DIDIT
Old School Fan
That is what 410 sprint car racing is all about. You just don't show up with a helmet and win these races. Bowman is a good driver and it's super tough competing at the Outlaw level.
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.I hold Alex in high esteem for this work. He is an exemplary human being.
And he runs dirt cars.
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.
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 roadster days they didn't, and a LOT of people died. Even the early rear engine cars seemed to be pretty solid.Imagine if Indy cars didn’t disintegrate upon impact…
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.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.
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?
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.
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.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.
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.I've been an advocate of reducing the mass for a LONG time. Agree 100%
Believe it was mentioned they considered removing some foam blocks. Leave more space between them.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.
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.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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Ballast is added in a manner that maintains left / right and front / rear weight distribution rules while getting up to minimum weight.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.