Big Cars, Big Report, Big Mouth , and HANS Hysteria
2001 has 14 races to go, and already a lot
of news is circulating regarding 2002. One of the bigger – pun – rumors concerns
the racecars, as supposedly NASCAR will mandate cars with a three-inch taller
roofline, three inch wider snout, and straighter angled windshield. Such a car
was tested at Talladega in April and accomplished nothing of worth – the car ran
faster than a car running the roof spoiler.
This is the mystery – why is NASCAR going
with a change it already knows has not tested well? "They have good races,
safe races, and the most competitive races they’ve ever had……they ought to
be focused on things like engines that cost so much money, and try to help the
sport," notes Andy Petree. "….slow the cars down at the other 34
races."
Part of the reason the bigger car ran
faster was that the higher roofline kept air off the rear spoiler and thus
reduced drag, but another reason lies in the very aerodynamic nature of modern
racecars – the car’s shape is still rounded like a teardrop; a higher roof and
wider nose does not add drag that can’t be massaged out of the body, which is
why the Craftsman Trucks are only a second or two slower than the cars at tracks
like Texas; it is also why the Trucks have forever flirted with restrictor
plates at Daytona despite their size greater than the cars.
The stories about this supposed change
make no mention about the roof spoiler and wicker on the rear spoiler, which add
drag that cannot be massaged out of the bodies and blast open more air creating
a far superior draft. NASCAR ought to keep the roof spoiler and wicker, as the
extra drag and stronger draft are necessary and effective.
So on August 21 NASCAR will release its
report on Dale Earnhardt’s death. Of course by then all involved will have known
its details, to go on leaks of the report that have circulated. And given such,
it is natural that The Big Report would once again bring out racing’s Big Mouth.
In his August 11 missive, Ed Hinton steals
one of Martin Luther King’s signature phrases – "NASCAR is changing. At
last, at last, Thank God Almighty, at last." The sheer cheesiness of
Hinton’s thievery turns off the reader immediately – that is, if the reader
managed to get past the grotesque opening paragraph about how "A mountain
is moving" and that its enormity is understood when one has "labored
on it for 27 years" and felt that a mountain would move "before NASCAR
would budge from its despotic ways."
Despotic? There is a sinister connotation
to the word that is grossly inappropriate to the subject matter – but which is
in keeping with the vulgarity that typifies Ed Hinton’s racing reportage over
the years.
>From the release of the report,
"NASCAR’s direction is not clear. But the possibilities are
wonderful." Why is that? Because "NASCAR is at the brink of agreeing
to crash recorders on the cars, the blue boxes Ford has been pleading to supply
for so long."
Ford has been pleading for installation of
these things? Now this missive was written before Robby Gordon’s similar
technology telemetry box erupted in flame at Watkins Glen, a spectacle that also
brought attention to the hitherto unreported rash of electronic scoring failures
that have permeated NASCAR the last eighteen months. And people advocate
installation of crash recorders that likely will not provide the right
information, and which will serve as eventual justification for installation of
more telemetry boxes and eventually traction control. The sport needs to be
purging itself of such technical devices, not adding more of them. Contrary to
the propaganda of their advocates, crash recorders do not provide information
that cannot be provided by real-world experience and observation.
Hinton goes on – "And…..no
organization is pursuing the elusive dream of energy-dissipating soft walls more
intensely than NASCAR."
"Dream?" Illusion is the proper
term, for no results of any value have ever come from soft walls, either in
testing – Bob Bahre notes in Speedway Illustrated that NASCAR testing of soft
walls at NHIS showed zero cushioning effect – or in actual crashes.
In a supreme irony, the HANS collar was
held as the savior of Roberto Moreno after he hit a soft wall barrier at
Michigan before CART qualifying there – it was said that without the HANS
Moreno’s head would have twisted and killed him. Now think about that – the HANS
collar saved his life – after he struck an object (a soft wall) that is forever
praised as a savior of drivers.
Hinton’s pathetic excuse for a column
continues as he writes, "The other forms of motor racing learned their
lessons in the 1990s, F1 from Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger, Indy cars
from Scott Brayton, Greg Moore, and Gonzalo Rodriguez. They had enough of dying.
They took off on techno blitzes to drive death from their realms (while) NASCAR
heard the alarm but was not listening. It took Earnhardt’s death to bring NASCAR
from the shadows."
The first sign that he is not on solid
factual ground comes when he mentions Gonzalo Rodriguez and Greg Moore, drivers
killed in CART cars well after the techno-blitz he mentions was underway. Nor
does he mention Sam Schmidt or Davey Hamilton, IRL drivers paralyzed or badly
injured in cars sporting the results of this techno-blitz. And he forgets the
six spectators killed at Michigan and Charlotte from flying wheel assemblies –
another offshoot of this techno-blitz. And that F1, CART, and IRL combined have
run fewer races with the same number of driver deaths as NASCAR’s three parallel
divisions further shows how this techno-blitz has not helped as much as Hinton
pretends it has.
But Hinton keeps going – "The
revolution in NASCAR is already under way. Were it not, the nightmare could have
been far worse." How? "Jeff Gordon, Ward Burton, Buckshot Jones, Elton
Sawyer, and Mike Skinner have survived this time of questionable cars and hard
hits against concrete, in crashes at angles the engineers and physicians know
are potentially deadly. They all wore head restraint devices since the death of
Earnhardt."
Hinton likely knows all of these drivers
took similar hits in years before they ever started wearing head restraints, and
suffered no head injury by the absence of head restraints, so his claim that
head restraints saved their lives is bogus. For Burton and Skinner in
particular, the illusions offered by head restraints were dispelled, as they
suffered injuries that, by the logic of HANS Hysteria, should not have happened.
And if head restraints are so good, why did Joe Nemechek not suffer any head or
neck injury in his Dover crash? And why did Ken Schrader not suffer any injury
after hitting the same wall at the same speed at similar angle as Earnhardt? And
don’t give me the "he was closer to the wall" argument, because
Earnhardt clipped him first and was slowed down, so that part was cancelled out.
The fact is nothing that comes out of the
Earnhardt report will change anything worth changing. Instead we may see changes
that are not needed and ought not be implemented. Head restraints are proving an
illusion of life saving, soft walls have already proven themselves a fraud, and
more crushable front clips sound like a good idea until you remember that bad
crashes were as common with softer chassis as today, and that recent stiffening
of chassis (the work of race teams, not NASCAR, despite attempts to pin NASCAR
on its change to harder-metal roll bars in 2000) hasn’t really affected the
safety of the cars. That drivers still routinely survive without injury in
crashes with these cars indicates that they do in fact offer excellent
protection. That the report will not change anything worth changing shows in the
fact that NOWHERE is there any discussion of the speeds of the racecars. It is
already well known that the speeds at New Hampshire, Texas, and elsewhere are
five-plus seconds a lap too fast. Amid all this technical examination of the
cars, they ought to be examining how speeds five seconds a lap slower than what
the non-restricted tracks are turning will soften the blow of impacts. 125 at
NHIS sounds slower than 185 at Texas, but given the size and shape of the tracks
involved such stats are misleading and this ought to be taken into consideration
in gauging how slower speeds affect these places.
Safety ought to be EFFECTIVE and not
dilute the toughness needed to race or wussify the competition. This is a fact
Ed Hinton has yet to recognize in his writing, but one the sport needs to keep
in mind.