Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 15, 1994 TAG: 9402150074
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. LENGTH: Long
On the day of Neil Bonnett's funeral in Alabama, another driver died at Daytona International Speedway.
Rookie Rodney Orr's fatal crash in turn 2 Monday morning was the second here in four days. Twenty-six drivers and one spectator have died at the speedway since it opened in 1959, but never have two died in such a short time.
Orr, 31, of Palm Coast, Fla., was killed instantly in the crash shortly after 9:50 a.m., and was pronounced dead at 10:06 a.m., NASCAR officials said.
It was a fresh dose of tragedy for the NASCAR family, which is still grieving over the death of Bonnett, the popular 47-year-old veteran who died Friday during practice after crashing in turn 4. Bonnett's funeral, in his hometown of Hueytown, Ala., started about four hours after Orr was killed.
There were few witnesses to Orr's crash. Perhaps no one saw it completely.
But from the skid marks on the track and statements from NASCAR officials, this is apparently what happened:
Orr's Ford Thunderbird, riding on Hoosier tires, was running alone deep into turn 2 when the back end began to spin out. There is a nasty bump in that turn where cars often bottom out, but Orr lost control before the bump and spun under it.
Orr apparently tried to correct the spin, and when the front end of his car hit the flat apron, the front tires caught and the car jerked around and shot toward the wall, much as Bonnett's car had done last week.
But Orr's car became airborne as it came back up the track. It began to flip and tumble as it hurtled toward the wall, like Jimmy Horton's car did last July at Talladega before it went over the wall. Orr's car hit the wall. And the first thing that hit was the windshield area in front of the driver. The roll cage was damaged and the wall apparently penetrated the cockpit.
The hurtling wreckage tore out a section of fence and knocked down the caution lights mounted on top of the wall at the exit of turn 2. It then flipped back on its wheels and spun to a stop on the backstretch. Orr suffered a massive head injury.
Winston Cup Director Gary Nelson was on the scene in minutes. He told several people in the garage area, "It was the worst I've ever seen."
The accident occurred about 35 or 40 minutes into Monday morning's practice. It was windy and cool, and there were few cars on the track. The only other driver near the accident was Jim Sauter, several hundred yards behind Orr.
"I just came around the corner and seen smoke," Sauter said. "I got on the brakes and off the throttle. I was looking for a hole. When I came through the smoke, the next thing I seen was his car coming off the wall and debris flying everywhere.
"The point I seen it, it was upright, spinning off the wall. I know there wasn't much of a body left on it."
The only person inside the turn at the time was a security guard, sitting in his car and facing away from the track, guarding the gate that opens to the backstretch. The guard said there were no spectators in the area.
Orr, the 1993 champion of the NASCAR Dash series for 4-cylinder, 2,600-pound compact cars, was trying to qualifying for his first Winston Cup race.
Like so many drivers, he came to Daytona with little experience, but unlimited desire. His No. 37 X-1R Ford was owned by his father, Beacher Orr.
"I am not going down there to win. I am going down there to get some time in," Orr told the Flagler/Palm Coast (Fla.) News-Tribune in an interview last Wednesday. "It will be a major achievement just to make the field. Even if I finish dead last, I will have achieved something.
"If we don't make it, it is not because we didn't have determination and it is not because we didn't try."
Orr is survived by his wife, Crystal, and an 8-year-old daughter, Ashton. He had raced motorcycles for 15 years and was a team driver for the Honda Supercross team before entering the Dash series in 1991.
Although a Florida resident, Orr had close ties to his native town of Robbinsville, N.C., an Appalachian mountain town of 703 residents in Graham County some 90 miles west of Asheville.
"Bobby Brooks' Exxon is the only Exxon in the county," Orr said in the 1994 NASCAR yearbook. "That's where my sponsorship fund originated. They built a little wooden box for people to make donations. That's our headquarters."
A mechanic at the service station said the town was stunned.
"In a small town like this, everyone knows everybody else and most everyone is kin to everyone else," Joe Adams, a mechanic at Bobby Brooks' Exxon, told United Press International in a telephone interview. "They are in shock over this.
"Rodney was a grade ahead of me in school," Adams said. "We had a little fund here of the people giving money to his team and he put Robbinsville on the side of his car. We have all of his racing plaques and pictures on the wall.
"I don't know what to say. I'm speechless. But there is a picture of Rodney on the wall at the service station of him holding his Gatorade plaque. He's smiling and has a can of Gatorade in his hand. That it how I want to remember Rodney - always smiling."
Keywords:
AUTO RACING FATALITY
by CNB