Ernie II is the best car never to take the green flag.

Mike Skinner got more than a Darlington stripe two weeks ago. It might have been much worse had emergency help not arrived quickly. As Skinner and Rusty Wallace battled for position on lap 283, Skinner was squeezed into the wall going into the third turn. With no room to maneuver, Terry Labonte slammed into Skinner's Chevrolet, which burst into flames.

Above the track in NASCAR control, Jim Bockoven dispatched the Emergency Medical Service crews from their stations. Within 22 seconds, EMS workers were attending to Skinner and Labonte and arranging their transportation to the infield care center.

As routine as the EMS teams' actions might seem, they are planned out weeks in advance by local fire chiefs. Unlike Formula One and CART racing, in which safety crews and medical staff travel from race to race, NASCAR depends on local personnel at each race site, and each local group requires training.

Each Thursday before races, Ernie Thurston, the corporate coordinator of emergency services for International Speedway Corp., meets with the local EMS teams and works on various drills to prepare them for scenarios that might occur in race conditions. This year, Thurston has a new and improved training tool to help his teaching. Dodge donated a race car that allows Thurston to give EMS workers hands-on experience in extracting drivers before they might be faced with the task on race day.

"We've been practicing safety procedures for the last 25 to 30 years," Thurston says. "We train hard. But what we lacked before was the proper tool."

Thurston was working as a life safety technician at Cornell University when he began training EMS crews at Watkins Glen in 1984 and later became director of race operations at the track before moving to International Speedway in Daytona. As part of the instruction, Thurston wanted a reusable race car to make the experience as real as possible.

So in July 1999 at Daytona, Thurston asked Dave Marcis what he did with his wrecked cars. Marcis invited Thurston to his shop and introduced him to chassis builder Mike Laughlin. Then Thurston and two of his extrication specialists went to Laughlin Race Products in South Carolina and designed the roll cage with proper cut points. Laughlin built the first chassis for the car, and Marcis donated the body.