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Brett Griffin Refutes Joey Logano’s Concerns on the Safety of Next Gen Cars

Published 07/21/2022, 2:10 PM EDT

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During a recent episode of the Dirty Mo Media podcast, NASCAR driver Daniel Hemric’s spotter Brett Griffin responded to Joey Logano’s comments regarding the impact of crashes with the new Next-Gen cars. Joey Logano had previously been outspoken about driver safety.

According to Griffin, NASCAR has addressed the safety concerns regarding both impact injury prevention and the high heat accumulation in the driver’s cockpit with the new Next-Gen cars.

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Logano said, “These cars they hit harder than ever. They hit really really hard. There’s super solid it hurts.”

Responding to Logano’s statement Griffin said, “If the hit is not massive, the driver gets the brunt of the force. He feels it a tonne but he has to hit it hard enough to actually really go in there and move the barriers, the data shows that it’s not as hard on the driver. It’s hard to say what’s going on here obviously you don’t our drivers saying that it hurts but the data keeps showing and I don’t know what they see I don’t know what they know. But the data keeps showing that in these scenarios, the driver is not going to get hurt.”

He goes on to say that it hurts the driver but does not injure them. He continues that there were two major concerns with the Next Gen cars. One was the driver’s safety, and the second was how hot these cars were going to be. He added that in all the races this year, we haven’t had any injuries or drivers complaining of cars getting too hot.

He concluded by saying, “Nobody can get more credit than NASCAR for keeping our guys safe.”

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Joey Logano’s 2021 Talladega crash

Ever since NASCAR race cars started hitting speeds above 200 MPH, the concern for cars going airborne during accidents has arisen. NASCAR has constantly tried to combat this issue. Last year during a Cup Series race at the famed Talladega Superspeedway, Logano’s car took off in a similar fashion after Denny Hamlin made him spin.

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During an interview, he told FOX Sports, “On one hand I’m mad about being in the crash, the other hand I’m just happy I’m alive. On the other hand, I think ‘When are we gonna stop?’ because this is dangerous doing what we’re doing.”

“I’ve got a rollbar in my head, you know what I mean? That’s not okay. I’m one hit away from the same situation Ryan Newman just went through. I just don’t feel like that’s acceptable.”

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Thereafter, several rule changes were implemented last year to slow down the cars at tracks like Daytona & Talladega to counter the cars taking off. Moreover, this year the New-Gen cars have proven to be far more impact absorbent that in turn reduces the chances of injury to the drivers.

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Written by:

Srijan Mandal

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Srijan Mandal is a NASCAR author at EssentiallySports. He is currently pursuing his Master’s in Journalism and has been writing for his own blog, 'Noobs Onboard', for a while now, covering NASCAR, F1, W Series, MotoGP, WRC and the WEC. Following motorsports for more than a decade now, he has become a devout supporter of McLaren Racing, Sir Lewis Hamilton, and Ayrton Senna.
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Edited by:

Ankit Sharma