The 2022 running NASCAR, IMSA & other racing things thread

Interesting that you used JJ as an example. Before Steve Peterson unexpectedly passed away, I visited NASCAR's technical director and safety guru at the facility in North Carolina for a series of stories about what NASCAR was doing to further advance safety.

After the on-record stuff, he and I went to lunch and I asked him point-blank if there was anything he thought was still a concern with the COT. He said, "A direct driver's side hit on a car stopped sideways on the track." Even though they had moved the driver more to the center of the car and beefed up the cage, he wasn't sure the G-forces from an impact of that type would be survivable.

I happened to be at Darlington the night Jimmie got T-boned (he fortunately climbed out and walked away with minor bruising) and immediately ran down to the garage area before NASCAR covered up the car with a tarp. The door support on the left side had caved in a good five to six inches and was up against Johnson's seat. If not for mandatory carbon fiber seats with helmet supports plus the HANS, there's no way Johnson lives. If that had happened at 200 mph (Daytona or Talladega) instead of Darlington, it probably would have been not survivable.

I'm not a fatalist, but I think the next death in NASCAR will be someone trapped and dying of smoke inhalation. If a driver's knocked unconscious and the car is upside down or on its side and the interior fire extinguisher isn't enough, the safety team may not be able to get to the driver in time. Their response time is way better than back when local ambulances staffed races, but the high-octane racing fuel they use can't be easily extinguished by water, like methanol.

The second, but way more unlikely scenario, would be a sharp, heavy piece of debris that could penetrate the webbing on the driver's side window.

I'm just very glad I worked that long without having to write an obit, although Michael McDowell tried his damnedest at Texas.

 

Race fans don't want to see death. They want to see death defied.
Stock car drivers up until Feb. 2001 were knights of the track. Today's racers are video game players.

There's a reason Evel Knievel was popular.

 

"In bull-fighting they speak of the terrain of the bull and the terrain of the bull-fighter. As long as a bull-fighter stays in his own terrain he is comparatively safe. Each time he enters into the terrain of the bull he is in great danger. Belmonte, in his best days, worked always in the terrain of the bull. This way he gave the sensation of coming tragedy."

 

That almost happened when Mike Harmon hit the open gate during practice at Bristol. His car was literally sheared in half, slid down the track and spun perpendicular, and the next car coming around the turn smashed into what was left of his front end. When it was all over, Harmon simply unhooked his belts, stood up and was on the track because his driver's side door was completely gone.
If his car had slid a few feet further down the track, or that car would have been a few feet higher into the turn, it would have been ... messy.

 

Mikey was lucky to have survived his meeting with that damn gate at Bristol in 1990. They had to lift the sheet metal to figure out where he was inside what was left.

 

At least it's ready to run a modified race now.

 

Blaine Johnson didn't come out as well when his car hit a turnout at Indy, and that's why NHRA tracks don't have them anymore.

 

The Grosjean before Grosjean.

 

Can’t tell the Rolex 24 cars without a scorecard Andy Blackmore’s spotter guide (PDF link).

 

That's a huge help, especially with a 60-car field. Plus, there are at least two teams with identical paint schemes (and one running two different manufacturers). Glad I'm neither a spotter not broadcaster this weekend.

It's going to be pretty damn cold up on top of that spotting stand. Bundle up.