The wreck Kyle Larson recently suffered at Talladega was inarguably one of the scariest looking ones in recent memory. You don’t need to look further than the state of his racecar or what was left of it after Ryan Preece T-boned it.

Thankfully, Larson was unhurt. But at the same time, his cockpit was destroyed, which made many wonder what could the situation have been had the impact been on the driver’s side than the passenger’s side.

This was something spotter Brett Griffin talked about later on as he urged NASCAR to consistently strive to make the sport safer.

NASCAR Spotter references Dale Earnhardt tragedy for the Kyle Larson incident

In a recent episode of the Door Bumper Clear podcast, Griffin opened up on his take on the Larson-Preece incident.

“First of all, I was scared for the safety as I was multiple times in Saturday’s race. We know a lot of these guys if not all of these guys that are involved in this wrecks so it’s hard on our heart watching somebody you have a friendship with, tumbling around the racetrack or getting hit in the door or T-boning somebody and watching their head bouncing off the steering wheel,” he said.

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Griffin then pointed toward the monumental tragedy in NASCAR, the tragic demise of Dale Earnhardt to emphasize his point. “2001, we lost Dale Earnhardt & I don’t know how many lives have been saved since then. I know Michael McDowell’s, I know Elliott Sadler’s, I can keep going at this but I won’t,” he claimed.

“As a sport, you look at football, they changed their helmets, trying to protect the guy … sports are constantly trying to protect athletes because the sport consistently gets faster.” 

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Griffin claims Kyle Larson’s post-race comments cemented how scared he was

Griffin furthered claimed how NASCAR as a sport is getting “faster and faster” with a car that’s “meant to be potentially slower.”

The spotter explained, “My point is this—in a world where we’re trying to make everything safer and safer, we’ve got guys like Kyle Larson getting out of a car and saying, ‘Man, my cockpit’s destroyed.” And you could tell he was scared. He was thankfully okay.

“Had that been driver’s side, what would have happened?”

“I think Freddie kept saying last year, ‘Why would we do anything that’s not as safe as it was, if not safer?'”

He concluded as he pointed towards the whole concussions situation from last year, the new knowledge about the rear impact, and more. “I know they’re working on it. We just gotta keep plowing forward with making this thing as safe as it can be,” he concluded.

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