Alex Bowman

@Nitro Dude ...

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well larson hurt thier feelings,bowman was laps down,but they never said why.
 
Wow that's surprising. I've been wondering how much longer Gustafson wants to do it as well. He's I think the most tenured CC on pit road right now and it's such a grind of a job.
 

That is awesome. It is so cool that drivers that are in the position to help out society with different charities take the time to do so. That is a great young man right there with a heart as big as Dallas and Fort Worth put together. If he could ever lose his bad luck cloud that seems to hover over his head, he would definitely be in the running for a championship. I'm very interested in seeing if the cars performance turns around next year with a new crew chief. He is in the next round so maybe this will be his year he goes the distance though.:D
 
I hold Alex in high esteem for this work. He is an exemplary human being.

And he runs dirt cars. 😇
Absolutely. When he and I would sit and talk when he was a teammate to the dirt car team I was helping, I knew he was a good kid and would probably go far in life. I didn't realize he would land where he landed but I'm happy for him that he did. Mr. H got himself a good one that's for sure.
 
Thanks, NASCAR, your crappy ass car has claimed another playoff contender. This car may be Steve Phelps "panacea" but it's quickly turning into a hot mess, and I think the level of unrest among the drivers is FAR higher than most people realize or care to admit.
 
Dale Earnhardt Jr said he suffered approximately 25 concussions during his racing career.

I would love to see a compilation of all the wrecks he thinks gave him concussions, but that aside, it exemplifies why the new car should have been a couple steps forward in driver protection, not a couple steps backward.
 
I would love to see a compilation of all the wrecks he thinks gave him concussions, but that aside, it exemplifies why the new car should have been a couple steps forward in driver protection, not a couple steps backward.

Well in the new cars defense, it is a step forward in safety as long as you crash going forward. It's a step backwards in safety if you crash backwards.
 
Well in the new cars defense, it is a step forward in safety as long as you crash going forward. It's a step backwards in safety if you crash backwards.

Has that actually been determined? At this point, I'm not ready to accept at face value ANYTHING NASCAR has to say about this car. I seem to recall some talk with a frontal impact that if you hit the Safer Barrier hard enough to get it to move, the hit wasn't too bad, but short of that, they felt VERY hard. As neat as the IDEA of a race car being able to hit stuff really hard and keep going SEEMS, I really don't feel like that is where we need to be going. A strong resilient body is one thing, the chassis needs to give. My honest opinion is Cup needs to be racing the Xfinity cars and then find something different for Xfinity.
 
I would love to see a compilation of all the wrecks he thinks gave him concussions, but that aside, it exemplifies why the new car should have been a couple steps forward in driver protection, not a couple steps backward.
A high speed crash into what is essentially an immovable object causes the driver’s brain to impact the inside of his skull. There is no helmet, Hans, seat or chassis development that can prevent that from happening.

Closed head injuries have been with us since the beginning, often with disastrous results. Lee Roy Yarbrough, Steve Park, Jerry Nadeau, Sam Ard, Ricky Craven, Ernie Irvan, Bobby Allison and many others. Earnhardt most often chose not to report his symptoms. Thank goodness for current awareness and concussion protocols.

Why did Carl Edwards quit? I wonder if it had anything to do with his wife’s line of work?

”Dr. Katherine Edwards is currently a physician working with patients in their rehabilitation with traumatic and severe brain injuries.”

 
Kinetic energy = 1/2 M (mass) x V2 (velocity squared) Damn you, velocity squared ... you’re always making things far worse by multiplying yourself by yourself ( see “dirty air”).

Want to dramatically reduce the force of impact against the wall? How about reducing the mass by 600 pounds and / or reducing race speeds by 10 or 15 per cent?
 
A high speed crash into what is essentially an immovable object causes the driver’s brain to impact the inside of his skull. There is no helmet, Hans, seat or chassis development that can prevent that from happening.

No, you can't prevent it, but what you CAN is try to slow the rate of deceleration by having more cushion and more crush, and this is where this car is failing.


Closed head injuries have been with us since the beginning, often with disastrous results. Lee Roy Yarbrough, Steve Park, Jerry Nadeau, Sam Ard, Ricky Craven, Ernie Irvan, Bobby Allison and many others. Earnhardt most often chose not to report his symptoms. Thank goodness for current awareness and concussion protocols.

The injuries have been there and they are not going to 100% disappear, but in many of the examples you posted, those injuries were severe enough to be life threatening. Now we are hurting people in cars that are driven back to the pits and repaired. I'm sorry, but I think that is a major difference. I just listened to Dale Jr. say that the ENTIRE car needs some serious rethinking in regards to impact absorption, and he, like myself questioned why in the hell somebody thought it was necessary to move SO FAR away from the previous car design and into so much unknown territory.
 
Kinetic energy = 1/2 M (mass) x V2 (velocity squared) Damn you, velocity squared ... you’re always making things far worse by multiplying yourself by yourself ( see “dirty air”).

Want to dramatically reduce the force of impact against the wall? How about reducing the mass by 600 pounds and / or reducing race speeds by 10 or 15 per cent?

I've been an advocate of reducing the mass for a LONG time. Agree 100%
 
No, you can't prevent it, but what you CAN is try to slow the rate of deceleration by having more cushion and more crush, and this is where this car is failing.




The injuries have been there and they are not going to 100% disappear, but in many of the examples you posted, those injuries were severe enough to be life threatening. Now we are hurting people in cars that are driven back to the pits and repaired. I'm sorry, but I think that is a major difference. I just listened to Dale Jr. say that the ENTIRE car needs some serious rethinking in regards to impact absorption, and he, like myself questioned why in the hell somebody thought it was necessary to move SO FAR away from the previous car design and into so much unknown territory.

Not defending the car here but slowing the decel rate could also be accomplished by further softening the walls themselves.

Busch and Bowman’s impacts were sufficient to cause injury. Whether or not either car was able to be quickly repaired to return to competition doesn’t change anything other than preventing Bowman from going to the care centre where he would have been subjected to protocol. That’s a problem even though his symptoms didn’t present until later.
 
Not defending the car here but slowing the decel rate could also be accomplished by further softening the walls themselves.

Busch and Bowman’s impacts were sufficient to cause injury. Whether or not either car was able to be quickly repaired to return to competition doesn’t change anything other than preventing Bowman from going to the care centre where he would have been subjected to protocol. That’s a problem even though his symptoms didn’t present until later.
The reason I think Bowman's wreck is important is that it illustrates that the driver is taking the impact, not the car. What good does it do to have a tank of a car if the driver is too hurt to drive it? As for the Safer Barrier, I don't know if any ongoing thought has been focused on them, but after two decades it seems reasonable to me to go back and see if a version 2.0 could reap benefits. If they get too soft, we are going to have long red flags while they are repaired, but maybe there is a happy medium somewhere. I don't know if changes to the foam blocks might provide more "give" without ruining wall sections, but I sure as hell would be testing it and finding out.
 
I've been an advocate of reducing the mass for a LONG time. Agree 100%
Why in the hell was Next Gen built to be so damn heavy? I would have thought with the road course thinking...lighter would have been better, but I am not an engineer.
 
For some reason NASCAR is fixated on having the cars run around with a truckload of tungsten in the frame rails. That is weight right there that could be dropped in a heartbeat.
 
The reason I think Bowman's wreck is important is that it illustrates that the driver is taking the impact, not the car. What good does it do to have a tank of a car if the driver is too hurt to drive it? As for the Safer Barrier, I don't know if any ongoing thought has been focused on them, but after two decades it seems reasonable to me to go back and see if a version 2.0 could reap benefits. If they get too soft, we are going to have long red flags while they are repaired, but maybe there is a happy medium somewhere. I don't know if changes to the foam blocks might provide more "give" without ruining wall sections, but I sure as hell would be testing it and finding out.
Believe it was mentioned they considered removing some foam blocks. Leave more space between them.

I'd scrap the car. Start over. Straight rear axle with 3-link suspension and put transmission back where it belongs. Then you can build a rear clip that allows crush without damage to the fuel cell. Steel controls arms. Steel wheels (don't care who says can't be done). Probably 16" wheels max.

Expensive? How much is a drivers career worth? Drivers have to be "approved" by sponsor. No sponsor, no team. <see Deagan thread>
 
Believe it was mentioned they considered removing some foam blocks. Leave more space between them.

Seems like a reasonable hypothesis, should be explored like yesterday. The problem with so much of this stuff is that nobody gets in a hurry until somebody gets hurt or worse.
 
For some reason NASCAR is fixated on having the cars run around with a truckload of tungsten in the frame rails. That is weight right there that could be dropped in a heartbeat.
If only the solution were that simple. A lot of weight (ballast) has to be added to the car to balance weight and get them to drive good. Sure you can pull all tungsten out of them but the car won't drive worth a crap. A bare chassis isn't really balanced where you need it to be.

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If only the solution were that simple. A lot of weight (ballast) has to be added to the car to balance weight and get them to drive good. Sure you can pull all tungsten out of them but the car won't drive worth a crap. A bare chassis isn't really balanced where you need it to be.

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Tough ****, as long as it's equally bad for everybody. In many ways we have been all spoiled by what we THINK we need.
 
If only the solution were that simple. A lot of weight (ballast) has to be added to the car to balance weight and get them to drive good. Sure you can pull all tungsten out of them but the car won't drive worth a crap. A bare chassis isn't really balanced where you need it to be.
Ballast is added in a manner that maintains left / right and front / rear weight distribution rules while getting up to minimum weight.

How do we know an un-ballasted car is unbalanced?
 
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