Submitted by NASCAR Ranting and Raving Blog
Michael McDowell needs to accept responsibility for his actions that led to a 9 car pile up which sent Bobby Labonte to hospital. All that McDowell has done is said that it was just a result of “hard racing” with Gilliland and offered up the excuse that he is racing for his job out there trying to stay in the top 35 in points.
McDowell eventually went on to finish 25th in the race, but is still out of the top 35 in Owner Points anyway. Go figure.
This incident reminds me a bit of what Ernie Irvan did at Darlington in 1990 where he was a lapped
car racing with the leaders and caused a huge wreck that put Neil Bonnet in the hospital with life threatening injuries. Bonnet would eventually return part-time to racing in 1993 and then full-time in 1994, where he died practicing for the Daytona 500.
As far as I’m concerned McDowell needs to accept the fact that he made a bad move - he is a rookie after all. After looking at the replays it seems to me that he went into the corner to take the spot from Gilliland, which he did, but then he moved up the track like Gilliland wasn’t there. What does he expect? That Gilland would just back off and let him go? Not with 8 laps left. If he would have just held his line he would have eventually cleared Gilliland going into the next right hand corner at the end of the straight-away anyway because he would have had the preferred line.
I’m in agreement that this incident was a product of hard racing (combined with a rookie-like mistake), but McDowell needs to have bigger shoulders and say it was his fault instead of making up excuses like ‘he is racing for his job out there’. I’ve got news for you Micheal, so is most everyone else out there you just wrecked.
Photo Credits: David Gilliland - AP Photo/Charles Berch, Bobby Labonte’s Car - Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR
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