rot in hell tony stewart.

i was pretty shocked they showed it too. then they immediately went to jonny football highlights. pretty tasteless.

it could be two buzzed up guys from the stands that dont like tony. or two people that heard another vehicle rev and thought it was his.

eta: just saying, idk how valuable "witnesses" are going to be in this instance. theres video evidence. even though it isnt the greatest its better than an account of what happened. especially early accounts.

seems like they maybe didnt know the kid was dead at the time. they just went back to the story and did not show the footage and acknowledged the kid is dead.

I don't think he was trying to mow the guy over. But I don't buy the explanation that he was speeding up to get past him. I just don't think a rational driver speeds up like that when you're under caution and another driver is on the track.

Wow this is the craziest sports story in a while. I don't think you can tell one way or another from that video.

But you can bet more and more videos with varying angles will show up on YouTube in the coming days. as soon as that kid got out of his car a bunch of people probably pulled their cell phone out.

Should be very interesting. Either way it's a shame, rip to that young man.



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This should end his career (not sure if it will but it should), even if it was 100% an unintentional accident.

A racetrack is not the place for ******s to do wreckless things with their cars because of pissy arguments they get into.

I know sports make people fight, but there's a big difference between two hockey players punching either other and dudes with cars going around at 100 mph+

The kid wandering around the live racetrack like that, jeez. I mean, it's ****ing night time too.

I don't think it's too unreasonable.

I'm thinking of it like a boat where you need power to turn. I imagine that on dirt the car naturally "slides" up the track? When you pull the wheel towards the infield you need power to pull the car down the track? Am I wrong about this?

Thinking like this:

1) Sees too late that kid is standing in/walking into his line

2) Turns wheel in and accelerates to pull car down track inside

3) Realizes this is causing his back end to fly out so he counter-steers towards the wall but it's too late

Seems to be what we saw imo

That video also serves as proof at how sensationalized and awful eyewitness testimony can be.

"HE WAS SUCKED UNDER THE CAR AND THROWN 50 yards!"

ESPN just ran the video

Wowwwwww

I was trying to avoid posted ITT because I'm a participated tag whore but just wow.

Lol at anybody ITT saying he "for sure" did this or did that. 99% of you have no idea how those cars drive and how difficult they may be to control. I know I don't. From the video I saw there's absolutely no way to tell what his intention was as Tony's car comes into frame .0001 second before the collision. Also lol at "you can HEAR the engine rev". Yeah, 100% Tony's car. No way it could have been one of the other 20+ cars on the track. That dudes cell phone camera was able to block out all other noises and only get Tony's car.

Yeah does ESPN not realize the kid is dead or something? Running the video (especially more than once) is just in horrific taste.

It's impossible to make any definitive claims based on the video, but from where I'm sitting that didn't look like an accident at all. Stewart clearly floors it during the point of impact and swerves in the opposite direction of what is logical from his perpsective if he's trying to avoid a collision. Factor in his history of anger issues and the fact that he was being confronted by the driver for spinning him out and I don't see how anybody could give him the benefit of the doubt.

That said, I wouldn't at all be surprised if he got off lightly here. There probably won't be unanimous consent among the jury that he deliberately ran him over so any charges will likely be over negligence or reckless driving which would carry a lesser sentence if he were to be convicted.

Of course the kid is an idiot for running out on the track but people making that a focal point of the discussion are completely missing the picture. We already know that what Ward did is stupid. The question is whether he was hit intentionally. Nothing else matters right now.

fyp

The quote is referring to the NASCAR race this morning at Watkins Glen.

http://www.foxsports.com/nascar/stor...stewart-081014

People are gonna see what they wanna see. Everybody who thinks Tony Stewart is a gigantic ******* will see it as "obvious" he did it on purpose, people who are his fans will see it "obvious" it was an accident.

From a legal standpoint all those opinions are completely irrelevant. It's gonna be completely impossible to convict him of doing something on purpose, barring some earthshattering new evidence like audio of him saying he's going to or something.

I don't think anyone is missing the picture by pointing out that someone charging a speeding car is partly culpable if a collision occurs. Of course the biggest question is whether he was hit intentionally, but we may never know the answer. Suppose he was not, but the evidence is inconclusive. Then that puts Stewart in a horrible position that he shouldn't be in. This is never going away for Tony no matter what the outcome happens to be. And I expect basically all sanctioned racing will implement some kind of severe penalty for encroaching on moving cars after this.

No. You are getting into a negligence analysis.

I don't see TS facing criminal or civil liability.

Sports are assumption of the risk events. A driver running onto the track during a green assumes the risk of being hit.

I just watched the deadspin video multiple times and from my very naive perspective it would be impossible to tell if Tony hit the kid on purpose. Is it standard for drivers to get out of their car and walk significantly towards the path of the other racers? The kid was hit in just about the center of the track right where several other racers had just passed through.

Since the video doesn't show Stewart's car until just a brief moment before the incident the intention is not obvious. Stewart's car veers right only after the incident, which would make sense given that his right wheel was slowed down by running over the kid so the reports saying he purposefully fish-tailed to the right don't seem accurate. Given all that I think its possible Tony had enough time to slow down. I guess I'm calling it 80/20 accident/some intention.

I am reminded of this incident and think just how lucky they both didn't take it further -

I think it's 100% intentional. If the revving of the engine isn't his it is the coincidence of a lifetime. He easily could have driven lower on the track, but he drove right where the guy was.

edit: I put the video into movie maker and slowed down the collision and obviously only my eye test, but it looks to me like he accelerates through the collision. I'm sure there has to be some Mythbuster way to find his exact speed.

you (general 'you') can't 'LOL news for jumping the gun on everything' and then say this.

they're live now (7am edt) with their NASCAR people on screen.

There's nothing wrong with pointing it out except it's pretty clear that a lot of people (some here, mostly elsewhere) are using this as a lazy defense for Tony Stewart. I'll concede the stupidity of charging the middle of the track during a race, but it's not like Tony didn't know that he just spun the dude out in that exact location. Most of all I just find it really hard to believe a world class driver would react so poorly in that situation. Not only does he not see the kid, but his split second reaction is to throttle the engine and swerve in the area he was walking from (the wreckage)? It's an even harder sell given that the driver was upset at him and Tony has a history of anger problems. It's clearly not enough to convict him of first or second degree manslaughter, or at least I wouldn't think so, but in the court of public opinion this much circumstantial evidence ought to be pretty damning imo.

tony Stewart is psychopath, clearly some intent to scare him, can't prove he intentionally hit him, but how does the first blue car manage to avoid him and tony hits him. This POS is a psychopath and should spend jail time, proof...he still planned to race NASCAR tomorrow after literally killing somebody.

Die Tony Stewart