One of the most obvious safety devices you can imagine is finally being put into use. Its potential has been evident since the first time a caveman wrapped an animal skin around his arm to ward off a club blow.

What we are talking about is padding … soft barriers around race tracks to reduce the impact that drivers, and cars, experience when they hit the wall. Foam barriers of various kinds have been tried at several tracks in truck races and other forms of the sport. Now, it appears they have hit the big time.

Soft walls were installed at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for this month’s practice, qualifying and the Indianapolis 500.

Last Sunday, Robby McGehee became the first driver to test the barriers at IMS and he’s pretty happy about them. According to The Associated Press, McGehee lost control of his car going into turn three at about 220 mph. It spun and the rear of the car slammed the wall nearly perpendicularly, then the right side slammed the wall hard.

Officials at the Speedway said the car hit with a force of 40 G’s, that’s 40 times the force of gravity, on the initial impact. When the car snapped around, the right side, thanks to Sir Isaac Newton, hit with a force of nearly 73 G’s.

Similar crashes have put other drivers on the sidelines for a long time.

McGehee pretty much walked away from his episode, and he credited the soft barrier with reducing his injuries. As it turned out, though, on Monday, he still was having some back and hand pain and went to he reexamined. Another doctor found hairline fractures in the upper portion of his spine and on one of his fingers.

The driver said his doctor told him he could return to racing whenever he felt comfortable but McGehee said he is not going to hurry. He drove with a broken leg last season and knows how difficult such a thing is. Not to mention the fact that the car he wrecked was the only one his team had.

New Hampshire International Speedway has announced plans to install padded walls soon as well. The soft walls should be in place in time for the Winston Cup race to be held there in July.

Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin, both promising Winston Cup drivers, died in separate practice accidents two years ago when their cars hit the Turn Three wall at NHIS.

Track owner Bob Bahre was to meet with NASCAR officials this past week to get permission to use the walls. He said he is ready to buy them … for $300 thousand.

The fact that padding is such an obvious solution does not mean that it should have been in use to protect racers all along. It has taken some technological advances to come up with the right material.

Something that will absorb energy and disperse it harmlessly, yet hang together so that large pieces of foam are not scattered around, causing a hazard for other drivers coming on the scene and creating long, fan-frustrating and TV stretching cleanup delays. If the material is ready, it should be used.

It may be sour grapes, but Ricky Rudd is unhappy with The Big Show and says he may be ready to quit. Rudd will set a record for consecutive starts if he starts the Coca-Cola 600 May 26, breaking Terry Labonte’s Iron Man record of 655.

But Rudd says he is not happy with the way NASCAR racing is being marketed these days and might retire at the end of the season. He feels that it all changed with the latest television deal, which produces about $400 million a year for the sanctioning body.

The driver of No. 28 says it seems that young, twenty-something drivers are being pushed before the public because that is the market they’re going for. As a result, he feels that older drivers are being ignored. Rudd is 45.

He even goes so far as to suggest that NASCAR is taking its marketing tips from professional wrestling.

He may be right, but we old guys often seem to respond that way.