John Delphus "J.D." McDuffie, one of only 13 drivers who have competed in more than 500 NASCAR stock car races, was killed during Sunday's Budweiser at the Glen Winston Cup race at Watkins Glen International.
The 52-year-old McDuffie apparently died instantly when he slid into a tire barrier and adjoining guardrail at high speed just five laps into the race.It appeared in television replays that McDuffie's left front tire came off, triggering the 160-mph slide off at the end of the long straightaway - the fastest part of the 2.428-mile, seven-turn road course.
His car skidded through the grassy area in turn five, cutting little speed, if any. The Pontiac flipped into the air, got upside down and the driver's side slammed into the barrier before coming to rest on its roof.
McDuffie, from Sanford, N.C., was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy was scheduled today at Schuyler Hospital in nearby Montour Falls to determine the specific cause of death.
McDuffie, one of the best-liked drivers on the circiut, was married with two children. His son Jeff has been working as his crew chief, but was not at the race.
He was one of the last of the independent owner-drivers in NASCAR and has been running a limited scheduled in recent years, racing only 39 times since 1986.
Jimmy Means slid off the track just behind McDuffie and also hit the guardrail, but he did not touch the other car and was able to scramble out of the wreck without injury.
Means said of McDuffie, "He lost his brakes or something. ... If you lose your brakes or have any kind of problem at all (at that point), you're running too fast. It's all flat and you go with the momentum of the car, wherever it's going to take you. This situation, nothing would have helped. The fence wasn't the problem."
When Means got out of his car, he immediately bent down to look into McDuffie's car to see if he could help the other driver. He said, "It was so bad I closed my eyes."
He quickly stood and began to signal for help.
The race was stopped for 1 hour and 48 minutes while track crews removed McDuffie, took away the wrecked cars and repaired part of the guardrail that was torn down.
McDuffie, whose Winston Cup career began in 1963, was competing in his 653rd event, making him fifth in all-time starts. His best finish, a third, came in a 100-mile race in 1971 at Malta, N.Y. He also won a pole at Dover, Del., in September 1978.
He had 12 top-five finishes and 105 top-10s in his long career, with his biggest purse $15,235 for finishing 13th in the 1982 Daytona 500. McDuffie won $1,338,057 in his Winston cup career.
It was the first fatality in a NASCAR event since Grant Adcox was killed at Atlanta Motor Speedway in November 1989 and the first racing death at Watkins Glen since August 1976 when Mark Freed was killed in a sports car event.
Although he never won a Winston Cup race, McDuffie said in an interview last summer, "I don't consider myself a loser, especially when you consider what I'm running against."