ROCKINGHAM, N.C. -- Dale Earnhardt's lap belt was found broken after the stock car racing champion was fatally injured in a crash at the Daytona 500, NASCAR officials said Friday.
"A broken left lap seat belt came apart," NASCAR president Mike Helton said. "We don't know how, when or where, yet. We will continue our investigation."
Dr. Steve Bohannon, head of emergency medical services at Daytona International Speedway, speculated that with the broken belt, Earnhardt's body could have been thrown forward and to the right, sending him flying into the steering wheel.
Bohannon said Earnhardt might have hit his chin on the steering wheel, causing the major head injury that killed him.
"Mr. Earnhardt more than likely contacted the steering wheel with his face," Bohannon said.
Richard Childress, Earnhardt's longtime car owner, said the seat belts were standard and were new when the car was built last November.
Gary Nelson, the Winston Cup director, showed a similar lap belt, part of a five-point harness, and described how the webbing near the lower left buckle, holding the lap belt atop the car frame, came apart.
He would not say how the material came apart, whether it was cut, frayed or in any other way damaged.
"All we know conclusively is the belt came apart," Nelson said. "We've never seen it, we've talked to people in the business and they say they've never seen it in 52 years of NASCAR racing."
Helton said NASCAR was not contemplating any safety changes for Sunday's race at North Carolina Speedway. He said Earnhardt's battered Chevrolet was still being looked at by experts, and that safety experts also will study the broken belt.
He said the most important thing about the information on the broken belt was that it be passed on to all the crew chiefs in the Winston Cup and Busch series garages here and at a truck race next week at Homestead, Fla.
Earnhardt, 49, died instantly in a last-lap crash last Sunday.
He was buried near his Kannapolis home Wednesday,
Childress, who also fields a car for Mike Skinner, will have rookie Kevin Harvick in a second car Sunday in the Dura Lube 400.
MOORESVILLE, N.C. -- A white cardboard sign that hung on the fence with letters in black -- Intimidator black -- read "In memory of my only hero" served as the focal point for about 200 fans who gathered at Dale Earnhardt's shop Sunday night, hours after the popular driver was killed at the Daytona 500.
The large shop that serves as home to DEI Inc.'s three cars -- Daytona champion Michael Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Steve Park -- seems out of place in rural Mooresville, but it was the perfect gathering place for fans to mourn the loss of their hero.
Cars lined the two-lane highway leading up to the shop, where three flags -- the U.S., North Carolina and DEI's -- hung at half-mast. Police guarded the entrances to the shop, but that didn't stop fans wearing their black No. 3 hats from lighting candles and placing flowers as they embraced each other at the makeshift memorial.
One of the mourners, Alec Mantz of Mooresville, came with a group of people who had to hold each other up they were so overcome with grief. Mantz said he met Earnhardt in 1980 and has been a fan ever since.
"He had has his ways, but he was best damn race car driver ever and that's how I'm going to remember him," said Mantz, who claims to be from Race City, USA. "To us here in Mooresville, he was put on this earth to race and that's what he did best."
Mooresville's Jim Donaldson, 21, came to the shop with his two friends. All three attended school with Dale Earnhardt Jr., they said.
"Earnhardt was Mooresville," Donaldson said as he removed his Earnhardt cap and rubbed his face in grief. "This is a tight-knit community, so even if you hated the Earnhardts, this is devastating. It was just a terrible tragedy."
At the Concord Regional Airport, 11-year-old Bobby Klimas bounced around the waiting room in his black Earnhardt jacket. Klimas traditionally goes to the airport with his father after races so he can get a glimpse of his heroes when they return from the races. His father didn't have the heart to tell him that Earnhardt, his favorite driver, was dead.
"He would go bonkers," Bob Klimas said. "My wife and I decided we'd wait until we got home to tell him. He'll be crushed, absolutely crushed."
As a result, Bobby Klimas was the only person at the airport in good spirits. As the race team stepped off their planes, family members waited inside in tears.
"It's just real somber, real sad," said a woman working the desk at the private airport who didn't want to be identified. "Normally the race teams come in and it's like 'Woo-hoo', but this time everyone is ready to go. It seems like a shock to them all."
Todd Parrott, crew chief for Dale Jarrett, looked stunned as he got off his plane and walked to his car.
"It's just the way this sport is -- it's a chance you are taking every time you get in the car," Parrott said. "Unfortunately it happened to him and it just don't seem right. It's hard to believe because you don't think things like that happen to drivers like him."
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