DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Not long after Kyle Busch's crash in the Xfinity Series race at Daytona International Speedway, NASCAR and the track announced that SAFER barriers would be installed on every exposed wall at the track.

While the move to act swiftly is admirable, it's too little too late.

The estimated cost of Daytona Rising, Daytona International Speedway's renovation project, is $400 million.

It likely wouldn't cost more than $10 million to outfit the rest of Daytona's walls with SAFER barrier.

In other words, the cost of making the track safer for the drivers entertaining the fans benefitting from the renovations is just a few percentage points of the renovation project itself. It was an absolute no-brainer, though it wasn't put into action until Busch possibly sustained a serious injury.

The wall that Kyle Busch slammed into on Saturday night was not covered in SAFER barrier. The impact from the unforgiving concrete jacked the rear tires of Busch's car into the air. Busch was taken to Halifax Medical Center on a stretcher with his right leg braced.

Thankfully he'll recover, but as a result he will not race in Sunday's Daytona 500.

Why wasn't the wall covered? There are no good reasons and Daytona president Joie Chitwood basically admitted as much on Saturday night. In 2013, NASCAR CEO Brian France said nothing prevented the sanctioning body from adding SAFER barriers over nearly every square foot of concrete walls on all of the tracks where it races. But two years later, not every wall is covered.

"We look at this, we think we have them in all the right places, and if we don't, we'll make an improvement, like anything else," France said then.

We didn't need Busch's potential serious injury to his right leg to tell us that SAFER barriers aren't in all of the right places. In last year's Daytona 500, Danica Patrick and Kevin Harvick hit walls that weren't covered with SAFER. You may remember a similar refrain from us after those crashes.

At a cost of approximately $500 a square foot, a mile of SAFER barrier would cost approximately $2.6 million. Many of the walls of the 2.5-mile Daytona track are already covered in SAFER. There aren't more than four miles of wall left to cover.

But let's be clear, this isn't a problem limited to Daytona's high banks. Nearly every NASCAR track has sections of bare concrete and it wasn't too long ago that Pocono had steel guardrails on the inside of one of its straightaways. For all of the advances NASCAR and its teams have made when it comes to the safety of cars and the equipment that drivers wear, the steps haven't been taken to the same length when it comes to the track themselves. Unless other tracks unanimously start to follow Daytona's lead.

(The wall Busch hit will be protected by tire barriers on Sunday)

NASCAR is in the first points-paying weekend of an $8 billion television contract. While tracks receive a portion of the contract and could afford to outfit the entirety of the walls at their facilities with SAFER barrier, NASCAR's pockets are deeper. And a refusal to reach into them is increasingly indefensible.

We have a tendency to ignore the process in favor of results sometimes. And because of the safety of the cars, NASCAR drivers have largely walked away unscathed from recent encounters with unprotected concrete, potentially minimizing the cadre of voices in favor of expanded SAFER barrier protection.

After what happened on Saturday, Busch wasn't so lucky. Will a change in the result be what finally nets a change in the process for not only Daytona, but other tracks? It's better late than never.

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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