levd

My GT3 is not Club Sport (no roll cage, 18-way seats).

Is it much more dangerous to track it than "roll cage + buckets + HANS" setup?

I mean, if things possibly go wrong and car hits something or even rolls over?

Another thing is I've heard buckets with 6-point harness are very dangerous without HANS. Is it so?

robmypro

I think it only becomes dangerous when something bad happens. Personally, if I tracked my GT3 often I would want the roll cage, buckets and HANS setup. It will definitely be safer.

zedcat

I think of safety as a system. 3 pt belts and airbags are a system. A 4 pt roll bar (sometimes called half cage) plus seats, 6 pt harness and FHR (like hans) are a system. Hans is a must with 6 pt harness. without it your neck is the weak link in a frontal impact. That's what killed Dale Earnhart. With a 3 pt belt and helmet you have added weight to the head relative to the 3pt belts and airbag system design. A simpson hybrid FIA head restraint can reduce the head load in a frontal impact. A full cage on the street is generally not a good idea as your head may impact the cage bars in a crash. With a full cage system on track a fire suit is also recommended to give more time to exit the car in case of fire.

robmypro

Good point. I never really looked at it that way, but it makes sense.

lnirenberg

As someone who drove through 2 layers of water filled barriers head on last summer at a reasonably rapid rate, the 1/2 cage, 6 pt belts and Hans were a literal life saver. I emerged with only a burn from the airbag propellant. Obviously, proper seats are also required for 6 pt belts.

trader247

^^^^
This seems like the happy medium for street.

Before I went to a full race car I thought about what is the best to do if I were to just keep using my street car on the track. I chose dedicated race car, but that was for me.

If you want to make your street car safer then I think it will also depend on how you use it on the track. Just DE at 7/10 or do you want to get everything out of the car as you are able too? The closer you get to being able or wanting/willing to drive 9/10 or 10/10 then the closer you will be to wanting more safety.

shapiroeric

Anytime you get into a car, track or street, it's dangerous.....honestly I feel safer on a track with sofas and 3 point belt than on the street....it's a controlled environment and I never drive past my capabilities....it's not a race and there are no trophies....I always check my ego at the gate....this concept was pounded into me when I started.....

levd

Track is not always a controlled environment. Last year the car that was behind me completely lost brakes at 200 km/h. Fortunately the driver managed to crash by himself and did not hit my car while I was entering the corner. But it was really close and I had zero control over it.

I don't drive without fire suit on track any more. No exceptions. However hot it is, I always wear it.

I do not street drive GT3 much lately, it's mostly used for track. And as I've seen bad things on track from both outside and inside the car, I now think it's probably too reckless to track drive with street safety system.

Club Sport + HANS seems like more reasonable safety system for track. The quiestion is - is it really so?

Does it really give more chance to survive if bad thing happen on track? If yes (which is at least the logic behind the existence of such a system), than is it "a little bit more chance" or "much more chance"?

pimpinon

Not having a cage keeps me from driving 10/10th of the car's capabilities, a more prudent 6/10th. In a way this is a safety feature in itself.

On the other hand, when I get in my friend's Cup car, around corners I 'm yelling at the car " give me more, you B****!"

zedcat

I think in the end it's a personal judgement. There isn't readily available data to quantify how much safer. but the standard tests performed on 3pt/ airbag systems are at relatively low speed. I would rather be in a seat/ harness/hans in a crash on track at speed. Another aspect to consider is seat/harness can be a performance upgrade too. If the seat fits well and you are firmly strapped in you can feel what the car is doing better and not using hands and feet to brace and hold in position.

Alan Smithee

Please add at least a roll bar to that combination. Being firmly strapped to a fixed-back seat in a rollover without could be deadly.

tstafford

I have a "half-cage", six-pt belts and the factory buckets. This allows me to wear neck device - I like the Simpson FIA because I still find myself in cars w/o cage/belts fairly regularly.

TRAKCAR

You have, or you will.

I'm not wearing a fire suit, actually I'm most often in shorts and Tshirt because cooking in the car and heat stroking I bet is the biggest reason people lose focus and crash on their own in the South.
Some of us are middle aged non-athletes.

I don't have to have a roll cage, just a roll bar because no one sell a cage. I've driven the car bone stock at 10 different European tracks because 2 pedals allows you to brace without harness. Didn't love it but at least there are a lot of airbags.

A fire suit, full fire system and roll bar will help if you are a rare bad luck case.
Everyone's tolerance for risk is different.

I think 911's are some of the safest cars to crash in.
I've crashed a 964 hard and the roll cage, halo seat etc helped a lot.

New cars have pretty good, very safe fuel tanks.
My limit is a roll bar and Hans devise. Hard crashes are hard on the neck and my neck is pretty ****ey as it is.

I find it inexcusable that Porsche actively denies us a factory roll bar, cage, harnesses and track setup guide.

Now if the idiots in charge in the USA DE world would just let us run with the windows closed....

Someone will sue Porsche and track and organizers for above...
By the time it gets sorted, we all drive electric pods...

zedcat

Agree! unintentional oversight on my part, thanks

Mike Murphy

Its not just you. This is known as "Risk Compensation," and can be applied to lots of things that have some factor of risk.

To the OP: I think it depends on how much time you spend tracking. Risk is a funny thing. If you ask people to rate the chances of death comparing skydiving to riding a bicycle, most people think that skydiving is way more dangerous. But the numbers are close to 1:100,000 (chances of death). This is a skewed number, though, depending on where you live, and while driving a regular car on the street is supposedly 7 times more likely to result in death than skydiving, of course, most of the reason why is because we drive cars way more often than we skydive.

As for the idea that the track is a controlled environment, every single track day I've ever been to results in either:

1.) A spin
2.) A blown engine
3.) Someone went off the track

I usually don't see any of these 3 things when I drive to work in the morning, although I sometimes see 1 or 3.

So, tracking is safe until it isn't, at which point, you are going to wish you beefed up your safety equipment.