Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

I speak after having been a racing fan of all kinds of racing for 75 years, a driver,race official, a promoter and the author of a book on the history of Kansas City auto racing called " UP ON THE Wheel". After watching the horrendous crash at Las Vegas and the death of the great IRL driver Dan Wheldon, it is high time we slow the cars down on the one and a half mile tracks. I feel they need to take away enough down force to slow the cars to 180 mph speeds. When you are traveling 220 mph you are covering more than the length of a football field per second, in other words at that speed you don't even have time to say Oh Shit !There's only time to say Shit when something bad happens on the track in front you. Someone suggested brake lights would help, but at this speed that wouldn't be a help.

There will always be high speed accidents, so we must find a way to design a tubular roll cage for IRL cars. The last 2 drivers killed in IRL racing, Paul Dana and Dan Wheldon, both went driver first into the catch fence. A roll cage would have taken the brunt of the impact instead of the driver's upper bodies.

My heart goes out to Dan's family, he was a real credit to our sport. RIP

PUT SOME DAMN ROLL CAGES ON THE IRL CARS. ==Bud Hunnicutt

 

Use Oswego type super mods. Maybe put ptople in the cars who are real race car drivers and get rid of the 20 rich kids.

You slow them down by keeping them on tracks like the Iowa SpeedWay.

A Bad Day Of Sprint Car Racing Is 10 Times Better Than 
A Good Day At Work!

My idea of an indy car.

Paul Dana did not go cage first into the catch fence. Dana was killed when he hit Ed Carpenter many seconds after Carpenter had crashed. You might be thinking of Tony Renna. Renna was killed in a 2003 tire test at Indy. No pictures or video has ever surfaced of Renna's Indy crash, but it was apparently a horrific crash that shredded both car and driver on the catch fence.

I get the point you are making about safety, and it is a completely valid point. I don't mean to be ghoulish at all, but 180 mph is never going to fly at Indy when cars were going faster than that 40 years ago.

I say it again you can not run crate engines as every one has same HP how do you pass some one That will be taken care of next year with diff. engines available. A roll cage will not help much if cage hits fence post at 200mph. A track that allows every car to flat foot it may be part of problem, that is why the Indy cars do not run at Daytona. They did one time and driver was killed. Only way to do it is with aero changes. The paying public will not pay to see cas like they were 50 years ago. I love the champ silver crown cars, but do see 100.000 people to watch the silver crown cars today? I think a 200 mph average would be fine, but you can not use a bunch of stupid ass rules. I feel the next tragic news will come from Bristol running asphalt sprint cars. A sprint car roll cage can not hold up to a 160 mph crash.

The solution is simple: Do what Mario says. More power, less downforce. A device that adds drag without downforce like the hanford flap will help as well. Read and understand what Mario says...

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/speed-quotes-mario-andretti-on-wheldon-safety-of-indycar-and-the-state-of-t/

You need to somehow eliminate the pack racing. The Hanford device was successful at that, but what do you do at the start of the race and restarts? Unfortunately, reducing the speeds a little is not going to stop drivers from being fatally injured. There is no way to design a mousetrap that will work in every crash scenario. It's racing, sh*t happens, and a lot of times, bad sh*t. Cages on Indy Cars? Seriously? Look what happened to Shane Hmiel at Terre Haute. How fast was he going? - way less than 180! Yes, Shane is alive, and lucky to be. Cages aren't the answer.

The one-off crashes are going to happen, because mechanical parts break. But, try to take away the human errors when the cars are in a dense pack. Remove the pack, and hopefully remove the pack crashes. But how are you going to keep a car from going airborne when it runs over a piece of debris from a one car crash? You can't design for every possible scenario. Make 'em safer, make it to where the driver HAS to lift going through the corners, and separate the cars. It's a start.

Greg Moore also pretty much hit the inside retaining wall top first in his unfortunate fatal crash in 1999. Another very talented driver lost way too soon.

Never hit stationary objects!