There may be no more profound example of the advancement of safety in NASCAR since Dale Earnhardt’s death than this:
Jeff Gordon, Michael Waltrip, Ward Burton and Roy “Buckshot” Jones are alive.
Since Earnhardt died in the Daytona 500 on Feb. 18, the four drivers have survived crashes into concrete walls at angles known to be conducive to basilar skull fracture, the injury that killed Earnhardt.
And all four, unlike Earnhardt, were voluntarily wearing head-restraint devices when they wrecked–Waltrip and Burton at Fontana, Calif., on April 29, and Gordon and Jones at Lowe’s Motor Speedway near Charlotte on May 19.
“What we’re seeing here is great success,” said Dr. John Melvin, a Detroit-based biomechanical engineer who is one of the world’s leading authorities on racing safety. “Very significant progress has been made when you look at the number of people wearing the HANS (head-and-neck-support system), the things they’re doing to strengthen seats, drivers going to six-point belts and various configurations of nets.” The nets are inside the driver compartment to help limit head movement in crashes.
Effective for Saturday night’s Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway, NASCAR has mandated a minimum driver-window height of 17 inches, to better accommodate the entry and rapid exit from cars by drivers who wear the HANS or other head-restraint systems. All but six in the 43-car field will wear head restraints–a radical turnaround from the Daytona 500 in February, when only seven drivers wore the devices.
All in all, there is more focus on safety innovation, by more drivers, teams, engineers and scientists, than ever before in the 53-year history of NASCAR.
“There’s a whole lot of people out there thinking about this,” Melvin said.
Although NASCAR has recommended the use of head-and-neck restraints, it does not require its drivers to wear them. NASCAR remains the only major racing organization without a traveling medical unit or on-board crash recorders. But with or without NASCAR’s involvement, safety innovations are on the way:
New seats: A revolutionary seat, a sort of survival cell made of composite materials, has been developed by a joint effort of two Winston Cup teams and Ford Motor Co., and has been tested by Melvin at the bioengineering facilities of Wayne State University in Detroit.
High-tech bumpers: Two energy-absorbing systems for the fronts of cars are under development, and one, nicknamed the “Humpy Bumper” by designing engineer Paul Lew, could be in use in races by mid-August, Lew said.
Traveling medical unit: A movement is under way to establish a specialized unit for NASCAR, which is the only major form of motor racing that doesn’t have one. Organizers of the effort say they’ve gotten a positive response from Jim France, younger brother of NASCAR chairman Bill France Jr., and therefore stock car racing’s second-most-powerful man.
On-board crash recorders: After lobbying by several drivers, especially three-time Winston Cup champion Gordon and two-time champion Terry Labonte, NASCAR officials acknowledge they are considering implementation of on-board devices. The devices have been in use since the mid-1990s by the other two top U.S. racing leagues, Championship Auto Racing Teams Inc. and the Indy Racing League.
“I think that will come,” said Melvin, who designed and developed the first computerized crash recorders for the two open-wheel series. “But I wouldn’t imagine they could do it before next year.”
Soft walls: NASCAR President Mike Helton said: “We continue the testing we began last year on wall materials [for energy-dissipating soft walls] and materials inside the car, and the configuration of those materials, in hopes something can be done to absorb the energy” of crashes.
Value to investigation?
Helton said NASCAR is on schedule to announce results “in early August” of its highly publicized internal investigation of Earnhardt’s fatal accident–and that the deaths in 2000 of Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin and Tony Roper have been “incorporated” into that probe.
Helton said: “Our position of not speculating, or not answering those who do speculate, has led to the implication that we’re secretive and trying to create a conspiracy. That’s unfortunate.”
But some are skeptical.
“I don’t expect a lot,” said Bruton Smith, chairman of Speedway Motor Sports Inc., the second-largest operator of racetracks (six) on the Winston Cup tour. “I think we already have the answers.”
Wanda Ellen Wakefield, an assistant professor of history at the State University of New York-Brockport, specializes in sport and popular culture and has been studying the post-Earnhardt phenomenon.
“I don’t think we can rely on anything that comes out of this investigation because it is not an independent investigation and it is not being conducted in the sunshine,” said Wakefield, who also has a law degree.
“If this were a criminal investigation, it would have to be thrown out. The evidence has been so tainted that we’ll never know.”
For example, emergency medical technician Tommy Propst, who unfastened Earnhardt’s safety harness at the crash scene, was not interviewed by NASCAR until after he told the Orlando Sentinel in April that Earnhardt’s lap belt was intact when he arrived.
The only independent study done thus far was of Earnhardt’s autopsy report and autopsy photos by Dr. Barry Myers, a court-appointed expert from Duke University. Myers, who is both a Ph.D. biomechanical engineer and an M.D. specializing in head and neck injuries from car crashes, determined that the separated lap belt, even assuming it tore during the crash, did not cause Earnhardt’s fatal injuries.
Wakefield suspects NASCAR will keep its fan base regardless of the mysteries in the wake of Earnhardt’s death but that economic forces will continue to pressure NASCAR for better safety standards and practices.
“The working-class, traditional NASCAR fan is prepared to accept whatever NASCAR says,” Wakefield said. “But I think folks who look at NASCAR more systematically . . . are going to continue to wonder what happened. And I think sponsors ultimately are going to be very concerned to see that something serious is done.”
Murky as the Earnhardt aftermath remains, there have been no deaths on NASCAR’s three major series–Winston Cup, Busch Grand National and Craftsman Trucks–since Earnhardt’s. There had been four driver fatalities in a 10-month span on those series.
And the possibility that, without head restraints, there might have been as many as four more deaths in Winston Cup alone since Earnhardt’s, “is certainly there,” Melvin said.
A debt to HANS
Gordon thanked God and the HANS for his ability to walk away from his crash at Charlotte.
“I hit at about the worst possible angle,” he said. “If you look at the right-front of that car, it took a big impact. My neck snapped really bad–it really stretched out there.”
Jones’ crash at Charlotte, even harder than Gordon’s, “really scared me,” Jones said in a story on CNNSI.com. “I knew it was going to hit hard. After it hit and I was still awake, I was, `Wow. All right.'”
Gordon complained of severe neck pain after the crash, and even “minor neck pain after a crash like that shows there was a pretty heavy load” of G forces, Melvin said.
Burton sustained a concussion in his crash at California Speedway, so the new head restraint he was wearing, developed by safety-products manufacturer Bill Simpson, is undergoing further testing.
But the device “probably did him good,” Melvin said of Burton, in helping prevent deadly basilar skull fracture.
Gordon, Jones and Waltrip were all wearing the fully tested and proven HANS system when they crashed.
The further development of head-and-neck supports and other safety features could be accelerated by the addition of on-board crash recorders, which NASCAR doesn’t allow.
Without on-board crash recorders “we don’t have objective data to say for sure that `this crash was as bad as that crash,'” Melvin said of comparing Earnhardt’s wreck with those of the other four drivers. “But these were heavy crashes. The consensus is that Burton’s crash at California was a pretty darn hard hit. And Waltrip’s crash was pretty darn hard, even though it was more of a side impact.”
Waltrip was the only one of the four who crashed at a side angle on the passenger side, which, Melvin points out, can be just as deadly as the right-front angle at which Earnhardt, Gordon and Jones hit. Veteran driver J.D. McDuffie died in 1991 of basilar skull fracture sustained in a passenger-side crash at Watkins Glen, N.Y.
Of crash recorders, Terry Labonte says he has been told by NASCAR officials that “they’re working on that right now.” The recorder monitors instrument readings, including speed and angle of the car.
“It’s real important that they have that,” Labonte said. “That way, you can go back and see what really happened–how many G’s were pulled in a particular incident.”
“I’ve always been in favor of them,” Gordon says of crash recorders. “I’ve talked to NASCAR about it, and I know they’re considering it. Now, it’s probably just a matter of how they get them, where they put them in, and making sure how they work.”
The recorders used on Indianapolis-type cars don’t translate directly to NASCAR applications because of radical differences in car construction.
“It’s not an insignificant job,” Melvin says of customizing recorders for NASCAR. “You’ve got to find a good place to mount them in the cars that gives you reliable data.”
But when and if the recorders are implemented in NASCAR, data may be gathered at a much faster rate than in Indy cars because “these guys are out there crashing all the time,” says engineer Tom Gideon, racing safety manager at General Motors. NASCAR simply runs more laps, more races, with cars more tightly bunched and therefore more conducive to wrecking, than the Indy-car series.
Better bumpers, walls
Currently though, development of high-tech energy-absorbing bumpers has been slowed by lack of hard data from crashes. “If you don’t have data, it makes development take longer,” Gideon said.
The Humpy Bumper–named for Speedway Motor Sports Inc. President H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler, who came up with the concept–has been through some General Motors-funded crash testing in Detroit, and engineer Paul Lew plans crash testing he hopes to have completed by the end of July, he said.
Melvin thinks the bumper’s developers “didn’t understand the problem at first,” but that “they’re learning quickly.”
The bumper is made of directionally engineered carbon fiber, which is designed to channel crash energy away from drivers’ bodies.
Lew says he’s in the process of acquiring five Winston Cup chassis for crash testing.
Canadian engineers developing another type of front bumper, made of stabilized aluminum foam, have encountered difficulties in figuring out just how to attach their device to current NASCAR chassis, and plan to confer with NASCAR, GM and Ford officials about possible reconfiguration of the chassis fronts.
“Once agreement is in place to define appropriate mounting, we’re willing to move forward to car installation,” said project manager George Daszkowski. “The big problem facing everybody now is lack of understanding of the underlying structure.”
In testing at the University of Windsor, “We’ve hit it [the aluminum foam `crash box’] square on the front, 30 degrees off the front, from the side and from the rear,” Daszkowski said.
But some computer modeling has indicated that the fronts of NASCAR chassis may behave very differently than has previously been suspected. The suspicion is that, because of the configuration of the bars and tubular steel in the fronts, the fronts of the chassis may be crushing too rapidly, and that the real culprit in transferring crash energy to the driver’s body may be the sheer mass, rigidity and weight of the engine itself. The solution, some engineers think, will be mounting energy-absorption materials directly on the front of the engine.
A proposal for a traveling medical unit is being developed, as a private, commercially funded venture, by two veteran marketing men on the NASCAR tour, Wes Beroth, formerly of RJR, and Bill Borden, who is a longtime friend of Jim France.
Many observers have long thought NASCAR’s objection to a specialized medical unit is rooted in fear of liability for treating injured drivers, and Borden said his plan is designed “to insulate” NASCAR from liability. He and Beroth are seeking private funding for their company, which would need only permission from NASCAR to operate their fully staffed unit at Winston Cup races.
Safety seats
The survival-cell seat, developed by Ford and two NASCAR teams, PPI and Roush Racing, “is oversized, and you fit the driver to it with bead foam,” said Melvin, who has supervised the testing. The driver has a tighter and safer fit in the car.
“It has been tested, and structurally it is very adequate. It does the work, but it hasn’t been tested by a driver to see if he can drive in it [comfortably]. So the next question is, is the configuration compatible with driving?”
And so, like the HANS, the seat will require some customizing and some getting used to by individual drivers. But while the composite-material seat is coming along, drivers and teams have come up with significantly more effective versions of NASCAR’s traditional aluminum-shell seats, Melvin says.
“Jeff Gordon’s got a pretty elaborate arrangement,” Melvin said. “It’s aluminum, but it’s got shoulder and head support. A lot of teams have changed their seats based on our advice to make the shoulder and head support stronger. Also, there’s been a number of net arrangements people have come up with that add strength and support.”
Equipped with the HANS and the most advanced seating arrangement available at this time, Gordon has done everything a driver can do today to assure his safety on the racetrack. Add crash recorders to facilitate energy-absorbing innovations currently under development (bumpers and “soft” walls) plus an expert, traveling medical staff, and drivers could survive even the most horrific crash.
Dale Earnhardt didn’t survive. But his death unleashed an unprecedented push for driver safety. Jeff Gordon, Michael Waltrip, Ward Burton and Buckshot Jones are his legacy.
