So sad. Such a needless loss...

*snuff

As an ex racer I will say this is disturbing and should definitely be investigated as a criminal act.
First, watching the initial incident closely, Stewart definitely turns into Ward intentionally putting him in the wall. That's likely not criminal, but it should get him thrown out of the circuit, and watched closely by any other circuit he drives in.
Second, the point made in the description is quite valid but understated. He DID know that hitting the throttle would send the whole car, and especially the rear end, sliding to the outside of the turn. Any attempt to claim otherwise is completely ridiculous, he's a professional driver and he knows that. That means even if Stewart didn't intend to hit Ward, he did intend to drive dangerously close to him at unsafe speed wile sliding partially out of control. It seems likely he only intended to spray him with the dirt roost and/or scare him but burped the throttle too soon...that is not an excuse or absolution in any way.
Being on a track doesn't absolve you from behaving safely, or from responsibility for your deliberately unsafe actions. Killing Ward may have been accidental, but acting dangerously irresponsibly was not. An accident that happens when you are acting unsafely is 100% your fault and responsibility, it's exactly why we have the charge of manslaughter and not only murder. Hitting and killing him when you unsafely accelerate at him in a dirt corner was foreseeable by any reasonable person....I would almost certainly convict him.

Here's a counter theory by another racer:

"I haven't seen how Stewart handled the car preimpact. That said, those vehicles require speed for what little grip they have, as it's largely generated by the roof fin, and they don't really steer so much as surf. If you watch the cornering style it's a full on drift. That makes twitch steering pretty ineffective - you steer from the back which requires heavy throttle.

You don't see Stewart's approach ( at least on the vid I've seen ), and the fishtail post impact I would attribute to the impact itself. His approach does not seem consistent with trying to spray the other driver with dirt ; that would have to be a at a high angle relatively speaking and he seemed to come in straight.

It's possible that Stewart intended to kill, but I really think it's highly unlikely. When you're racing you have a lot to deal with, and whilst under a yellow flag undertaking is typically verboten and in theory you should be slowing down, but in reality you are always looking to get the drop as soon as the yellows disappear. To that end you're scanning the track looking for disabled vehicles.

You're not scanning for drivers standing in the middle of the track - the assumption would be that the driver stays safely secured in the car, or they hop the barrier. If that can't happen for some reason, it's the job of race control to red flag the race.

My personal theory, based on incomplete footage - I'd like to see in car footage from Stewart ideally - is that Stewart just didn't see him in time to make any effective attempt to miss. It's a night race, and Stewart would have been concentrating on the disabled vehicle to his right. There's not much about Ward's outfit that would attract attention - from Stewart's perspective, black helmet, black racesuit, against a dark dirt background. These vehicles don't use headlights, so there's nothing to offset the glare of the spotlights.

In a perfect world Stewart would have seen and avoided, but ultimately Ward put himself in a fucking stupid position and paid the price. I'm not surprised to see lack of remorse on Stewart's part ; Ward shouldn't have been there, plain and simple.

Anyhow, that's my thinking on this - I don't know or follow anyone in that type of series, so I'm claiming to be bias free here. Racers know that motorsport is dangerous, so you do what you can to mitigate risk, not increase it by orders of magnitude.

Edit : Looking at it a few more times, it's also possible that Stewart was trying to rotate the car around Ward - throttling up and steering right would have pushed the back away from Ward, which might have made the outcome different. I still say it's a Darwin."

I'd have to agree with sniper. I think the car turned after the impact with the driver. The driver also made the attempt to get in front of Tony's car which is pretty foolish.

Pretty sure the powers that be would consider this snuff @lucky760

Sorry, @Sniper007, but @eric3579 is correct that this is very obviously disallowed because it falls within VideoSift's definition of snuff.

Please refer to the posting guidelines: http://videosift.com/faq#posting_guidelines

*discard

Discarding this post - discard requested by member lucky760.