NASCAR's 'guinea pig' is enhancing driver safety, but he doesn't want the credit

When the front of Corey LaJoie's No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet made slight contact with the rear of Noah Gragson's No. 10 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford coming down the back straightaway at Michigan International Speedway on Monday, not many could have predicted what happened next.

LaJoie's car spun, went airborne, flipped, and rolled before making contact with the inside retaining wall. It fortunately landed right side up.

All after a relatively light tap.

In the aftermath of the crash, the NBC Sports broadcast booth referenced the fact that LaJoie has been a part of a number of safety initiatives with NASCAR over the years and that he has been one of the drivers at the forefront of making things safer for everybody.

LaJoie spoke to Beyond the Flag about some of those initiatives, and he gave a lot of credit to his father, two-time Busch Series champion Randy LaJoie, when speaking about his own involvement.

"I hate being the crash test dummy; that's never good," LaJoie admitted, regarding some of the further changes that have been introduced to the Next Gen car after his nasty Michigan wreck.

"But I was probably one of the first ones to start wearing the mouthpiece sensor that a lot of guys are wearing now. It looks kind of like an Invisalign with some hardware on the outside that captures Delta-V and G-load on the rotation of your cranium in the course of a wreck."

That mouthpiece sensor has proven paramount in collection of some of the data that simply wasn't accessible before.

"NASCAR and drivers themselves have learned a lot from [the fact that] sometimes the data that the car collects from its black box is different than what the mouthpiece sensor does," LaJoie continued.

"Trying to correlate those sensations between what a driver feels and what the car is actually saying has been important information for headrest foam and some things like that, things that NASCAR has made some improvements on, as well as softening the car up for the crashes – the front clips and front bumpers."

But LaJoie doesn't want any credit; his primary goal is simply making things safer for everybody, both today's race car drivers and tomorrow's – just like the goal of his father.

"I'm not going to take any credit for it necessarily, but being that my dad is kind of a pioneer with safety with the seats and things like that, keeping short trackers safe, I probably know more than most when it comes to just having experience with keeping guys safe.

"So if I can help NASCAR and be kind of the guinea pig for some of their new gadgets, I'm always down for it."

Now NASCAR is set to visit Daytona International Speedway for the Coke Zero Sugar 400, a race that produced a massive – and heavily analyzed – crash involving Ryan Preece a year ago.

NBC is set to provide live coverage starting at 7:00 p.m. ET this Saturday, August 24, and LaJoie, who has been cleared to race, is set to compete with primary sponsorship from CELSIUS on his No. 7 Chevrolet. Begin a free trial of FuboTV and don't miss it!