CHARLOTTE, N.C. — NASCAR drivers Ryan Newman and Corey LaJoie’s mangled cars arrived back in North Carolina Tuesday morning after Monday night’s heart-stopping crash at the very end of the Daytona 500. While Newman recovers, NASCAR engineers will be combing over their cars to determine what helped save Newman’s life.

• That Ryan Newman survived the horrific crash at Daytona wasn’t a surprise to NASCAR engineers
• Since Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s fatal crash at Daytona in 2001, NASCAR has spent a lot of time and money improving safety
• Engineers believe Newman will race again as soon as he’s healthy

There will always be an inherent danger in motorsports. While it was arguably the most horrific crash visually, Monday night wasn’t the first for Ryan Newman. His car went airborne and landed on its roof at the 2003 Daytona 500. And then he had a similar crash at Talladega. Despite that, Newman has been outspoken in the past, pushing NASCAR to do all it can to make racing as safe as possible.

The last lap of the Daytona 500 has, historically, been one of the most dangerous. Monday night, with Newman leading the race, that couldn’t have been truer. “The other car came up behind him and trapped him. You can see it seemed like the tires are on ice because that’s how much they’re pushing the adhesion of the tire and the handling capability and the aerodynamics of the race,” explained long-time racing mechanic Bill Kelly with Charlotte’s “Seat Time Racing School.”

Despite Newman’s car rolling multiple times before driver LaJoie’s car unavoidably slammed into Newman’s, causing a debris cloud of twisted car parts and sparks flying, Kelly says he wasn’t surprised Newman suffered severe injuries but survived. “No, not at all,” Kelly said. “That car could flip seven or eight times as they have been to do, and he would be fine, more than likely.”

Kelly says ever since Dale Earnhardt Sr. died in 2001 on the last lap of the Daytona 500, NASCAR has invested heavily in making crashes survivable.

“They realized that even the heroes can fall victim to the dangers of the sport,” Kelly added.

Kelly showed Spectrum News the science that came out of that loss and how it may have helped protect Ryan Newman.

“It was a normal roll, until that impact,” Kelly said. “It was violent, but until the impact, it was like he was gonna go for a rough ride.”

That’s because, after the Earnhardt crash, NASCAR adopted the “HANS” device, which provided the driver with head and neck supports. But in 2007, NASCAR made the biggest overhaul of the car’s design, calling it the “Car of Tomorrow.”

It involved making the chassis sturdier and the roll cages stronger. The third change, Kelly says, had to do with the driver seat. “[That was to]….move the driver further in towards the center of the vehicle, to get their head away from, and their body away from the outside of the car, because as strong as these cages are, they can be damaged.”

But the hope is if the car is severely damaged — the driver will walk away. “He’ll [Newman] probably get back in another car as soon as he’s given the OK to do so.”

Engineers at the NASCAR Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C., have both Newman and LaJoie’s crumpled cars in impound. That’s where they will examine the wreckage to see how well the vehicles performed during that violent crash and what changes could be made to make racing even safer.