M758

Safety is not an simple thing to judge.

For example some tracks have enough room that a little mistake won't cause damage or immeadate wall/armco impact. The fact is any time you hit a solid object the risk of injury increases.

So you really need to understand the frequency of wall/amco impacts as well as what happens when you do.

So having 200 feet of run off is great to reduce frequency of damge, but if the only thing at the end that 200 feet is trees if someone goes in those trees it can be bad. Very bad. However you figure in 200 feet how many cars will get there. Contrast that to a armco 5 feet off the track. You will have alot more cars hitting the armco and some will do so quite hard.

So what is less safe? Well if you running the odds probably the one with armco close for ever 1000 cars that pass a greater percent will hit it. Then safety when you hit it come down the particulars of how and the safety gear in the car.

Bottomline is if you can avoid the sudden stop nd prevent a roll safety levels are generally better.


So to do it right you need to look at the terrain and provide run off where it likely to be used. You need to make sure the run off is smooth so that it minimizes the risk of causing a car to roll. Then once you run out of run off you need to have some form of barrier to keep the car in the track and avoid things like trees, ditches, spectator areas and paddock areas. Alll while working on confines of topography and property boundtries.

Then when you realize you can provide an effective compromise you adjust the course to reduce the speed or change the approach angles to whatever feature you cannot design around.

Personally paved run offs are probably the biggest track safety improvment since tire barriers. The paved run off minimizes the changes of roll over and proviess grippy surface for a car's tires to slow the car. All the while it minimizes the need for extensive clean up or extended yellows when a car doe go off. Their downside is cost, space and limited effectiveness on cars with no tires.

gums

paved runoff is proving to be the best, just look at Greg Moore's tragic result when he slid across the grass. Soonafter most ovals paved huge areas like that one.

Gary R.

Agree Frank and I think it's great that the Glen is paving those new areas for this year.

sig_a

But asphalt presents additional headache and extra cost for track owner in control of storm water released back into the existing streams, contaminated storm water run-off being collected to water settling ponds and catch basins, EPA clean water certification and monitoring, potential flash floods of adjoining properties......

Provided a large enough area, tall, thick grass on a smooth and more or less level surface would seem to provide as much potential protection as asphalt. Putnam Park is pretty close.

Gary R.

Nah. Grass gets wet and it and the soil stays wet. I slid (as did Fred C.) about 100 yards into the woods at Limerock off T1 and that's only about a 75 MPH spot. For me I missed the trees (miracle) and had a car full of twigs. After my incident they put up concrete barriers, which Fred hit (at about 5-10MPH). If that was even 1/2 paved we both would have stopped in less than 100 feet. The runoff isn't all that hard to deal with!

Brian P

Speaking as someone who has crashed in that corner, I wouldn't change a thing.

Brian P

Come on... if they paved it more, you guys would have just used that extra track and still have gone off. Is there a patch of grass that Fred hasn't used yet?

Gary R.

Even Fred considers the outside of Big Big a !

And when LRP is concerned, runoff is no problem at all, they just will have another pond there!

TheOtherEric

The bypass is a joke; nobody uses it. The obvious answer is paved runoff after the kink. And that's where all the excuses start. Considering the huge amount of construction to remove the bridge, wouldn't you think there's SOMETHING they could do for runoff at the kink?

And if that's truly impossible, then hell move the whole damn portion of the track east. Literally move the kink and 300 yds of track around it 10 yards east to make runoff room.

And if that's not possible, do x, y, or z. And if those aren't possible, put in a permanent bypass/bus-stop. Something. Anything.

Racerrob

Agreed to both. Having had a few offs in my time, I would prefer paved run off when there are objects to hit.

James-man

"Really Safe Track" is a sales slogan that a driver says to his wife.

TedA

Safe...hog pen at VIR...off track.. into wet grass you could make it to the Dan River... but you are gonna have plenty of time to plan your back stroke before you get there.

C.J. Ichiban

ha +1

RonCT

I didn't read through all the replies, so forgive me if this has been said already. Your choices don't correspond to your question, so you aren't going to get a valid cross section. You ask what we feel is the safer track style, but then you put in a catch-all, that all are basically unsafe.

I'll compare the 2 tracks I know best: Lime Rock and Watkins Glen. I find Lime Rock to basically feel "less risky" because of the many areas of runoff (end of main straight, lots of grass inside and outside of Big Bend / Esses, etc.). I see many cars going off in those locations and most end up just fine, though dusty / muddy. The Glen feels more intimidating for sure with all the Gulf Blue Armco, so close over so much of the track. Then again, The Glen has places like the T1 paved area, Nascar bypass, the Bus Stop, etc. to help avoid problems. I think all tracks can benefit from more paved runoff areas - easier to stop if the grass is wet.

Good write-up of this year's improvements to Watkins Glen:
http://www.theglen.com/Articles/2010...k-Updates.aspx

I don't perceive either as more or less safe than the other, rather I see different opportunities for mistakes (or random bad luck - fluids) to be absorbed.

Larry Herman

After a lot of the comments came out, it was apparent that there are so many other questions to ask.

One of my thoughts that prompted this thread was about what is considered to be safer. If you have a lot of guardrail that tends to tear up cars, but doesn't give much opportunity for that big hit, then is that safer than a track where most spins wind up with no contact, but when you do go far enough to hit something (which was not designed to be hit), the results are usually ugly.

Its a very interesting and personal subject for many of us.