Scott Brayton, Allesandro Zampedri and Fermin Velez at Indy, were under
IRL rules, in High downforce, year old cars, they were not CART crashes,
with the lower downforce 1996 CART spec cars, the speeds would have been
lower, and the Drivers more experianced.
only one of those is CART......IRL is a bunch of idiots, in unsafe cars
powered by time bombs.
Seeing many IRL crashes that have caused major injuries, I have to look
and see what is wrong. Did they learn from CART's 2 fatal mistakes in
CART-spec cars last year? Or were they out in "slower is safer"? Let's
examine the facts.
Major Injuries:
1996 MIS to Laguna Seca:
MIS: E. Fittipaldi
Indy: Scott Brayton (fatality), Allejandro (sp?) Zampedri, Fermin Velez(?)
Toronto: Jeff Krosnoff (fatality)
Las Vegas: Poster Boy (was it major or not? Not sure)
1997 WDW to present:
WDW: Davey Jones
Australia: C. Fittipaldi
Phoenix: (forgot, I think 2)
Indy: Scott Sharp, John Paul, Jr, Robbie Gordon (but that wasn't a crash)
Texas: Mike Groff
Pikes Peak: Robbie Buhl, Scott Sharp, Jim Guthrie
Loudon (test): Buzz Calkins
So you see how many people have been injured since the new IRL chasis has
been in effect. I may have forgotten some, but I obviously have a feeling
they didn't look at the fatal crashes of Krosnoff and Brayton and learned.
The biggest problem is the carbon fiber not absorbing the impact. That
is why some CART cars in similar or worse crashes have not been as bad as
the crashes above (except maybe C. Fittipaldi).
What is your opinion on this? I'd wished Leah, Allan, Ehud, and everyone
on RASI could come here and respond....
Christopher Sampang
MIRacing engineer
http://www.MIRacing.com
Chris,
I'm not up to the latest findings on what is good or bad about the
different chassis designs (perhaps a motorsports ng would be more
appropriate for your post?)...Anyway, Brayton's death was due to
rapid-decelleration, so I doubt any more protection could have helped.
As for Krosnoff, the cause was due to driver error, and the result was
unavoidable and unpreventable (from a mechanical standpoint).
We miss you Scott and Jeff!!
Marc
>[list of injured drivers snipped]
> So you see how many people have been injured since the new IRL chasis has
> been in effect. I may have forgotten some, but I obviously have a feeling
> they didn't look at the fatal crashes of Krosnoff and Brayton and learned.
Yeah, I'm sure the officials just totally glossed over the two fatal
crashes, and concentrated their safety efforts elsewhere... Not even the
IRL is that brain-damaged...
Rarely can one intelligently compare the severity of crashes by watching
them on TV. Seeing Brayton's accident on the news, after I knew he'd
been killed at Indy, I didn't think the incident they showed on the news
was the fatal incident. It didn't look significantly worse to me on TV
than many other crashes I've seen at Indy. Krosnoff's shunt in Toronto
was likely to be fatal in any open-cockpit, open-wheeled car. I don't
care if the car was CART, F1, F3, IRL, Dodge Pro, or whether it was made
of carbon fiber, Kevlar, steel tube, Legos or Tinker Toys; that was an
accident with unavoidably bad results for the driver.
There's a few things I have problems with regarding the IRL, but the
inherent safety of the cars isn't one of them.
Let's see them detune the motors, by limiting compression, forcing a
sealed rev-limiter of XX00 RPM, mandating the teams run a single motor
for several races, or some other means to force the teams (by the rules)
to build more reliable motors. Let's see them learn to count to 200 laps
(even using a computer if they have to). Let's see them put on a
consistenly good show for the fans. Leave the cars alone, put a reliable
driveline in there, and let's get on with it. I realize we've been
racing small-block Chevys a damn lot longer than Auroras, but something
tells me that the engine builders for the IRL are either being too
aggressive with their mills, or haven't absorbed any of the accumulated
body of knowledge of racing V-8 builders before them...
---Jim
I guess you have forgotten how big of a piece of S*/! the Honda motor
was when it made it's debut. Now it's the premier motor of CART. It
takes time to work out the bugs on any thing new.
I guess you have also forgotten the two laps at 200+ mph made at Texas
side by side by Tony Stewart and Buddy Lazier!
> I guess you have forgotten how big of a piece of S*/! the Honda motor
> was when it made it's debut. Now it's the premier motor of CART. It
> takes time to work out the bugs on any thing new.
Which I why I think the IRL might want to consider giving the teams a
helping hand until we do learn enough about the motors to make them
reliable. Compression and rev limits seem a pretty darn good way to do
that... If the teams are forced (by the fact that the rules permit it)
to build the motors right to the ragged edge, you'll generate lots of
ex-engine block coffee tables until they figure out what parts break
first and why. As more experience accumulates, you can loosen the rules
envelope somewhat, permitting more stress on the motors.
*Two* laps doesn't make a racing series. I never said there wasn't
side-by-side racing; mostly what I said was that the motors blow up
about ten times more often than the should. (Unless your comment was,
"Hey, look, we managed to get two IRL cars to simultaneously complete
two laps EACH without a motor failure..." in which case I mis-understood
you.)
---Jim
> I guess you have also forgotten the two laps at 200+ mph made at Texas
> side by side by Tony Stewart and Buddy Lazier!
</begin sarcasm>
2 LAPS!?!?!?!? Oh my gosh.. I've NEVER seen any of the real racers, er
CART racers run 2 laps side by side.. Could've sworn I was there and
watching Tracy and Moore go at it side by side for almost 100 laps, let
alone 2.. Wow, what an amazing thing..
</end sarcasm>
--
Dave Otterness
Yes but they will cause a big wreck
>> I guess you have also forgotten the two laps at 200+ mph made at Texas
Quoted text (13 lines)
>> side by side by Tony Stewart and Buddy Lazier! ></begin sarcasm> >2 LAPS!?!?!?!? Oh my gosh.. I've NEVER seen any of the real racers, er >CART racers run 2 laps side by side.. Could've sworn I was there and >watching Tracy and Moore go at it side by side for almost 100 laps, let >alone 2.. Wow, what an amazing thing.. ></end sarcasm> >-- >Dave OtternessThey can try using those Toyota's engines if they want to slow down the car
Hmmm...me thinks you're in err...Didn't Scott Pruett do a butt-
dance on the walls at the Molson event? Other cars were all
around him, but his loss of control was when the back-end shot
out from under him...Never say never.
The fin helps a great deal I'm sure, but is not a guarantee against
a spin. I understand that it's actually the track geometry that will
determine the outcome of a spin (at speed), depending on the
type of car involved, as well as its relative position to the turn's
apex.
Marc
