In every article I read about the disturbing death rate in stock car racing, this aspect of the problem is just a postscript. If construction is flawed then that’s where the changes need to be made. Reduction of front- and rear-clip strength on NASCAR’s vehicles will make them less predictable to adjustments. It will also absorb a lot of the energy a crash generates.

NASCAR President Mike Helton has admitted car construction is an issue. But he refuses to mandate significant changes. Why? One reason may be individual team economies.

Gone are the days where a team’s stable of cars was four or five. Today’s Winston Cup combatants have cars specifically for every track. That means a dozen or more shiny, decal-cloaked, wind tunnel-tested vehicles sitting in shops at the ready. It would be a major expense to scrap these cars and start over.

We are talking major overhaul. The cosmetics are something crews deal with on a regular basis, but once the chassis is produced, seldom is it reconfigured. Bad chassis end up sitting in front of a grocery store or auto parts outlet on the show car circuit.

What we are talking about is reducing the flex rating of the cars.

"Engineers actually assign a number that rates the stiffness by X number of foot pounds of torque per degree of twist," explained my friend and NASCAR engineer Bob Cuneo. "In Winston Cup, as factory engineers got more and more involved, cars got stiffer and stiffer. No one has stopped to think that they have stiffened the cars up to a point that they are transmitting more and more energy back to the driver."

By putting some deformable structures -- zones using less rigid materials and less rigid construction designs -- forward and behind a car’s suspension, there would be a place for a lot of the accident energy to go before it telegraphed into the main part of the frame.

If we have learned one thing from NASCAR’s extensive investigation of Dale Earnhardt’s death, it is that incredible energy is generated in a crash. One of the main coefficients in this energy generation formula is and always has been speed.

Cars are not going faster these days. Instead, they have slowed to just below the 200 mph barrier at NASCAR’s fastest venues. That’s a drop of almost 15 mph from where those cars were in the 1980s. The issue is exacerbated by the advances made in construction.

Downforce is now as big an issue in NASCAR as it is with Indy Cars. Aerodynamics have taken such a deciding role in a race’s outcome that a big chunk of a team’s development budget is devoted to purchasing wind tunnel time to test its aero package.

When Bill Simpson expressed utter amazement that his lap belts may have contributed to Earnhardt’s death, he was not covering for his company. When a couple of additional lap belts "dumped" (showing tears less than 1 inch in length) in high velocity accidents, NASCAR quickly revealed the incidents. Simpson never experienced these types of incidents and asked why NASCAR didn’t look into their construction methods.

Simpson’s belts had never been subjected to such forces. But, instead of reducing the forces generated upon safety equipment, NASCAR has chosen to ask for better equipment. Humpy Bumpers and HANS devices are their answer. Put the burden on them. Single out Tony Stewart for his resistance to wearing neck restraints.

I agree with Dale Jarrett when he calls on NASCAR to do more to get drivers to wear restraint devices. I also agree with H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler when he says he has lost patience with the people in his industry who are dragging their feet.

"I'm sick of it, I'm tired of it, the gloves are off," he said. "We have a moral and ethical responsibility, at the highest levels, to solve this problem now."

Lets face it. The cars are more rigid than they have ever been in the 50-plus years the Florida-based sanctioning body has presented "stock car" racing. Nothing is stock on the current crop of Winston Cup cars. Everything is engineered to make them as much a purpose-built racing vehicle as Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari.