Telemetry said he went from over 165mph to Stopped (forwards anyways) in just over a foot.
True testement to the SAFER barriers and the COT.
Plus when you look at it, the car kept moving around the track after the collision, which means less energy absorbed directly by the driver. (i.e. another part of what went wrong with the Earnhardt wreck)
I mean, it was a kind-of glancing blow on the barrier, car didn't slow down much so he can't have decelerated much in the impact. A bit like Kubica's 165mph accident at Montreal last year - looked deadly but the initial hit wasn't head-on so he just bounced off the wall and lost the rest of the energy rolling down to the hairpin.
I think that has a lot do to with the new safer barriers, they soak up the majority of the impact. You can see the pictures of how much damage the car did. I suspect if those were the old type of barriers and it was the old car then the outcome might not have been so good.
Kubica's was far worse than this, he hit a concrete wall very very hard, most of the energy went in that initial impact when the front of the car disappeared and he was very close to having an impact on the bottom of the car with the wall which there would be no way he could have survived. Kubica's rolls were pretty minor really and there were more rolls because of all the bits and mass that had been lost from the car, the last bit was just like it fell over like Bruno Sennas F3 car did after hitting the bridge at Snett. If you look at the high resolution photos of Kubica's impact and have some knowledge of where the bits that are flying around the place are meant to be located in the car you'll soon realise just how close it was.
In contrast that stock car crash wasn't that bad, the initial impact was the bad thing (not the rolls in a closed cockpit car with high sided bucket seats and 6 point harness), it looked nasty but thanks to good barrier design and the camera telling a bit of a lie it wasn't that heavy an impact into the wall itself the car bounced off exactly as it is supposed to the rest of it is just routine stuff that you can design for a good chance of walking away from.
quick thing about nascar, why do all the cars when they crash burst into flames? In no other motor sport that i watch do the cars burst into flames, so why in nascar? is it just because the fans would moan if they didnt see the spurt of flames when a car crashes?
The impact barely changed the speed of the car, only the velocity, which generally isn't as bad when it's only through about 30°. The car absorbed a lot of energy, rolled around a lot to disipate some more, and squashed the barrier to get rid of yet more.
Earnhardt's crash was much harder, into a concrete wall and even without some of the modern safety improvements there's no logical reason why he didn't walk away, exactly what killed him is a different question but from what I've heard he often raced with his belts slaked right off, which is effectively like racing unrestrained in the cockpit.