FORT WORTH Tony Roper, a veteran race car driver who was critically injured Friday night at Texas Motor Speedway, died Saturday at Parkland Memorial Hospital.

Mr. Roper, a 35-year-old native of Fair Grove, Mo., sustained a severe neck injury that stopped the blood flow to his brain. He was left without any brain function and died at 10:55 a.m., said Dr. John LaNoue, the attending trauma surgeon at Parkland.

Mr. Roper was involved in a three-vehicle crash during the early laps of the O'Reilly 400 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race, a supporting event for Sunday's Excite 500 Indy-car race. His truck glanced off another truck and ricocheted into a concrete wall on the front stretch.

The fatality was the first of any kind at TMS, which opened in 1997. The speedway complex plays host to several forms of racing, as well as various driving schools, on multiple tracks.

But the death was the third in five months for NASCAR, which is
considered the safest major form of racing. Busch Series driver Adam Petty and Winston Cup driver Kenny Irwin were killed at New
Hampshire International Speedway on May 12 and July 7,
respectively.

"If you say it's a coincidence, it sounds flippant," TMS general
manager Eddie Gossage said about the rash of NASCAR tragedies.
"But I think this is a coincidence. This was totally unlike the other accidents in what caused it."

Mr. Petty and Mr. Irwin each died in single-car crashes during practice. Stuck throttles, in which the engine continues running at full speed, were suspected in both tragedies. Mr. Roper's crash did not appear to have a mechanical cause. 

"I've never seen a car or truck turn and take a bite and go head-on into the wall like that," Mr. Gossage said. "Usually it glances off the wall. Last night, it was a head-on crash into the wall." 

Rescue workers had to cut the roof off Mr. Roper's truck to remove him. He was unconscious and unresponsive at  the scene, and he never regained consciousness after being flown by air ambulance to Parkland.

"We appreciate the show of support from the other drivers and teams who came here to be with us ... [Friday] night," said Dean Roper, Tony's father and a successful former driver in the Midwest-based Automobile Racing Club of America and U.S. Auto Club divisions. "We appreciate everybody who helped him
along in racing and all the friends he has made as a result. He was a good little racer."

Tony Roper was a veteran of 60 Truck Series starts, with a best finish of second at Indianapolis Raceway Park in July 1998. He has also competed in the Busch Series, NASCAR's middle division between Winston Cup and Trucks.

After starting in grassroots modifieds in the mid-'80s, Mr. Roper competed for five years on the American Speed Association stock car circuit. 

He started the 2000 season as the driver of the minority-owned Washington-Erving Motorsports entry in the Busch Series but qualified for only three races before the team shut down operations. In July, he rejoined the Mittler Motorsports Truck Series team, for which he drove in the mid-'90s.

The only previous fatality in the Truck Series occurred in 1997, when John Nemechek died after a crash at Homestead, Fla. That was the most recent death in NASCAR until the 19-year-old Mr. Petty, the grandson of stock car racing legend Richard Petty, was killed in
May.

This latest tragedy will renew the call for so-called soft-wall technology in racing. With soft walls, an energy-absorbing barrier is affixed to the concrete wall. 

"I've never been a proponent or opponent of soft-wall technology, because it doesn't exist," Mr. Gossage said. "Soft-wall experiments exist. I think a lot of fans have the concept that if you just strap on a bunch of mattresses on the walls, you've fixed it, and that's not the case. You can cause more problems than you resolve."

Mr. Roper's death will undoubtedly be on the minds of the Indy-car racers Sunday in the Excite 500. Indy Racing Northern Light Series cars are about 35 mph faster than the NASCAR Trucks.

"As a race driver, we know it can happen to us," Indy driver Scott Goodyear said. "We're in this business, and we understand that. When you have an accident, you go, 'Hey, I escaped.' You always know it might be the big one.

"When something like this happens to anybody in the family of motor sports, it's hard to take."