JOLIET, Ill. – Count off 10 seconds in your head.

One Mississippi two Mississippi three Mississippi four Mississippi five Mississippi six Mississippi seven Mississippi eight Mississippi nine Mississippi 10 Mississippi.

Easy enough. OK, now count off 10 seconds again. But this time, imagine there’s fire burning all around you.

There’s no way you can.

You can’t make the blink of an eye last forever the way it must have for Bobby Labonte as he sat in a burning race car at Chicagoland Speedway on Sunday.

Thankfully, Labonte is OK. The incident on Lap 215 in the Tropicana 400 produced some spectacular video and one of the year’s best quotes – “I smell like a barbecue pit but other than that I feel fine,” Labonte said – but no serious injuries.

What it should produce is another round of serious scrutiny into how NASCAR handles on-track safety and rescue procedures during Winston Cup races.

Almost every other major racing series employs safety teams that travel to events and takes charge when there’s an incident on the track. NASCAR, however, depends on each track to assemble local workers to form the crews that put out fires and assist with extricating and administering aid to drivers.

The tracks take that job seriously and arrange for qualified people to be there, including doctors and emergency medical technicians trained to handle emergencies and fire fighters experienced in dealing with fires involving gasoline. These are the kind of people who are very good at their jobs because they know they could literally be the difference between life and death. No one questions how committed they are on race day.

Still, they can’t roll to a scene until they get the word from NASCAR control, where officials are waiting until the cars on the track slow down under caution before sending safety vehicles toward a crash scene.

It is the interim between the wreck and the time safety vehicles start moving that must be shortened. NASCAR can defend its current policies, but anyone who’s ever watched an IndyCar Series or Championship Auto Racing Teams event knows that their safety crews simply get there faster.

There are two main reasons. First, safety crews in other series don’t wait until the field races back to the yellow. Second, since these crews work races every weekend they know how best to move quickly but safely.

There’s been a lot of discussion about racing back to the yellow flag in NASCAR, but most of it has been off point. The so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” is preposterous to start with, but the issue shouldn’t be whether it’s proper etiquette for one driver to pass another as they race back to the line. The issue should be that doing so is unsafe.

The whole reason a yellow flag comes out is because the track is not safe for racing. If conditions are not safe for racing, there should be no racing.

If the cars slowed immediately when the yellow lights come on, safety crews could roll sooner. And if those safety crews worked for NASCAR and traveled from track to track each week, they wouldn’t have to wait for a “go” command from the tower. They’d know when to roll and they’d be there maybe 10, maybe 15 seconds faster when a driver like Bobby Labonte is squeezing out of a burning car the way he was Sunday.

Tony Stewart said he’s been “praying for three years now” that NASCAR would change its minds and employ its own traveling safety crew.

Stewart also pointed out that it’s not as simple as it might sound to do that. How many people does NASCAR need to cover a race at large tracks like Daytona or Indianapolis or Pocono? The IndyCar and CART series have only one track to cover on a given weekend. What does NASCAR do when the Winston Cup, Busch and Truck series are all at different venues? And there are the liability issues.

NASCAR could require tracks to provide emergency workers to augment its own safety teams. It could also employ and train some of those workers on a part-time basis when the schedule spreads its primary crews too thin. And it could not allow itself to let liability concerns paralyze forward thinking on safety and medical matters until the sport again finds itself reacting to a tragedy.

NASCAR is moving on safety issues. Energy-absorbing barriers won’t be up at New Hampshire International Speedway in time for this weekend’s race, but they’ll be there at Richmond in September. We hear that a roof escape hatch, which would allow a driver another and perhaps easier way out of a wrecked car, is close.

The environment is right for another look at the traveling safety team issue. NASCAR should count to 10 and do it.

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(c) 2003, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).

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