice of reason, but that man did that a lot.
I was told by a friend who was there as a crew member for another team that Larry had a Moon Equipment Co. tank mounted behind the seat for an oil tank. When he hit the wall the tank broke loose from where it was mounted, came up and hit the back of Larry's head and that was what caused the basilar skull fracture. I remember in the video they said the head rest on his seat was broke. That kinda makes sense. And Larry was born in Wilkes County, N.C. (even though he grew up in Lenoir) and is buried there.
9:23
We'd see that level of care in 2003 with the accident involving Japanese rider Daijiro Kato, with very similar lack of medical care by the Suzuka track workers. And given how much medical science and track safety had improved in the three decades since...
Great video. Thanks!
As always, it's great to hear about the back story of a driver who otherwise would be considered as just a driver who died. That has definitely cleared up some of the questions I had with regards to what happened. That damage definitely doesn't add up to "a minor crash" in my mind
One thing that seems off to me is that the radio team seemed to think the wreck was actually pretty serious - until word of his death got to them. Then their narrative became that they thought it was minor. Why? Why change the narrative mid-race like that?
It's always the hits that "don't look that bad" that always turn out serious, or fatal.
13:30 says exactly what I thought.. the inertia traveling through the car from a 180mph, even a glancing blow, would translate to, and scale up to, major damage to meat and bone. Essentially his head hit the side of his helmet, which hit the inside if the car, which hot the wall... the rest is history.
I don't really like NASCAR but I've subbed and liked because this is obviously an excellent channel.
The first NASCAR driver I met in the garage at Darlington.
3:26 look at that beast. Pound for pound, Can-Am is/was the ultimate in racing, imo. Bring it back!!!!🏎🏎
The Roanoke Times.....I wonder if it's Roanoke, VA??? If so, that would be so cool and a little piece of history I could have potentially discovered via this awesome video!!!
I was at the track when Larry Smith was killed. It didn't seem like a hard crash but, It doesn't have to be a huge hit to put you in big trouble. Also, Dale knew about the HANS device In November the year before he was killed. He refused to wear it, stating and I quote. "I'm not wearing that noose around my neck". I liked them both and I still miss them and others who have left us under similar circumstances.
Thank you, he deserves to have his story told.
I was a crew member on a Grand National team back in the late 70s (started a couple years after this). A couple of points; this was not a "minor" hit. The RF of the car is destroyed (look at the still pic at 12:25). Look at the still pic at the :06 second mark, Smith is obviously way forward in the car. The accepted fact in the garage was always that the inertia reel failed and a driver I knew who was in the race said that when he went by under caution after the wreck, Smith wasn't in the seat. Regarding the helmet padding, I have no idea what is true on that but I'm not sure a perfect helmet would have saved him. I don't believe he ran two laps on an inner liner at Talladega. We once blew a rear tire at Talladega and it blew the quarter panel off the car and nearly jerked the bolt through the heim joint on the Panhard rod and that was a 1" diameter bolt. (Fortunately, ours blew on the straightaway, so no crash). A tire blowing, especially at that speed, has tremendous force.
So I believe Greg Moore's assessment. He was always a straight up guy.
thank you NMan, always a mystery that larry smith crash at dega, cheers from italy, robert
I was listening to this on the radio. There was a lot of speculation at first. I believe in ‘74 when one driver had a massive heart attack from what I recall.
Real interesting,program. And i really miss those radio brodcasts on MRN
Looking at the pictures of the wrecked car, a basilar skull fracture makes the most sense to me. Much like DE, a bad angle combined with a poor choice of seatbelt lead to the hangman's break claiming another life...
Wow. Im a huge NASCAR fan, esp the 20th century area... somehow , i missed it!
my Mom was Larry’s sister. i just watched this video with her & my Dad. she really enjoyed seeing it, even though she disputes some of the information
Larry was a friend' I lived in the next town over Morganton NC' He was several years old than me' I met him through my wife which was a friend of to his wife Patty back then. I had just bought a trail bike Larry and his friend Rick invited me to go riding with them' We would ende up riding 2/3 times a month. One particular time when riding, we came up on a very long steep hill....
alot steeper than the hills we had been climbing' when it came Larry's turn to climb the hill' he rode about 100' straight up it and all the sudden jumps off his bike and hugged a tree laying on his back. We had drank a few beers before' I thought he was clowing around like we always did. Nope he was serious it took us a good 10/15 minutes to coax him back down to the bottom of the hill and that's when he told us he had severe vertigo and had been bothered with it all his life.
Makes me wonder how he dealt with it driving a race car.
Was this ever talked about amongst the family.
This race winner was Dick Brooks, his only Cup win. Drove the #22 Crawford Brothers Plymouth. Last win for Plymouth. The info about previous head injuries causing the driver discomfort and him removing padding from the helmet was attached to this story from the start. If Greg Moore (Bud's son) said something, believe it. Same for Richard Petty. Old seat belts and shoulder straps and them not being used properly, also true. Having shoulder belt attachment points near the floor on the bar behind the seat was a common issue. The belts need to be kept as short as possible to decrease stretching on impact. Driver seats not being properly mounted also. See: Terry Schoonover, Grant Adcox, Ricky Knotts, etc.
Good job. Consider covering the career and death of Hunter Nemechek. His wreck "did not look that bad" either.
Judging from the damage, it was a hard impact. These same questions come up with Dale Earnhardt's accident at Daytona.
What's the mystery?? Hard right front impact with a concrete wall at high speed. Basilar skull fracture. Did I describe Larry Smith's wreck or Dale Earnhardt's at Daytona in 2001? Both! Circumstances almost identical. So, what's the mystery?? 🤷🏼♂️
That Black label ad is brilliant... Today advertisers aren't allowed to even reference the fact that alcohol is drinkable. This guy was all about "Wanna get loaded without the bloat, drink Black Label"
... his car's right front looks about as bad as Blaise Alexander's at Charlotte, and none of the commentators thought anything was up ... most of the basal/basilar skull fracture crashes I've seen impact the right front, and they admittedly don't look that bad to the layperson
Very well said. I agree. I was at Charlotte in 2001 and witnessed Blaise Alexander's crash. The immediate concern was Kerry Earnhardt, sliding upside down and on fire. When he scrambled from his car right in front of us, we were all relieved. Then we looked left and wondered what the frantic commotion was about. I witnessed a safety worker pounding his fist on his own vehicle in obvious frustration and sorrow. That told me all I needed to know. I knew Blaise was dead before any official announcement.
Earnhardt Sr., Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin, and Tony Roper. All killed in the 18 months prior to Blaise's accident. I remember it was a big WTF moment. I remember thinking at the time, concrete walls?? How come there isn't a fatality every week? Soft walls became a no-brainer solution.
That was in absolutely no way a “minor” crash. The damage done shows it was an extremely hard impact, in an era where the cars had little to no give in them. This meant a hit like that was almost entirely absorbed by the driver- with frequently fatal results.
Yeah them metal plates if they gave him headaches by wearing a normal helmet, then what did they do when his head was launched violently forward seems rather obvious to me
Talladega was and is dangerous place. These cars were not safe and it is a miracle more guys didnt die. This wreck was worse than Earnhardts and he had half the safety precautions
Fun fact, the Peerless Automobile company became the brewer for Carling beer in the US right after the end of prohibition.
I do not know how someone would call it a minor crash. Looking at the car in that one picture, that thing is tore up bad. Roof is buckled, windshield is about to come out etc. And that's not a small car it's a Mercury. Larry hit that wall a ton maybe blew a right front... Whatever it was, it's terrible. GOD BLESS him.
Routine? I don’t understand anyone downplaying this crash, look at the photo! It’s shortened up clear to the center of the hood, the roof buckled! Cale said it looked pretty bad.
The only controversy is because too many people, who knew very little, made stupid comments. The first being that the crash didn’t look that hard. Just looking at the damage to the car shows that it wasn’t just a simple brush with the wall, that much damage created a tremendous amount of G force to the driver. How in the hell his crew chief/mechanic thought that he could have continued in the race after seeing the car is dumbfounding. Someone with no experience in racing would be able to see that the car was damaged well beyond the point of being fixed. And the announcers keep saying it didn’t look that bad, but then they would go on and say that the front end looked like it went through a meat grinder. WTF? And no one should take advice about a person’s physical health from Richard Petty, I don’t believe he has any knowledge of medicine. As for his helmet being the cause, it didn’t matter if it was a basal skull fracture. That is what killed Dale Sr, and it wasn’t because of the type of helmet he was wearing. When you are going nearly 200 mph and suddenly hit a concrete wall, the sudden stop (or rapid deceleration) will basically snap your head off at the base where the spine attaches. That is why after Sr’s death, NASCAR mandated the use of a neck/head restraint (HANS device) for all drivers. And it is doubtful that the ratcheting retaining device he had been using had anything to do with his death either. If anything, being allowed to move forward would have lessen the chances of a basal skull fracture. If the gears were stripped during the contact, he would have had somewhat of a “cushion” instead of simply having his head go forward while the rest of his body remained secured by the seat belts/harness. Basal skull fractures are almost always the result of sudden impact that allows the person’s head to either move forward or backwards with a lot of force. Hitting your head on the roll bar wouldn’t cause a basal fracture in most any case. And his helmet wasn’t cracked, so he didn’t hit anything with enough force to cause the fracture.
What caused the accident, who knows but it was most likely a flat or blown tire or something in the front end broke. Both would be hard to confirm since the car was so heavily damaged in the wreck. It might have been a blown engine, but there would have been oil on the track leading up to where he hit the wall. As for his girlfriend having a dream or a feeling, who knows. She only said it after he was killed, so maybe she embellished a bit. It is surprising that there haven’t been more deaths due to basal skull fractures in NASCAR. Maybe if someone actually looked into how he died, the mechanics of what caused the basal skull fracture, a device like the HANS device might have been invented in the mid to late 70s. There is nothing mysterious about his death, only the fact that too many people had no clue about the mechanics involved to cause it.
This was not a minor crash. Tiny Lund's crash at 'dega was a minor crash and he died.
Tiny's crash wasn't a minor crash either. He got hit in the left door and the car was narrowed up quit a bit. There were still pictures of the left side of the car, post crash.
If Larry had $29K, that wasn't going towards a house. In 1971 in Lenoir that would have bought a nice house, the land, and a couple cars, all paid in full. I bought a house in Hickory in 1991, and it was only $40K.
Even with a fastened seatbelt. People seem to forget when a car has little to no crumple zones, that energy gets transferred where? That's right. Directly to the driver
To me it spunds like an industry at the time trying to downplay the severity of the wreck since Big Bill's giant temple of speed was getting all sorts of flack.
Greg Moore's accounts about it being a seat belt failure is probably the closest to what happened.
Riding around on the inner liner like that would have been impossible, it wasnt a glancing blow, and padding removed i dont think would have played much into him essentially snapping his neck, a broken seatbelt would be the leading cause instead.
I was at this race and remember the accident. I was surprised he died from the wreck. RIP
Rest in peace and race across the stars of the galaxies forever
Flavor enough for the world is an amazing slogan
If anyone knows where to get a Larry Smith diecast, please let me know.
The people who said it didn't look like a bad wreck clearly hadn't seen the close up pictures of the car or the wreckage when it was recovered into the pits. In the close up pictures of the car in this video you can see it really pounded the wall. The front end is reduced to nearly half its' width which isn't nothing, but the distortion to the rest of the shell is the real giveaway, there are bends and wrinkles in panels that couldn't possibly have been directly involved in the impact and it looks very much like the rollcage has been pushed well over to the left of the car which, even then, would have taken huge force. If you look at the oil running down the track from under the wreck it looks like there are fairly large pieces of what look like metal there too, which wouldn't be part of the dry sump oil system which is mostly light weight so I would suggest the impact broke the right bank cylinder head or maybe the block, which certainly wouldn't be normal for a wreck even then.
I would like to present a hypothesis for this crash based on what I can see from the pictures, and this is only a theory, but one supported by the pictures. Larry suffers a jammed throttle approaching turn one with the brakes at that time not being able to overcome the 500+ horses still being sent to the road, so the car goes up the track and pounds the wall a ton, with the curvature of the wall increasing the angle of impact until it reached a critical angle ("the Earnhardt angle.") The inertia reel on the harness is overcome by energy of the impact, again showing how energetic the crash was as to break an inertia reel even then takes a huge force, so Larry's body continues at the same speed as before the impact while the car slows down, until the reel runs out of harness bringing Larry's body up with a massive jolt as it's thrown to his right, breaking the headrest and very likely seeing his head impact part of the dashboard and the rollcage. In all likelihood the fatal basal skull fracture is the result of the shoulder harness running out of strap. The wrecked car and dead driver then come away from the wall and run down the track still with enough speed to make the announcers think Larry is still trying to drive out of the way and maybe even back to the pits, which really shows how much speed the car carried into the crash as wall strikes like that usually take away almost all of the car's momentum so it's only really gravity moving them away from the wall and down the track. Exit Larry Smith and the inertia reel shoulder strap. It's pretty much the Dale Earnhardt crash, just with the crash energy being imparted by a stuck throttle rather than another car wedged in the right side, and 30 years before...
3:15 Legends know Carling Black Label as Zamalek
Way too many similarities to Iron Head's deadly crash.
I'd like to know exactly what NASCAR checks n their physical to clear a driver to race.........they obviously DIDN'T ask important questions nor take Xrays.
Taking the padding out of your helmet is probably not going to end well. That's the story I've always heard. Btw, that car was absolutely destroyed. What's the old story about Dega being built on an old Indian burial ground? Any validity to that?
What kind of padding did those helmets use?
A guy that worked on the crew from Lenoir told me that he had been having real bad headaches and had a doctors appointment on Monday after the race. He beleived the Larry had an Aneurysm and was passed out are already dead when he hit the wall.
My Brother in law ran 51 cup races and he was there that day. He always told me his head was cacked like an egg shell and came apart inside his helmet.
I have an issue of the Stock Car Racing magazine that is shown at 3:30. Thought I recognized the car before they showed the magazine lol
I have that magazine somewhere. If I remember correctly, he said he got $15k from Carling.
I gotta have a Black Label Racing T Shirt !
I actually just heard this race on the motor racing network classic races. Even though this was many years ago, it's still saddened me when I heard it. I'd like to know how his girlfriend at the time is doing today.
Agree. Running bottom, puts more strain on tires, which talladega is well known for. Drivers always say they like running at the top, cause if something happens the wall will protect you not kill you.
At any level in top tier racing there is no such thing as a minor crash
Just like the supposed routine crash and should've walked away just reminds me soooo much of the dale sr crash. But we now know more about head and neck injuries 😢
Earnhardt's crash wasn't a routine crash, he hit the wall a ton at a very severe angle.
RIP - Larry Smith 🇺🇲🏁
Kenny needs to get Eli go to talk to tell stories
Hit something in the cabin during the crash? Probably hit everything
That #92 was a sharp looking car
This reminds me of Dale Earnheart's crash.
I thought the story was that Larry Smith had an unusually soft skull and when he hit the wall that was the main reason why he died.
Wasn't there a Reddit post showing a woman working on a car talking about it being their Grandpas car that his grandma worked on and helped him win the 1972 rookie of the year?
Black Label, the first beer I ever had a sip of in 1975 at a very young age. Bring it back!
@Lemmon714 Carling Black Label was a favorite of mine along with a few buddies around that same time. We all switched to it finding that it had a pleasant, slightly different taste to it. I could be wrong about this, but wasn't it a bit hard to find? Meaning, you could not find it stocked at most stores? That was all so long ago now that I don't remember much of anything else about CBL. Thanks, and later.
If u look at it it was so much like Dale Sr n his restraints where 💯% better than Larry's
Go back in the video and look at the photos of the crash... You can clearly see a white helmet where the steering column would normally be... His head DEFINITELY rammed the steering wheel hard enough to kill
@TheMrtgamer I've always seen what you're seeing, but the issue with that is that he was actually wearing a black helmet! So what are we looking at? I've never quite figured it out.
Anybody notice that this wreck is similar angle to Dale Earnhardts
Yup!
Sad Sad day, you can see him moving up on the steering wheel.
When Vance took out Hersel midway through the third quarter he would’ve got at least 400 yards if he left him in I’m just saying go dogs Hershel was the greatest
got his autograph at trenton speedway; the next race, talladega, the accident occured
Just like dale at daytona
What a crazy story.