Safety, Driver Bashing, Etc: Some Post-Season Thoughts
With the awards banquet on tap, the sport
has wound down its competition for the year, but the debates and retrospectives
continue, and the safety issue keeps burning with a warning
issued by a panel of safety experts at The Performance Racing Industry show in
the Indiana Convention Center. "They said the factors that killed Dale Earnhardt….exist
at all racetracks with concrete walls."
The piece quotes Bob Hoekstra, who
developed an undergraduate program for race engineering at the University of
Central Florida, and also Bill Muzzy, a Navy and Air Force researcher who spent
three decades studying human tolerance to impacts. Hoekstra said that
"Earnhardt had a direct impact speed of only 43 MPH" and that short
track drivers "are going a lot faster than that….You can get hurt on a
short track just as easy as you can on a (superspeedway)."
My problem with Hoekstra’s analysis is
twofold. The lesser is the assertion that short trackers can get hurt as well as
superspeedway jocks. Now this is clearly accurate, but we needed a Central
Florida professor to tell us what self-evident truth, not to mention years of
witnessing racing, should have ALREADY told us?
But my bigger problem is the assertion
that Earnhardt was only going 43 MPH in his impact. I’ve gotten explanations for
the seeming discrepancy of racing at 180 MPH but hitting the wall with an impact
speed of only 43 based on the laws of physics, but I keep harkening back to that
circus-stunt crash test of the now-discredited Humpy Bumper at Charlotte, and to
similar tests of soft walls at Indy Raceway Park. In the Humpy Bumper test the
car was going about 45 MPH, and it was all too obvious that it was vastly slower
than real-world impacts, a trait repeated in the varied soft wall tests at IRP
that have garnered considerable publicity. The Humpy Bumper is now officially
dead, killed by the device’s lack of real cushioning effect.
I also hearken to the number of crashes
where concrete walls were pierced or cracked – the most under appreciated safety
scandal of the sport. In six instances over the last seven years – at Daytona
(Andy Farr) and Phoenix (John Andretti) in 1994, Charlotte in 1996 (Robby
Gordon), Atlanta in 1997 (Steve Grissom), Sears Point in 1998 (Jeff Burton), and
Dover in 2000(Tom Carey) – impacts were enough to crack open concrete and even
push back the impact point of the wall. Such does not come off as consistent
with 43 MPH impact speeds, and that more concrete walls have not been pierced is
something of a miracle.
Bill Muzzy discussed Earnhardt’s broken
belt and repeated the assertion of Bill Simpson that it was improperly
installed. Yet again, though, no mention is made of the belt’s character – it
being a pull-up belt, with the adjuster below the driver, a belt more prone to
such "dumping" breaks than the pull-down belts more commonly used.
"He died because of a tremendous
force on his head," Muzzy notes. Indeed he did – he struck the steering
wheel; his upper body struck the wheel. This, though, doesn’t stop the
inevitable HANS sales pitch by Bob Hubbard, who said Earnhardt would have
survived had he worn a head restraint. "If you don’t (wear a head
restraint)," says Hoekstra, "you’re taking your life in your
hands."
I constantly shake my head at such
proclamations, for years and years of witnessing drivers hit walls in fashion
similar to Earnhardt when not wearing head restraints and not suffering due to
their absence ought to indicate a level of exaggeration in such warnings. That
drivers’ heads can and do whip about the cockpit of the car is obvious, and that
it can and does lead to serious consequences is also manifest.
But if head whip alone killed Earnhardt,
then why did it not kill Richard Petty at Daytona or Bobby Allison at Talladega
– crashes where in-car footage showed serious head whip, and in Petty’s case it
was downright enormous – in 1986? Or Ken Schrader at Daytona in 1998? Or Rusty
Wallace and Dave Marcis at Pocono in 1999? Or Jeff Purvis at New Hampshire in
2000? Or Joe Nemechek at Dover in 2001? Or so many others over the years? Until
a convincing explanation for what would seem to be a self-evident discrepancy
comes along, then there remains a serious flaw in the head-whip argument, a flaw
ironically borne out in the increased use of head restraints. With their use we
have seen a number of drivers suffer concussions, notably Ward Burton at
Fontana, and since they are incurring such, how can it be said that they will
not suffer basilar skull fractures while wearing them?
Then there is continuing soft wall
testing, outlined by Mike Snow in Speedway Scene’s November 20 issue. Snow
reports that testing has gone from single-layer walls to "sandwich"
composites, designed to not trap a car during an impact. Such comes off as a
"hardening" of soft walls, an example of the trade-offs inevitable in
such engineering. With soft walls thus being hardened – a natural result of poor
results with previous generation soft walls – they are starting to become more
like regular concrete walls, indicating a truism that there is no "free
lunch" in such enterprises – to correct a problem within the solution one
risks merely restoring the original problem.
All of this is of course because, as Brett
Bodine put it, "NASCAR had to look in the mirror and say, ‘We’re not
doing enough of our job for (Earnhardt’s death) to happen in our industry. What
happened in Daytona….made us al aware that no one in motor sports is not at
risk, and we need to do things to lessen the risks.’"
But the approach has been flawed, and the
fiasco of pit-road crashes – where NASCAR lengthened the pit speed limit barrier
and crewmen started wearing helmets, only to see at New Hampshire the same
result as with the Homestead crash – shows the core flaw in this approach. The
effort is focused on treating symptoms with changes that have less to them than
meets the eye, instead of attacking the core problems. At almost all racetracks,
the core problem is that the speeds of the racecars are beyond what the tracks
can handle. Reducing speeds will not of course entirely eliminate the risk, but
it will do more genuine good than has been done.
The AP’s Jenna
Fryer notes that NASCAR "did things to lessen the risks" after the
October Alabama 500 – "When angry drivers confronted (Mike) Helton about
the current racing conditions at Daytona and Talladega…..the sanctioning body
responded with a brainstorming session attended by drivers, crew chiefs, and car
owners (and the result is) a new aerodynamic package the teams wil take to
Daytona in February……"
Except that this "new" aerodynamic
package is not new at all, but simply a "refried" version of a failed
aerodynamic package, a package these same drivers said was unraceable only two
seasons ago, and which was used to dismal results in Grand National racing in
2001.
That the drivers advocated returning to
this failed package speaks poorly of their judgment, and barring cooperative air
and weather these same drivers will come out of Daytona testing in January
lamenting inability to pass. When this happens will they remember what they had
taken off for the sake of a fictitious improvement in safety?
And of course drivers are attacked
verbally by fans constantly, and this is considered in very bad taste, to judge
from Carmen
Ellis’ peace at Teamracin.com.
"I often wonder just what our
favorite drivers think of us. Are we held to the same standards that we hold
them to. Do they scrutinize our every move like we do them?"
He asks the question based on
"episodes of driver bashing and just plain unkind comments towards a
favorite driver of mine." Mr. Ellis suggests that "some fans"
forget that "these guys are only human," and wonders if such bashing
derives from the bashers not being true fans, or because they hold the drivers
to higher standards, or because of caring only about themselves, or not caring
at all, or because of a perennial need to find something negative.
Now all of the above find themselves as
reasons for driver bashing, but the higher standards argument has the most
strength behind it, because higher standards are what the drivers ought to be
held to.
"These guys bust their
butts……just to bring a little enjoyment into our lives on race day. They are
doing what they know best, what they enjoy, and they are doing it for the love
of the sport…..Would they still be driving and building racecars if some of
the fans stopped watching races?"
But does this somehow immunize them from
criticism?
"These guys deserve more respect than
what they are getting, along with their crews. They work long, hard hours and
(if something goes wrong) there is a whole lot of bashing going on. I just want
to know why – is there even a purpose to it all?"
Yes there is. When these men do something
that is wrong, then they ought to be called on it, and when certain drivers
prove themselves deserving of ridicule and ungratefulness, then displays of such
should never be held back. "They are doing it for the love of the
sport" is rather laughable given the enormity of the money they earn and
how it has dulled the fire to a preposterous degree. That they all work long and
hard hours is clear to all, but this should never immunize them from justified
criticism.
I am tired of these arguments that the
drivers should not be attacked or ridiculed by fans just because they have a
very difficult job to do. If they are held to higher standards, it is because
they ought to be.