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Yes it is.
A further note on Lime Rock is that to me it's like two different places. One is the Big Bend end through the Left, where there's plenty of grassy runoff and you see lots of spins and agro racing with consequences only rarely, the other end is unforgiving over the top of the uphill, through West Bend and then of course the Downhill; lots of bad accidents in those areas. A comparison of just those two different areas gives a lot of insight.

M758

I don't see why tracks can't use the best of both when ever they can. Well placed run off minimizes the small incidents turing into car breakers. However they still need a terminal barrier some where to keep cars out of dangious areas.

So if you have room for 200 yars of run off great, but also put a tire wall down the end to make sure cars don't just go off never to be see again.

In places where you can't put in long run off optimize what you have to do two things. First minimize the risk of minor slides/offs turning into wall impact. You can do this by putting some run off where a driver might able to save it vs going stright into a wall or tires. 10 feet of run off is alot better than 1 foot especualy if it can be paved. Of course in area like that you know cars will hit the barrier so design the barrier to minimize the decel loads. Tire walls do a great job and are cheap, but can be problematic in some places. Still you need to take the good with the bad.

One thing that I see alot of tracks don't do well is deal with what happens at then end of "miles of run off". Some sort of assume that cars will slow down themselves. I think we can all think of times cars have gone off where there was "lots of room" and all of sudden it got ugly since that room turned out to have flaws. Cleraly Joey Hand's Mid-ohio is example of this.

Now what is safer? Knowing that one false move will put in you into a properly desinged barrier or having space to make small errors, but a big error can put you in unknown territory.

For me I perefer a little space to be able to correct small error. Maybe that is because I don't know the unknown and therefore I does not bother me. However when you see a wall you know full well what can happen.

I don't fear walls, but also don't like tracks were being 6" off has a 95% chance of ending op in a barrier.

Interesting andictode
I run most at two tracks and both have lots of white concrete walls around them. However due to placement 1 is my mine much safter than the other. One track has room to made small to moderate errors and not hit those walls. This allows you push hard and 90% of the time an off will not cause any damage. The other track has couple areas with miles of run off some of which is paved. However other parts of the track leave no room for error. One false move of if the tail steps out bang you are into the wall. In fact I was talking to a driver about this saying "Don't take too much curb there as it will lanuch the car a bit and as soon as you land you will be right into the tire will on the edge of the track surface. You will barely have anytime to gather the car before you get into the wall". Low and behold next session the car came back in dented all along the side. What happend? Too much curb launched the car into the wall. Point is all it took was a small error and bang into the wall.


However what is intersting is that at the track with more run off I have seen more severe incidents. Why? There are two spots where a small error is no big deal, but a major off can be bad. One turn in particular has eaten at least 5-6 cars badly over my 10 years of driving there that I have seen personally. Sadly when incidents do happen the car is often a write off and injuries also have happend. The reason the incidents are severe is that if you go off in certain way you are likey hit the barriers pretty darn fast.

So where am I going with this? I guess that for me I want space to make sure small errors don't turn into barrier contact. This allows me to race hard and enjoy it. As for the big ones. Well my job with repsect to the big one is to do 3 things. 1) Not drive over may head as to minimize the risk of going off badly. 2) prep the car to minimize the risk of mechanical sending me off and make sure my safety gear can protect me 3) realize when to throw in the towel and clamp it down to minimize the damage. I might be able to save a minor mistake, but I need to know where to go and what to do if it gets bad.