Ryan Newman’s car was traveling at 200 mph, when it was clipped, ?ipped, went airborne, landed on its roof and burst into ?ames. Daytona 500 spectators feared the worst. Amazingly, less than 48 hours after skidding across the ?nish line in a ?urry of sparks and blazes, Newman strolled out of a hospital holding the hands of his two young daughters. It was due in no small part to the HANS device, a head and neck support invented by the late Robert Hubbard, an MSU engineering professor, and his brother-in-law Jim Downing, a driver himself. They’d discovered after crashes, drivers were dying from skull fractures. That led to their creation of a collar-shaped device to restrain drivers’ heads and reduce spinal compression. Four years after the 2001 death of Dale Earnhardt, the industry made the HANS mandatory. Meanwhile, Newman said it felt like angels were holding him.
Alex Gillespie, '17