During the next week, probably Tuesday, NASCAR is expected to release its report on the crash that killed Dale Earnhardt last February. Last Friday, The Orlando Sentinel newspaper ran a story it says it got from an advance look at the report. The Sentinel says the report will blame the fatality on the design of the cars.

The story says that sources who were close to the investigation revealed that the design flaw which will be blamed most in NASCAR’s report is the lack of a crush zone to protect the driver in a frontal crash.

On one hand, it’s is hard to watch one of those spectacular superspeedway crashes, see the driver climb out and walk to an ambulance, and say that the cars are not safe.

On the other hand, one need only think of the improvement in foot/leg protection modern day drivers of open-wheeled racers enjoy.  Twenty years ago, a relatively mundane collision with the outside wall of a superspeedway would leave the driver with crushed foot and leg bones. But designers learned to design the cars to absorb the energy before it got to the driver.

Basically, modern day Indy Cars and Champ cars are a solid, protective tub which almost completely encloses the driver. Attached to the tub are the other pieces of the car, engine, radiators, suspensions. The intention is that these pieces will tear off the car as it crashes. The energy required to tear them off is energy which does not impact the driver.

Take a look at the frame of your family car. On the portions which you can see from the engine compartment are a series of dents in various places. Those dents are, in effect, accordion pleats which allow the frame to collapse, using up impact energy before it gets into the passenger compartment.

NASCAR machines don’t have those crush zones, but they may soon. Designers who create cars for NASCAR teams reportedly are catching up to the technology.

On the other hand, at least one expert says that crush zones are not the answer for stock cars. John Melvin, a crash safety consultant for NASCAR, says that the cockpit needs attention first.

Melvin has proposed a combination of head and neck restraints, six point harnesses, safer seats and nets.

Some of these devices are being phased in. HANS devices, used to protect the head and neck, were used in 33 of the 43 cars which started the Pepsi 400 at Daytona last month. More recent is the addition of safety netting which keeps the driver from being thrown forward and to the right during an angled impact.

Such netting is said to have saved Michael Waltrip from serious injury in a crash in April at California Speedway.

However, Melvin does not favor making all the available safety devices mandatory for all drivers. He notes that what works for the five-foot, six inch tall driver may not work for the six foot, five inch tall one.

Not unexpectedly, NASCAR’s Winston Cup event at Watkins Glen whupped the competition for eyes and ears last Sunday. Overnight ratings from the Nielsen company showed three times as many people watched the stock cars slide around the road course on NBC as watched the Indy Racing League on the brand new oval at Kentucky on ABC.

And about twice as many watched the IRL put on the best race of the weekend as watched CART, with arguably the best drivers in the country, parade around Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.

This is not good news for CBS, which announced this week that it will air seven CART events each of the next three seasons. But it may be good news for the Fox network.

This week CART CEO Joe Heitzler announced a three year agreement to carry CART races … at least seven each year. In the works is an agreement with Fox to carry the rest of the season … some on Fox, some on FX and some on Speedvision, which Fox recently bought.

ABC and ESPN had been carrying both CART and IRL events but ABC announced this year it would go exclusively with the IRL as far as open-wheeled racing is concerned.  ESPN will follow.

Can’t tell the players without a program.