Surviving A Wreck That Would Have Been Fatal: Luck Or Engineering?

Editor

In a really vicious wreck on the track, the best thing a race car can do is come apart. A multiple-barrel-roll thrill-ride featuring a car that’s dumping flaming debris and fluids all over the track might look really scary, but it usually means the driver’s just fine–by contrast, when a car is brought to an abrupt but unspectacular halt after hitting a guard wall or a dirt embankment and the window net doesn’t come down, it’s usually a sign of big trouble. Same as in highway crashes, the old truism holds that energy dissipated through flying car parts and rending sheetmetal is energy that the driver’s body will not have to absorb. In stock-car racing’s past, many of the fatal wrecks are those that don’t really look all that dramatic at the time–Dale Earnhardt’s tragic last-lap crash at Daytona in 2001 comes to mind. And perhaps ironically, it was this very incident that changed the sport’s entire approach to driver safety, and paved the way for cars that now crash very differently from the way they did even a few years ago. Read more…

The last couple of seasons in NASCAR have borne witness to some exceedingly spectacular wrecks–most notably Joey Logano’s magic carpet ride, Kasey Kahne’s near over-the-wall jump into the Pennsylvania foliage, and the ongoing aerial acrobatics between Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski. And this last weekend at Pocono, on the same grassy stretch where last June I’d photographed racing Cup cars at closer range than I’d ever seen them before, Elliott Sadler’s Ford hit the solid infield embankment hard enough to tear his entire engine and most of his front clip clear of his car. But, either miraculously or as a result of brilliant engineering, there hasn’t been a single fatality or even serious injury in Sprint Cup since that terrible day at Daytona.

For their part, the privately-owned tracks have been making major improvements as well. SAFER barrier’s been added, pit rows widened, track surfaces repaved. After the hellacious last-lap wreck involving Kahne in June, Pocono Raceway in particular has been planning some extensive improvements, including building closer retaining walls and eliminating some of the wide slippery stretches of grass that help off-course cars gather speed before they’re slammed into unprotected barriers, just as Sadler’s car did on Sunday. There’s been a lot of talk about safety, interestingly, at a time when the cars are safer than they ever have been. But perhaps more ominously, there’s also been a lot of talk about driver recklessness and apparent sense of invincibility amidst this new cocoon of safety: chillingly, the day after what’s being called the hardest hit ever recorded in Sprint Cup racing, Sadler says he’s got no qualms about getting back into a car he feels is virtually “indestructable.” What it all seems to add up to is that the luck that has smiled on NASCAR since the advent of the Car of Tomorrow can’t possibly hold, that the drivers are really pushing it, and that sooner or later, as history has shown, the sport will see a wreck that will end someone’s life.

What do you think? Has NASCAR reached some kind of magic tipping point where the racing is so safe that fatal wrecks are virtually not even possible? Or will it take another tragedy to drive home the point that hurtling through space in a sheet metal shell is dangerous no matter how you cut it?

Sadler, the following day, talks about his Pocono crash:

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Posted at 2:34 pm in Jen Dunnaway, Motorsports, NASCAR, Sprint Cup Series, Wrecks

Comments

1978bluecamino
Aug 6, 2010 at 9:19 pm

Theres two kinds of “famous people” i have the utmost respect for: real musicians and NASCAR drivers. The thing i like the best is that he was able to talk to the driver that sent him into the wall and work it out. they both know its a dangerous sport, so its all good. safety or not, NASCAR has to live on. they can improve safety, but its not cool anymore if safety gets in the way of the quality of the sport. party on, NASCAR

DaveIndy
Aug 5, 2010 at 1:32 pm

Exactly how do you design a car to survive a crash at 180 MPH? Much like production cars, they aren’t built for demolition derbys? But accidents and stupidity happen. There is risk involved everytime you get behind the wheel, be it NASCAR or a city street.
Since Daytona 2001 there have been huge changes in safety that sacrfice the car, for driver safety. Driver reaction also plays a part in crashes.
I believe this is why “restrictor plates” were implemented?
The cars of NASCAR are safer than production street cars, now made mostly of plastic.

WWW116
Aug 5, 2010 at 11:04 am

Grace!

Oafman
Aug 4, 2010 at 10:30 pm

All of these changes have made Nascar much safer than it used to be. We are down to a death every 5-10 years instead of every 1-2 years. Still plenty of room for improvement.

GTwildfire
Aug 4, 2010 at 7:26 pm

Thinking nobody will buy the farm is borderline idiocy. Physics will find a way to get a fatal dose of unreleased energy to a driver. Not hoping for this of course, but they’re whipping around the track and even the best planning, wisdom born of pain is flawed.
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Taking the worry away has its benefits. They can be at ease more and focus on the race better, but things can and will happen. Only a fool would think they can’t.

Steve Little
Aug 4, 2010 at 3:08 pm

Seeing Sadler crawl out of that car with just the look that he was hurt being only that he was fine and just sore from the belts, while the car’s front end was torn completely off with the engine literally sitting in the infield shows how safe those cars really are. It’s been a few wrecks since ’08 when the COT started to be used full time where they might not have been fatal but the driver would have came out hurting. Most i remember seeing a driver hurt was Brad Keselowski i think at the Atlanta race earlier this season but he was just sore so was alright.
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After seeing these wrecks in the COTs it’s making me wonder if they are as safe as humanly possible. But unfortunately I’m sure sooner or later there will be a wreck so bad that they have to up the safety even more. But as i see it, i think the only way a driver will get hurt so bad to miss the next race is if a big fire somehow gets inside where the driver is and burns the driver somehow. I remember Mark Martin’s car being engulfed with flames in the engine compartment, underneath and in the trunk area but NOT inside where he was, that also shows how safe the cars are.
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So i don’t think it’s luck, it’s just not that much good luck in NASCAR for every driver to walk away from all those really bad wrecks the past 2 1/2 years and not get hurt. So it has to be the cars being safe. Only luck in NASCAR is sometimes winning the race, thats about it.