Copyright 2002, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

From an e-mail sent by Andrew Nelson’s dad, Rick:

Re: Andrew Nelson FUSA 600 Sportbike Race

Hi guys, I don’t know if there is any interest in this to your readers but I thought I’d send out an update regarding Andrew’s race-ending crash and his condition.

We’ve been inundated with phone calls and e-mail messages regarding Andrew’s condition after his early exit from the Formula USA 600 Sportbike race in Daytona on Sunday. He is fine and is in much better condition than his Shoei helmet.

For those of you who did not see the crash first hand, it would have scored a 10 on any judges score card. Fortunately Andrew only ended up with a sore shoulder and something less than a mild concussion.

Most of you are asking as to what happened as he had been in many races throughout the weekend without incident. Well we feel that the crash stemmed from three contributing factors.

Firstly, Andrew’s race strategy was very aggressive and was to push hard to the front immediately from the start. He knew that drafting some of the faster bikes was going to be tough, with that in mind, he wanted to be leading out of the chicane. (As it turned out, from 8th on the grid to 4th in three corners, was as hoped.)

Secondly, we opted for a harder compound tire for this 12 lap race as the track temperature was at or near to the hottest of the weekend. For the 5-lap CCS races a medium compound tire was used with warmers on for 30 minutes powered through our generator. With the harder compound we looked to warm the tire slightly longer.

On pit road, as we waited for the 5 minute board we noticed that our generator was running in the econo mode which saves fuel but dramatically slows the heating time of the tire warmers. Consequently, the tires would have been warmed equivalently to 10 minutes in regular power mode.

Thirdly, Andrew is always so anxious to get to pre grid he left pit road too early and then proceeded to tour around on his warm-up lap in heavy traffic not fully scrubbing his tires. With so few right hand turns at Daytona, this scrub lap must be done correctly.

In hindsight, our aggressive race strategy should have been curtailed as ‘you can’t with the race in the first corner.’

The result: Andrew is 20 seconds into the race at mid corner in the east orseshoe, knee down pushing hard through a right hand turn, with a cold nscrubbed tire, and completely gets sideways, then airborne, then in the hospital, now wishing he could have continued his weekend-long drafting/braking battles with Jason….congrats.