05:26 PM EST on Tuesday, February 7, 2006

By TONY BURBECK / 6NEWS
E-mail Tony: TBurbeck@WCNC.com

The wife of one of the people who died in the Hendrick plane crash has filed a new lawsuit that places partial blame for the crash on John Hendrick and Hendrick Motorsports.

Those allegations come from Diane Dorton, who claims Hendrick's desire to get to the race on time may have contributed to the deaths of the ten people in that crash.

In a claim she filed on behalf of husband Randy Dorton she claims there were a sequence of events leading up to the crash that could have been avoided. She also claims that they could have also chosen not to go at all.

Randy Dorton called Diane on the morning of October 2, 2004.

The conversation involved Randy's delay flying to the Subway 500 race in Martinsville. Randy built engines for NASCAR and for Hendrick race teams.

Dianne said Randy told her he was supposed to fly by helicopter, but the helicopter was grounded due to bad weather.

They'd fly in a Hendrick Motorsports plane instead. Randy waited in the Hendrick hangar for more than an hour.

He called Dianne and told her he didn’t think they'd go.

He called 47 minutes later and said "we're going."

It's not clear who gave the go order for the trip.

It's an alleged conversation between pilot Richard Tracy and Hendrick Motorsports president John Hendrick that's part of a negligence and misconduct lawsuit against Hendrick Motorsports.

The suit claims Tracy proposed flying to Danville instead of the Blue Ridge airport due to the weather and that Hendrick said that option was unacceptable because they'd be too far from the track and late for the race. Danville is farther away from the track than Blue Ridge.  

"He told us that and I feel certain that he would stay by what he said," said David Burgess, Dianne Dorton's attorney.

Burgess said the grounded helicopter pilot was part of that conversation and could be called to testify.

"What our investigation has led us to, is a witness who said that there was an offer made to fly to another airport because of the weather problem at Martinsville and they flew into a mountain," he said.

These are portions of the pre-flight check between pilot, co-pilot and air traffic control:

"Wouldn't be going to Martinsville, would you?" air traffic control (ATC) asked.

"Yepper," replied the pilot. "Uh, let me seem I'm probably going to have, one, two, three, four, let's put six souls onboard."

"Visibility is unreliable," said ATC.

"Alrighty," the pilot responded.

Later, upon approach to Blue Ridge airport, there is more of the pilot's conversation with ATC.

"There's good visibility below," said ATC.

"51, 501 Romeo, Hotel, we're going missed," said the plane's copilot.

"Say that again," replied ATC.

"We're going missed at this time," the copilot responded.

Those were the last words. Bull Mountain was obscured by clouds and fog.

The plane slammed into it and all ten onboard died.

A separate lawsuit against Hendrick Motorsports alleges at least 27 other planes aborted landings at Blue Ridge due to weather.

The plane didn’t have a terrain avoidance warning system, which was not required, but could have helped.

Diane said the lawsuit isn't about money. She said it's about finding the truth about what happened to Randy, what happened onboard the plane, addressing accountability and making future airplane travel safer for her friends in NASCAR.

Monday Diane and another Hendrick crash widow, Linda Turner, boarded a flight to Washington DC.

Tuesday they'll hear what the NTSB says caused the crash.

6NEWS asked Hendrick Motorsports for their side of this story. They refused, saying they can't talk about a legal matter.