Racing Notebook: NTSB: NASCAR violated regulations

By: JournalNow Staff | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 29, 2009

■ NASCAR violated federal regulations when it allowed a plane involved in a deadly 2007 crash near Orlando, Fla., to return to the air without maintenance after a pilot reported an electrical malfunction the previous day, federal investigators said yesterday in Washington.

The crash -- which killed five people, including two children and an adult on the ground -- was partly a result of sloppy maintenance record-keeping at NASCAR's aviation unit, staff investigators told the National Transportation Safety Board yesterday. NASCAR has a fleet comparable to a small charter operation or a tiny airline.

The board was set to vote later in the day on determining the official cause of the July 10, 2007, crash in Sanford. Investigators said that the pilot flying the plane the day before the crash deactivated the plane's radar system in mid-flight when it began producing a burning smell.

The pilot submitted an incident report to the maintenance division, but the problem wasn't inspected before the plane was allowed back in the air the next day.

Instead, the radar system was kept off.

The pilot in charge on the day of the crash was told of the incident before he took off, investigators said, but may have believed that the radar system was simply broken.

Instead, an electrical problem reoccurred, this time tragically, as the plane was making a 100-mile trip from Daytona Beach to Lakeland.

■ Ray Evernham, who won fame as a championship crew chief with Jeff Gordon, is ready to take on some new challenges.

Evernham officially relinquished his leadership role at Richard Petty Motorsports yesterday. He will keep a minority ownership with the team and do some consulting.

"I'm not retiring from racing or putting NASCAR on a back burner," he said in a release. "I'm committed to the growth and success of the sport overall, and to building championship teams and organizations in many different levels of racing in the future."

Among his new projects, Evernham will work with NHRA star Doug Herbert, helping design and build a land-speed car to break the 500 mph record for a piston-driven car.