Count off 10 seconds in your head.

Easy enough. OK, now count off 10 seconds again. But this time, imagine you are surrounded by a raging fire.

There’s no way you can.

You can’t make the blink of an eye seem to last forever the way it must have Sunday for Bobby Labonte as he sat in a burning race car at Chicagoland Speedway.

Thankfully, Labonte is OK. The incident on Lap 215 in the 2003 Tropicana 400 produced some spectacular video and one of the year’s best quotes — “I smell like a barbecue pit but other than that I feel fine,” Labonte said — but no serious injuries.

What it should produce in the aftermath is another round of serious scrutiny of how NASCAR handles on-track safety and rescue procedures during Winston Cup races.

Almost every other major racing series employs safety teams that travel to events and takes charge when there’s an incident on the track. NASCAR, however, depends on each track to assemble local workers to form the crews that put out fires and assist with extricating and administering aid to drivers.

The tracks take that job seriously and arrange for qualified people to be there, including doctors and emergency medical technicians trained to handle emergencies and fire fighters experienced in dealing with fires involving gasoline. These are the kind of people who are very good at their jobs because they know they literally could be the difference between life and death. No one questions how committed they are on race day.

Still, they can’t roll to a scene until they get the word from NASCAR control, where officials are waiting until the cars on the track slow down under caution before sending safety vehicles toward a crash scene.

It is that interim between the start of a wreck and the time safety vehicles start moving that must be shortened.

NASCAR can defend its current policies all it wants to, but anyone who’s ever watched an IndyCar Series or Championship Auto Racing Teams event knows that their safety crews simply get there faster.

There are two main reasons for that. First, safety crews in other series don’t have to wait until the field races back to the yellow. Second, since these crews work races every weekend they know how best to move quickly but safely when an incident happens.

The whole reason a yellow flag comes out because the track is not safe for racing. If conditions are not safe for racing, there should be no racing. Period.

If the cars slowed immediately when the yellow lights came on, safety crews could roll sooner. And if those safety crews worked for NASCAR and traveled from track to track each week, they wouldn’t have to wait for a “go” command from the tower. They’d know when to roll and they’d be there maybe 10, maybe 15 seconds faster when a driver like Bobby Labonte is squeezing his way out of a burning car.

NASCAR could require tracks to provide the same number of emergency workers now employed to augment its own safety teams each weekend. It could also employ and train some of those workers on a part-time basis to lead crews when the schedule spreads its primary crews too thin.

NASCAR is moving on safety issues. Energy-absorbing barriers won’t be up at New Hampshire International Speedway in time for this weekend’s race, but they’ll be there and at Richmond in September. We hear that a roof escape hatch, which would allow a driver another and perhaps easier way out of a wrecked car, is close.

The environment is right for another look at the traveling safety team issue. NASCAR should count to 10 and do it.