At the recent Chicago street race, Cody Ware suffered a 160km/h crash into a tyre-protected concrete wall.
The impact wrecked his #51 Rick Ware Racing Ford Mustang.
So violent was the crash that the steering wheel collapsed and pierced the steering column.
Ware was shaken but uninjured. Speaking with SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, he said his HANS device was cracked as well as the foam in his helmet.
NASCAR’s slow response to the accident was to van Gisbergen’s benefit, who took the white flag before the caution was drawn.
The reaction time has drawn criticism, but van Gisbergen believes the response would have been different if they had further safety measures in place.
“It is worrying that they didn’t see how hard that car went into the fence,’ said van Gisbergen on the Rubbin Is Racing podcast.
“I’m pretty sure that in Australia there are G metres in the car, and when a car crashes the officials would see that that had had a huge impact. You’d be able to do that.
“So hopefully something like that is implemented so that there’s a trigger that there has been a big crash and to throw the yellow straight away.”
TNT just showed a replay of Cody Ware’s Chicago crash from the onboard camera looking at Cody inside the cockpit.
Look at how the steering wheel and some of the side padding moved forward upon impact. pic.twitter.com/pYOqSsN2ji
— Steven Taranto (@STaranto92) July 12, 2025
Supercars are fitted with a MoTeC accident data recorder (ADR) that notifies race control and race management with live impact information.
Anything less than 14G is deemed a minor impact and does not warrant an alert. Anything between 15G and 29G is considered a medium impact while anything more than 30G is considered a major impact.
A driver who has suffered an impact of more than 30G should complete a head injury assessment.
“I’m sure that they’re looking at that stuff straight away,” van Gisbergen said of potential developments.
“That seems to happen here when something bad happens, there’s an immediate fix or they certainly look into it and try and start fixing things.
“I really think that the end of that race probably could have been managed a little better but my position I guess I couldn’t complain at the time.
“In hindsight, that was a crazy crash. The crowd cam view was scary to watch.”
The current specification ‘Next Gen’ car has been criticised for its stiffness in crashes.
NASCAR champion Kurt Busch suffered a career-ending crash that left him with lingering concussion symptoms.
Ware was also the victim of a broken foot after crashing at Texas Motor Speedway in 2022.
Caught this video of Cody Ware’s crash. The speed is incredible but glad he was okay. NSFW for language pic.twitter.com/fuZZIqM7xE
— Chris (@MagnusCheeks) July 6, 2025
In the wake of driver feedback, NASCAR modified the front and rear crash structures
“Pretty much everything from the interior of the car as well as my gear was killed in that impact,” Ware explained.
“Thankfully, getting a new helmet, a new HANS. There was a crack in the EPS foam inside the helmet. HANS device was cracked. Steering wheel got bent up pretty good as well.
“It’s just a testament to all the safety people who are selling us helmets and HANS as well as steering wheels from Max Papis and my interior guys at RWR that are building these race cars and keeping them safe.
“Unfortunately, this isn’t my first time getting into a really gnarly wreck in the Next Gen car. I look back at 2022, and that’s all that I had in my mind for those five seconds.
“It felt like the longest five seconds of my life was when I took that frontal impact in the Next Gen car back in 2022 at Texas.
“That was before a lot of the updates in the front clip had been made to make sure that the crush zones were more significant and the chassis would definitely deform a lot more on those impacts.
“That’s a testament to the work that was done between then and now because I was pretty worried that whole way to the wall that it was going to be another injury-inducing incident where I broke my foot at Texas.”
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