GT3-ers,

Many GT3s seeing track use, like mine, have a rollbar.

Some have a full cage.

(Of course many of the roll bar cars [again like mine] also see daily driver usage so the full cage isn't very practical.)

KEY ISSUE: How effective is the roll bar (bolt-in)? Are we in a fools paradise, thinking we have serious protection but in reality we don't?

Comments/thoughts welcome.

FRED

 

My guess is that it offers more protection than a car without it. A full cage is vital in wheel to wheel racing where getting T-boned is a plausible possibility.

 

A roll bar holds your harness shoulder straps and should give you additional protection in rollover and side impact at or behind the B-pillar. Obviously it won't do anything if you have an impact to the door or A-pillar area, and it won't stiffen the chassis like a good weld-in cage will.

 

Better than nothing. How safe is safe? Cage,fuel safe,window net, three layer suit, external kill switch... anything short of all of it the less safe than one that does. We all go over 130mph and really bad things "can" happen.
We all play the odds. For DE I think the roll bar is good enough. But remember Dell's video when he was almost Tboned?

Buddy of mine ended upside down and on fire in his GT2. Crawled out the passinger window. Just a DE day and hit oil from a car ahead before the flaggers were able to warn.

 

The teq bar DOES work in a roll.

 

my das sport roll bar saved my life and that of my gf in a very bad roll over. ill send you pictures if you shoot me an email. wont work for a Tbone in wheel to wheel though.

 

There is a lot of opinions about the Techquipment bar. I really do not see a value in the bar unless you have seats that will accommodate 5 or 6 point harness. There does seem to be a consensus regarding added chassis rigidity. I run the bar and find it functional. However I would opt for a full cage if I am going to run the car in POC Time Trial, or private club racing events.

 

We all should probably worry more about our safety on the road than at the track. Bring on the flaming.

Lifetime odds of any one person dying in a car crash on the road are ususally cited around 1 in 100. These are based on current annual death rates of 20/100,000 licensed drivers. This probably understates the risk since not all licensed drivers actually drive.

I haven't seen numbers for DE but assume the same risk parameters hold for the NorCal DE circuit: then assume there are 10 DE events to choose from per month (this might be high). assume 120 drivers per event. This means we sould be seeing 3 deaths ANNUALLY just in NorCal from DE events. This is clearly not the case to the best of my knowledge.

So yes we are right to focus on safety on the track but we might want to realized that we are probably FAR more at risk on the road.

 

I guess the statistic can be misleading too.. ?! I am guessing that the average cars being used in DEs are probably more well prepared, meet certain minimum requirement, etc. Hence the less fatality.

I guess what I am trying to say is, when you take your Porsche to real world, and going at 1/2 the speed as you do at track, it is really not "FAR more at risk".. ?!

 

171 mph,

Are you factoring miles driven per driver per year, or do you assume that DE drivers drive the same # of miles on track per year as the average licensed driver does on the street?

 

Agreed regarding the DOT driving however at the speeds most of the track collisions occur we are very exposed without the proper track safety gear. Also, I would expect many of the OT deaths are multiple car as apposed to the DEs which are single.

 

No i'm assuming simply the RATE of death is the same, i.e 0.0002%/year. This is quite conservative as obviously the average 'street' driver drives far more miles in achieving that statistic than the average 'track' driver. This might even go so far as to balance out the fact that the 'track' drivers have more safety equipment (to address cfjan's and roberga's comment).

I stand by my hypothesis that even factoring for added safety equipment and higher velocities, driving your porsche on the track is far safer than driving it on the street. There are uncontrollables on the street that we do not have on the track - drunk drivers, cellphone users, old ladies with extreme near-sightness....

 

A few years back, I was at a NorCal DE where someone died. I've driven a lot more street miles and haven't personally seen anyone get killed.

Dave, can you put your statistical spin on this?

 

Experience has shown that the Porsche Tequipment bar does its job. For DE I am content with the Porsche Club-Sport set-up, i.e., Teq bar Schroth 6 pt harnesses and the one piece GT3 seats. All engineered to work together. A full cage is safer on the track but a real hazard on the street when you are not wearing a helmet and illegal for that reason in most jurisdictions. I trust the factory engineers to design something that works.

 

Wait you were actually at the track?! i don't believe it! seriously dude we need you out at thunderhill or wherever. GT3 drivers are dropping like flies ever since Mooty dropped his last one (and this after conning me into buying his friend's car a year ago just so he could have sometime to play with). Haha!

OK i have absolutely no pertinent stats to back up my hunch - suffice to say we all pay a lot more attention on the track than we do on the street. Yes, i admit it i sometimes text on the highway.