butzip

not built 'Ford tough'......

prg

I'd have to argue with this statement. Hallett has an outstanding safety record. I've raced there 10-15 weekends a year and seen only one serious injury in a car. (due to hitting a corner workers bunker at 100+mph.) In the 30+ years it has been open, there has been only one fatality in a car. (The bike guys are another story.)

The whole point of this type of tire wall is that you hit the soft tire wall, the tires go flying in 30 differrent directions taking your energy with them. You deccelerate gradually from 90 to 0. I don't think any of us who race at Hallet are going to be asking them to "improve" our safety by erecting concrete barriers behind the interlaced tire wall.

I've hit this very tire wall in this very place at about 60-70 mph in practice in a spec miata. We rolled the car back over, towed it back to the pits and I was back out in qualifying the next session. The soft walls generally do a great job of minimizing injury to drivers and cars.

This was a freak incident. In a typical race weekend 2 or 3 cars will hit this tirewall. I've never seen one ever get to the safety fence.

Gasser

I agree. I have seen many cars get into the tires at hallett and have fairly minimal damage. However that said, I have seen that corner more than once have a car upside down there. There are two rows of tires to the left and my buddies Cab 996 was upside down there. However being a cab and a well built Porsche it held up with a Porsche factory roll bar and aftermarket Porsche made SS roll hoop behind the drivers head. The A piller held perfectly as well.

People, if you want to drive fast and push any kind of limit then please Please put in some safety before spending the money to go faster. I think you can all see why... Brings back memories of the GT3 at MSR that went end over end at a DE a year or so back. Anything will and can happen. At Hallett years ago a friend lost a wheel comming out of the bitch and rolled. Had a student in the car. Everybody was fine. Stuff happes so be prepared. Thats why I use my fire suit even in DE days and practice. You never know. Hans never gets disconnected from my helmet.

Have a great day.

P.S. By the way PRG, I go look at your car every event I get to Hallett. Love it. I heard its for sale? Its always fun watching you open wheel guys run out there. Sounds amazing...

prg

Thanks, stop by and say hello.
The car is probably going to get sold this winter. It's like heaven on stickers, but after 4 heat cycles its diabolical.

kurt M

PRG, I think the key is that you and the mustang hit the tires and rolled. The mustang fliped due to the tire configuration alone. The idea is to soak up the energy and not have the car get jacked into the air during. Bolted sets of tires with belting tend to stay together and not form a ramp as the car dives through them. the absorption system should not have a tendency to elevate the car. The mustang looks like it was jacked by the first row and skipped over the second row and fence rendering them both useless in slowing the car.

RedlineMan

What he said ^^^

Just because you've never seen it doesn't make it any less dangerous, does it? Just because it has never happened does not change the fact that this is not an ideal arrangement. This incident should tell you all that you have been LUCKY, not safe. A little old bowling pin will deflect a 16lb ball going 20-30mph an amazing amount, but it will never slow it down much. That's what you have here. A couple hundred pounds of bowling pins trying to slow a 3000lb ball with 50-100+MPH of energy included.

An average little off may only scatter a few tires around, but you need to think beyond that level into what COULD happen. In this case, IT DID.

Flying Finn

Not trying to say bolt in cages are as good as welded in but it doesn't automatically mean if a cage is bolted that it's bad but in this case, the cage was bolted to the floor pan (instead for example to frame rails) which of course is a crucial mistake, it was mentioned that this was cosmetic cage so I guess it never was meant to do much protection after all.

However, the reason I'm mentioning this is because the GT3RSs bolt-on cage is bolted to the floor pan, not anything more substantial...

Z-man

Glad the Mustang driver got out of that ok, HOWEVER, if he has the means to make a car look good and go fast, he should also make sure he is properly protected. Wonder what type of fire supression system he has in that Mustang...

Safety equipment should always be the first upgrade. And the second and third upgrade.

Regarding bolt-in vs. welded - if a welded in cage is incorrectly done, it isn't effective either. Cosmetic rollbars in a car placed on the racetrack is senseless to me...

-Z-man.

kurt M

I still do not see how the driver lived. Where the heck did he go when the roof rain gutter met the door window lip? . Was his containment system poor enough that he displaced from the seat or formed the classic frontal impact "C" shape and he folded in the middle?

rlm328

Please note it was a "Roll Bar" not a roll cage. He was going to upgrade to a roll cage. The amount of force applied to only one leg had to be phenominal, no wonder it punched through.

SundayDriver

If you saw the photos from the passenger side, you can see the roof was crushed on the drivers side edge and there was still a lot of height in the passenger side and even the center/right of the drivers side.

Looks very lucky to me.

Streak

Note to self: Check roll cage mounting points.

gums

I'm not able to see any of these images, as much as I'd like to, but I'm also betting that the occupants were NOT wearing full harnesses, as these are designed to act with the roll bar as a system. If they were held in, upright, I don't think they'd have walked on this one.

Potomac-Greg

If they were in 3 point seat belts they could have executed the miraculous, inverted, rotating, "I'm-going-to-lay-down(up?)-right-over-there" maneuver as the car was cartwheeling and the roof collapsing.


Heck, if they had harnesses anchored to the roll bar, I wonder what happened to the harness as the roll bar got jammed through the floor.

gums

Yeah, that too!