Fatality won’t keep NASCAR stars from sprint cars

JOLIET, Ill. — Kyle Larson is limited to 25 sprint-car races a year by his NASCAR Cup Series team owner, and he plans to make the most of them.

The Chip Ganassi Racing driver doesn’t think much about the fact those cars are prone to flipping, or the death of World of Outlaws driver Jason Johnson from an accident Saturday night at Beaver Dam (Wisconsin) Raceway.

“It basically just comes down to I love it,” Larson said Friday at Chicagoland Speedway. “I think it’s terrible to see tragic things happen like that and … I think the normal person out there would probably think like, ‘Wow, why does Christopher [Bell] and Kyle still go do that when things like that happen?’

“And honestly, I don’t think about the bad stuff that could happen when I’m strapping into a race car. I just love sprint-car racing so much. I love racing so much. It’s just a drug, and I don’t think about the negative things.”

Larson, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Kasey Kahne have competed in the World of Outlaws sprint-car series this year, as has Bell, an Xfinity Series driver.

Bell said accidents happen outside of race cars and sprint-car series often run double the number of races (if not more) than the NASCAR national series.

“It can happen to anybody in any style car,” Bell said. “We’re race car drivers. Racing’s not a safe sport unfortunately.”

Johnson died after his car flipped over the concrete wall and into billboards in an area without a catch fence. Johnson’s car appeared to then fall on top of the concrete wall before landing outside the track.

“Sprint cars, we have continued to somewhat make the race cars safer with tethers and straps and safety bars and stuff like that, but I don’t really feel like we have done a whole lot to make the track safer,” Larson said.

“The tracks that have become safer I feel like are tracks where they have had issues at. … I just wish the tracks would be a little more proactive or the series to be more proactive in making sure that the facilities they are going to are safer.”

Stenhouse said last week that the accident wouldn’t keep him out of those cars.

“A catch fence definitely would help … but it definitely was a violent flip for sure,” Stenhouse said.

Larson said he plans to have a memorial sticker for Johnson in place of his own name above the driver’s side door of his NASCAR Cup Series car.