Full Throttle

It took the death of NASCAR’s biggest star Dale Earnhardt Sr. in 2001 to add urgency to the sanctioning bodies efforts at producing a safer vehicle. The resulting car is getting its first full season test this year and at this point has generally received passing grades.

This past weekend saw the tragic death of Ashley Cooper from injuries he suffered when his vehicle crashed during the second-tier Fujitsu series at the Clipsal 500 meeting in Adelaide on Saturday.

It was the second serious accident in the Fujitsu Series following New Zealand driver Mark Porter’s death at Bathurst 1000 meeting in 2006.

The second death in less than 18 months has prompted V8 Supercars Australia chief Wayne Cattach to look at the possibility of a car design overhaul.

Although making no commitment he left open the possibility of a radical revamp of car design to make them safer through a purpose-built design rather than the current method of using production-based cars. Cattach said a similar solution to NASCAR’s could be looked at.

But he warned any change would involve heavy financial costs.

“I guess it’s really the cost of making that rather massive change,” Cattach said yesterday.

“If there was supporting evidence to do that, then I guess we would do it. At this stage there is nothing on the drawing board to affect that. Certainly we wanted to keep the cars in a form that gave our manufacturers the chance to market cars from them.

“In other words, not go down the NASCAR route, but have them as a silhouette of the road cars and have them have swinging panels and so on and so forth.

“That would be a very big exercise, to start with a clean sheet of paper, (but) it might be something that we need to consider.

“Certainly if we are in any way unsure about the strength and safety of our cars, well, that might be one option.

“But at this stage I wouldn’t draw that conclusion. I think the cars have, by and large, protected the drivers well.

“If you look at some of the colossal crashes we’ve had over time with very little injury, I think that’s a testament to the strength of the cars.”

Cattach said the tragedy would be fully investigated.

“We have had a preliminary look at the footage of the accident, and from what it appears, his car may have clipped the guard rail on entry to the corner.” “There is nothing that we can find that would indicate any failure of the seat, his HANS (head and neck support) device, the straps or the roll cage,” Cattach said.

V8 car safety came into question in 2006 when Mark Porter was killed at Bathurst with then Bathurst 1000 champion Craig Lowndes expressing concerns very similar to those heard in NASCAR when Dale Sr. died:

“Side impact is our worst nightmare because there is no crumple zone,” Lowndes said. “Front or rear impact isn’t bad because we have a large crumple zone. (On the side) there’s not a lot of room between us and the outside of the car. To have an incident like that (Porter-Clark) is pretty freakish . . . now we’ve got to figure out ways to prevent it.”

At the time Lowndes’ Triple Eight racing team went beyond then current V8 regulations and installed reinforced carbon fibre in the driver’s-side door.

Lowndes also expressed a desire to allow drivers to position themselves closer to the center of the vehicle (sound familiar? - ed) and adopting a driver safety cell like those in use in the German DTM car series. Essentially the cell is a pod-like structure that can be easily removed by rescue crews with the driver inside.

Ashley Cooper’s accident wasn’t the only serious one on the weekend, the V8 ute race in Adelaide had three drivers make trips to the hospital Sunday as the site of their crash was described as looking “like a war zone.”

It will be interesting to see what comes of any potential changes in V8 Supercar safety, will they go NASCAR’s route or remain with the current production based chassis? One thing is for sure it won’t be any time soon. NASCAR’s change took 5 years from a scratch pad drawing to the first prototype hitting the track for testing.

Interestingly, Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS), Australian Institute for Motor Sport Safety (AIMSS), Federation Internationale de l’Automobil (FIA), V8 Supercars Australia, the South Australian Motor Sport Board (SAMSB) and Monash University conducted research that monitored factors affecting the physiology of drivers, crew members and officials at Adelaide this past weekend.

While important in it’s own right they may all have a more pressing issue on their plate now.

Cross Posted @ Asian Motor Sports