Circuit Motorsports

Yep, Miller Motorpsorts Park is FIA certified, not sure who else is. Laguna possibly, Thill and Buttonwillow not likely. With most clubs not being FIA based here there just isn't the push. Some clubs have standards but nothing on the level of FIA.

333pg333

I'm not sure if this is a stupid thing to say or it's just so obvious that nobody discusses it, however why do we generally have concrete or armco to hit when or if we have an incident? Why can't they be something that is way more forgiving? Surely in this day and age it would be easy to invent a material/s that could cushion and absorb the majority of the impact AND leave your car not totally destroyed. Something pneumatic or some type of netting. I don't know. All I know is it has to be possible to improve upon what many of us deal with every time we go to the track.

Not to be at all disrespectful, but why are trees even anywhere near a run off on a racetrack?

chrisp

Road America gets kudos for the bridge and other improvements but at the end of the day the single biggest risk (the wall outside the kink) is still there and there's at least one death there that I'm aware of in recent years. We all thought Katherine Legge suffered the same fate.

I know why the wall hasn't moved (property line and wet land issues) but the turn hasn't changed has it? Why not mandate the chicane (which I believe is designed for two-wheelers) or build some other layout to reduce speed?

Personally I always prefer improved safety over reduced speed (keeps the excitement factor) but in a case like the kink there's not much choice.

The challenge is that these corners are marquis corners and in many cases define a big part of the personality of the track so people resist changing them. Kink at Road America, Downhill at LRP, T12 at Road Atlanta, Esses at WGI, T2 at Mosport are the ones I can think of.

Larry Herman

It depends on the topography. Most of the "non-armco'd" tracks have a reasonable distance to any trees, but you can cover a lot of ground on wet grass. At VIR, there are places that if you go off, you can safely slide downhill for hundreds of feet, and then hit a tree.

bobt993

Larry is correct on that one. I have seen a car go off in hog pen (VIR) on wet grass and make it to the woods. It looks impossible from any perspective, but it happens. Concrete is typically there to protect the spectators who signed up to watch.

Brian P

Exactly. I feel that tracks need a corner that demands respect and separates the men from the boys. I agree that an off shouldn't be fatal, but there should be serious consequences if one tries to take the corner WOT and fails.

SundayDriver

First of all, the most used soft barrier is tire walls. A couple of reasons you may not want to use these.One is the unintended consequences of tire walls. They can grab a car and make a small crash into an upside down, bigger crash. If close to the track edge, they have a tendency to toss the car back into traffic. Overall, they are a good but not a magic formula.

Other technologies exist, but have their own issues. Not the least of which is cost. We all want the tracks safer, but many participants in racing and DE cannot or will not pay double, triple or higher rental fees. Most tracks do not have the huge gate of a top level spectator event or two. Thus they cannot afford major investments in leading edge safety.

As far as trees, or anything else, being close to the track - close is relative. There are may cases where it appears that trees (and other) stuff is outside the hazard area. But stuff happens. We had a car go off T7 at Mid Ohio. It traveled into the spectator area. Fortunately, that was not a major event and the area was not open to spectators. Not spectator injuries but that would have been a very different story had it been a different event. Thousands of cars have gone off there over the years. None had gone over that last fence. It looked safe. But all of a sudden, an odd event happens and we realize it is not as safe as we thought.

Bottom line - we don't fully understand all the consequences of safety 'improvements', we can't full predict what a car might do and tracks are businesses with budgets.

How many would be willing to pay $1k, $2k or more for one day on the track because it has higher safety?

smlporsche

There is...Safer Barrier from our friends who only turn left...

http://www.sciencecoalition.org/univ...rch.cfm?page=4

smlporsche

That's true Larry andI'll agree that it is impossible to make any track 100% safe but to give you an idea of a known hazzard just think of the drainage pit/hole between South Bend and Oak Tree at VIR.

You would think it would not be a teribly hard repair but instead they put a cone over it and give you something to aim for when you drop your wheels off at 10 (not that I've ever done that).

gums

That's one reason why I love to look at pictures from the past. It makes you wonder what the hell we were thinking back then?

Potomac-Greg

True, but would we all be willing to suffer a 30 minute red/black flag session to replace a crunched safer barrier? I think the delays caused by gravel traps has led to greater use of paved run-off.

MJones

Barber Motorsports Park is FIA certified as well

Circuit Motorsports

Safe Track? None will ever be truly safe as everyone else has said.

I do think there are Good Safe Tracks. Those are track who try to plan for every known/assumed issue but when something odd happens they then react to the new issue and make sure it won't happen again.

It's just like customer service. It's easy to meet expectations and that's not really customer service. What customer service really is, is how well you respond to adversity.

The ball is in every tracks court when someone goes off 'where noone ever thought they could'.

TheOtherEric

+1. IMHO it's ridiculous that they've spent so much $$ at RA on the bridge and runoff areas but have completely ignored the Kink. It's ridiculous. I'm sure they have excuses but I don't give a damn about excuses.

SundayDriver

I am curious as to what you think they should do. They have provided a safe alternative with the bypass. They can widen it so it is no longer the kink (easy flat for everyone). What should RA do to this corner?