Getting rid of walls

The thought occurred to me that if retaining walls were eliminated, not only would much of the rationale for restricting Indy car development no longer apply but many of the hazards would also be gone. So how do you safely put tens of thousands of spectators in proximity to an oval track or road course without any retaining walls? Or to be more specific, how do you install grandstands with no supporting structure underneath? Ever see the Golden Gate Bridge? The open space underneath suspended grandstands could be occupied by gravel traps or water traps.

;)

Several corporations and universities are doing research into fiberglass bridges, including suspension bridges. The big advantage for suspension bridges is because the resulting roadway weighs much less, the towers and anchors can also be made much lighter.

2 points:
1. Do you want we to tell you what is wrong with your idea?
2. I must say that i have thought about "water traps" in the past. It would be interesting to see what they would get on reseaching it.
a)The water couldn't be too deep, or else we would get a heap of ****ed of competitors with flooded engines.
b)They couldn't be too shallow or else cars are just going to skip over them.
c)There would be certain health issues involved, tracks are stingy as they are, do they want to go emptying huge volumes of water ever few days?
d)Sand traps have their problems, so do just plain asphalt.
It might be worth looking at, but since it isn't an Apollo rocket, we don't need to stick them in with trial.

(sorry i failed the grammar test once more :))

You do realize that coming to a sudden halt as the result of hitting a concrete wall is the prime cause of serious injury (or death) and destroyed cars? I mean we are clear on that point aren't we? When somebody uses flooded engines as a criticism for a track architecture that eliminates the prime cause for destroyed cars and/or seriously injured drivers I have to wonder what their priorities are. In fact, that's such a seriously screwed up set of priorities I must have been hallucinating when I read it. Surely no sensible person would propose that a track architecture which gets rid of retaining walls is a bad idea because occasionally a driver might have to take a car back to the garage to dry off the engine.

[This message has been edited by Franklin (edited 02 May 2000).]

Well i dont want to spend the rest of my life arguing with you there, but what the hey?
When i said flooded engines, i was thinking of a road circuit if a driver was to have a spin into a lake. Try driving your car into a lake, it might be an eye opening experience for you.

A few pointers about not having walls on the outside of the track:
1. Yes the wall hurts.....
2. How much money do you have?
3. If ever a car goes off the road on an oval, it will continue on at the same trajectory as the slope of the banking. Do you wish to argue that? Because i can give you some solid facts which back that up. Or are flying cars all right?
4. So you have sand at the side of the road. Sand will roll any car which hits it sideways. Do you wish to argue that? Because i can give you some solid facts which back that up. A roll rolling end for end at 230mp/h....i'll let you clean that mess up.
5. At 230mp/h, how much of an area are you giving the cars? A couple 100 meters? Go and ask a track owner if he is interested....
6. Unless you have water which can stick to a slope, the airbourne car will hit the water at a fantastic speed...once again i'll let you clean up the mess.

ON relatively straight pieces of road where the cars make a glancing blow with the wall, it is better to have that lump of concrete there than have a few hurdred yards of run off. I can prove that too.
In the corners where the heavy rear and side impacts occur, why not have some of those energy absorbing walls you talk so much about (once they are tested and proven to be an improvement)?

(Sorry about the grammar and spelin :))

So the thought just occured to you. You seem to be one inspired person. Wouldn't it be strange for the spectator to have errant cars disapearing under them in a roar of steam and gurgling? Could be high on the cool factor...

FRANKLIN: ARE YOU ON CRACK??????????!!!!!!

No, are you in the habit of asking thoughtless ignorant questions?

This idea is reedickilus (I spelt it rong on perpus, Frankliff), for all of the above stated reasons.

Franklin...Your in the habit of making thoughtless and arrogant posts!!
Why can't you contribute to threads about the racing thats going on now? You have only annoyed the people who come here to talk motorsports. You insult them when they disagree with your Rube Goldberg type ideas on how you think racing can be improved. You really gotta grow up or get laid or something. You act like your wound up tighter than a $2 watch.

Forget about the getting laid bit. I really don't want to hear about how you think the Karma Sutra should be changed cause it can cause back injuries!!!!

Franklin, I am glad your mommy taught you such good manners.

Please take your toys and go to "All Other Classes" where maybe your non-Open-Wheel-Racing ideas will receive some of the response you want.

Unless of course your desire is merely to annoy everybody who wants to talk about IndyCars?

Franklin have you noticed that almost nobody gets hurt or killed racing these days, the way things are now? Do you realise that the pilotes know motor racing isn't pattycake? Is someone holding a gun on any one of them and forcing him to race fast cars on high speed tracks for very very very large sums of money and lots of public adulation? Do you think the people in the stands and hanging off the fences with their cameras over those fences don't know the difference between staying safely at home in their fallout shelters with their hands over their ears, and being inches from some of the fastest vehicles on Earth?

In other words, DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE WE ARE SO STUPID THAT WE DON'T KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING IS DANGEROUS? AND HAS IT ONCE OCCURRED TO YOU THAT WE, RACERS AND SPECTATORS, ARE THERE BECAUSE WE LIKE THE DANGER?

Honeychile, if you are that frightened of the big bad cars, maybe you would be best advised to stay home and play with your Legos.

Liz,
You do have a way with words!!! I hope I stay on your good side. LOL!!

"DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE WE ARE SO STUPID THAT WE DON'T KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING IS DANGEROUS? AND HAS IT ONCE OCCURRED TO YOU THAT WE, RACERS AND SPECTATORS, ARE THERE BECAUSE WE LIKE THE DANGER?" Well, it has now occurred to me that even women can use macho bullsh*t like that as a reason for sitting on their ass instead of using their imagination.

Fortunately, some people did use their imaginations so we got items such as the following. Helmets. BETTER helmets. Restraint harnesses. BETTER restraint harnesses. Rollcages. BETTER rollcages. Firesuits. BETTER firesuits. Fuel cells. BETTER fuel cells. Fire suppression systems. BETTER fire suppression systems. Window nets. Arm restraints.

And as far as danger is concerned, some people can learn a lesson from Richard Noble's comments on why failure with the Thrust SSC was not an option. "It would have been awful. It would have gone through the clouds. It would not have fluttered around like some formula car. It would have gone straight up through the clouds."

Obviously removing retaining walls is completely out of the question. Those cars have to come to a stop somewhere, and if they have damaged suspension, the brake will do nothing. And would you be willing to completely clear a large area of marshalls and safety workers? It's a dumb idea.

Racing will always be dangerous, but if you want to discuss some realistic options try:

gravel traps? -Would concrete be better
tire walls? - Are they the best?
Is the current formula safe?

Nah, it's all about getting laid, sorry :)

Fraklin: Feeling any better? Better bring a bucket.

I can see that yellow card now... please hurry it up, Administrator.

"Obviously removing retaining walls is completely out of the question. Those cars have to come to a stop somewhere, and if they have damaged suspension, the brake will do nothing. And would you be willing to completely clear a large area of marshalls and safety workers? It's a dumb idea."

The largest racetrack in the world is operated with vast stretches of it clear of marshalls and safety workers. It's called Bonneville. When cars don't have walls to run into safety workers are much less needed.

Ladies and gentlemen

You will never convince Mr. Ratliff that the types of speed competition which interest him have little or no relevance or resemblance to the forms of motorsport that EVERY OTHER poster on these forums has come here to discuss. The concept of racecars actually having to turn right and left instead of mashing the throttle on a quarter-mile plus length of asphalt or on a salt-covered dry lake bed seems to be causing him a bit of a problem.

Mini-lakes to slow down cars, Franklin? What happens to a vehicle sliding sideways at 100-plus miles per hour when it hits your little lake? Do you think that there might be the slightest chance that the abrupt change in the surface it's sliding over might, just MIGHT, cause one side of the car to dig in and flip over? What happens to a driver hitting the surface upside down at those speeds?

And if the first impact doesn't kill him, the fans in your suspended grandstands might have the unique experience of watching him drown. Sounds like fun!!!!

Maybe you'd better go back to the Wile E. Coyote School of Engineering and work some of the bugs out of your theory.

This is a contest, isn't it? Somewhere in here is a common thread. Well, I claim the prize.

Who ran a car that he had built himself with no reference to Reynard or Lola?

Who tried to use braking parachutes to stop himself at 500mph?

Who ran at Bonneville Salt Flats?

Who used a water-filled culvert to ultimately stop himself?

Ladies and gentlemen, the answer is CRAIG BREEDLOVE in the original "Spirit of America". Do I get a donut?

As an aside, I might mention that at no time did Mr Breedlove attempt to turn left, thus removing the need for retainers of any kind on the corners. The braking parachutes disintegrated at that speed, and were very nearly useless, and I don't think that Mr Breedlove was particularly thrilled with the way his car nearly drowned him at the end of the run.

In 1940, hot rodder Bob Rufi went 140 mph at Muroc dry lake with a rear-engine open-wheel car using a laydown seating position. (Even the engineers at Auto Union had not realized the benefits of the laydown position.) By 1955, hot rodders had gone over 200 mph at Bonneville with a rear-engine open-wheel car using a laydown seating position. Hilborn fuel injection, the system that dominated Indy car racing for decades, was a hot rodder developed system first proven at the dry lakes.

Since for at least 20 years now, CART has had little to claim in the way of innovation I'm not criticizing a series with a long history of original thinking. The new HANS device? F1. Combining the vent with the fuel hose? F1. Wheel tethers? F1 (without even killing any spectators). Mandatory helmets for the pit crew? F1. The carbon fiber tub? F1. Passive ground effects? F1.

And actually, the last time Breedlove got into trouble was in October of 1996 when his latest "Spirit of America" tipped up on its left wheels at 600+ mph. To avoid running out of room, Breedlove made the world's fastest U-turn (and like F1 convention, it was a RIGHT turn).

In contrast Thrust SSC, at approximately 22,000 pounds the heaviest land speed car in history, could stop from supersonic speed within the available distance at Black Rock using just its wheel brakes and inherent aerodynamic drag without even overheating the brakes. For normal operation, the drag chutes were used to shorten the rollout distance and save wear on the brakes.

[This message has been edited by Franklin (edited 03 May 2000).]

>>"The new HANS device? F1. "<<

Nope. Micheal Andretti was the first driver to test the HANS device. Check 7thGear News Tidbits section for a pic.

>>"Combining the vent with the fuel hose? F1."<<

Nope. Watch the Spanish GP and during the pit stops you will notice that there is no vent man.

>>"Wheel tethers? F1 (without even killing any spectators). "<<

The reason for wheel tethers was to prevent what happened to Senna from happening again. Also in that same race a wheel came flying off of Pedro Lamy's Lotus and into the crowd, injuring several spectators.

>>"Mandatory helmets for the pit crew? F1."<<

Only for the fuel man. CART made it mandatory for ALL crew members wearing helmets.

>>"The carbon fiber tub? F1. "<<

Agreed.

>>"Passive ground effects? F1."<<


Agreed. But it was close. 1 year later didn't JR drive the Pennzoil Chapparal?

>>"In 1940, hot rodder Bob Rufi went 140 mph at Muroc dry lake with a rear-engine open-wheel car using a laydown seating position. (Even the engineers at Auto Union had not realized the benefits of the laydown position.) By 1955, hot rodders had gone over 200 mph at Bonneville with a rear-engine open-wheel car using a laydown seating position. Hilborn fuel injection, the system that dominated Indy car racing for decades, was a hot rodder developed system first proven at the dry lakes."<<

This is a CART/IRL forum.

>>"And actually, the last time Breedlove got into trouble was in October of 1996 when his latest "Spirit of America" tipped up on its left wheels at 600+ mph. To avoid running out of room, Breedlove made the world's fastest U-turn (and like F1 convention, it was a RIGHT turn)."<<

This is a CART/IRL forum.

>>"In contrast Thrust SSC, at approximately 22,000 pounds the heaviest land speed car in history, could stop from supersonic speed within the available distance at Black Rock using just its wheel brakes and inherent aerodynamic drag without even overheating the brakes. For normal operation, the drag chutes were used to shorten the rollout distance and save wear on the brakes."<<

This is a CART/IRL forum.

Look, Franklin. If I wanted to talk about LSR's and drag racing I would go to the appropriate forum.

Would you go to a NAPCAR forum and talk about the proposed beryllium-lined cylinder heads that Ilmor/Mercedes were planning for their F1 motor? Would you go to a baseball forum and talk about what an awesome goalie Cujo (Curtis Joseph) is?

">>"Combining the vent with the fuel hose? F1."<< Nope. Watch the Spanish GP and during the pit stops you will notice that there is no vent man." The reason there is no vent man is because of COMBINING THE VENT WITH THE FUEL HOSE. Let me explain it in a different way. When you have one hose that both supplies the fuel and vents the tank it's COMBINING THE VENT WITH THE FUEL HOSE. So when you're COMBINING THE VENT WITH THE FUEL HOSE that means you get rid of the vent man because the guy fueling the car is also venting the tank.

It is only now, after Michael Andretti runs over the head of one vent man and the leg of another vent man, that CART is finally getting off its collective butt about COMBINING THE VENT WITH THE FUEL HOSE.

"The reason for wheel tethers was to prevent what happened to Senna from happening again."
Senna got killed in May of 1994. Am I supposed to believe that after the F1 powers that be watched CART and IRL kill six spectators it was still Senna that lead them to implement wheel tethers?

[This message has been edited by Franklin (edited 03 May 2000).]

Oh my God, i have to agree with you there Franklin!!!! :)
Another thing:
"Nope. Micheal Andretti was the first driver to test the HANS device. Check 7thGear News Tidbits section for a pic."
-Really? And if 7G says he is the first person to use it, they are way wrong. Such devices have been in use for years. I can distinctly remember a local touring car teams having its drivers wear such devices in 1995, after they lost a driver in an accident. Also , shock horror to you Mapguy, drivers in the IRL have also been using them for years as well. Remeber when Cheever won the 500 (1998), he had to pull apart all of the straps which kept his helmet tied to his suit, as Gary Gerould was trying to interview him? No you probably wont, because it was an IRL race...there there... :)

OH be nice....

Franklin-

Nice tap-dance change of subject, but I'm STILL waiting for you to reply to my rebuttal of your theory about stopping spinning cars by using a water hazard.

That IS the subject of this thread, isn't it?

OK, well you are not going to get an answer out of Frankie on that one, but i'll have a shot.

The idea of gravel or water traps on a speedway, to be put nicely, is dumb. Your dead right, they would flip, and at that speed the flip would not be pretty.

But my way of thinking is that maybe they could be considered to be tested (in a controled lab) for use on slower cars on road courses. When a car hits a sand trap sideways it flips, no gain there or lose there with the water trap. At slower speeds, if a car angles into the sand it is at its most effective. The problem with flat sand traps, is that it doesn't stop flat bottomed race cars that go straight on. If a flat bottomed race car has a failure, such as brake or stuck throttle, sand traps and plain asphalt are just plain useless. Would water do anything different? There may be some initial skid over the surface, which may scrub off some speed, it would then "sink" and slow. Just a theory.

There would be heaps of questons to be answered, and many problem which would have to addressed, which i stated a few earlier on the thread.

Mr./Ms. Administrator, are you still watching?

Oh, and one more thing that makes me think it would be a thing to look at is that there used to be a local track here with an unprotected lake. Of course many cars spun off into it, none of them got to a depth where the driver was in trouble, but gosh, did it stop the cars in a hurry!! :)

"Nice tap-dance change of subject, but I'm STILL waiting for you to reply to my rebuttal of your theory about stopping spinning cars by using a water hazard. That IS the subject of this thread, isn't it?"

Actually, NO. That is NOT the subject of the thread, Mr. Attention Deficit Syndrome. The subject of the thread is track architectures that would allow the elimination of retaining walls. (A further reminder to those who may have forgotten that was the subject of this thread. When you eliminate retaining walls that means your focus is slowing the car down, NOT slowing it down quickly before it runs out of room and hits a concrete wall.)

The following was served upon Franklin just a few minutes ago.

"Franklin, if no one else has shown you a Yellow Card yet, may I be the first? As one of the Administrators I must tell you that your continuing name-calling is against the rules, besides being really ill-mannered, and either you will cease and desist right away or you will be banned.

You have one more chance. I would advise you to think carefully before you use it up.

Liz Shaw
Clerk of the Course"


Let's all calm down now and talk about racing, shall we? It IS possible to disagree without being disagreeable, isn't it?

Gosh Frankie, if you could only sell them on your patented perpetual motion engine & Kevlar tyres we could do away with pit stops altogether. Think how many pit crew would thank you for saving them from danger in the nasty old pit lane.

"FRANKLIN: ARE YOU ON CRACK??????????!!!!!!"

"Let's all calm down now and talk about racing, shall we? It IS possible
to disagree without being disagreeable, isn't it?" Well, Liz where the hell were you when champcarfan implied I'm a crackhead?

Given your complete LACK OF RESPONSE to champcarfan's implication that I'm a crackhead, why should I not now be considering words like bias, favortism, prejudice, or hypocrisy?

(And when it comes to football, pretty much all of us colonials have no clue what a "yellow card" is although we are familiar with penalty flags. Anything in your rules about penalty flags for bias?)

[This message has been edited by Franklin (edited 04 May 2000).]

Franklin, you are getting on my last nerve with your quibbling. A Yellow Card is exactly the same thing as the yellow segment of the traffic light, as I am sure you already knew. (P.S. I am an American living in Canada. Technically that makes me a "colonial" too, doesn't it? I am educated regarding football rules, even so.)

And you do have a point about Champcarfan's animadversion, and he or she is duly admonished to stop the personal remarks as well.

NOW can we talk about champ car racing?

[This message has been edited by Liz (edited 04 May 2000).]

Okey dokey.

Franklin.....I hope you'll get involved in the dicussions now and not just pontificate(sp) to the other members.
People who know your past track record have been waiting for you to get the boot. It's time you chill out and post your tech ideas on the proper forums and talk about current Champcar stuff here.
Crashtest really held back on you cause he plays by the rules here.
Stop being the guy on the outside looking in and join the fun most of us have in these forums and try to enjoy yourself.

Yikes! what a ride. I felt like I was in an out of control car spinning through where I could've sworn there was a retaining wall just a second ago & then headed for the Black Lagoon! Thank goodness for the way big dorsal fin and the fishing net. Whew!

Franklin-

It's MS. Attention Deficit DISORDER.

Please correct your records.

The problem with making every track like a Cleveland with tons of run off space, is that spectors will quickly become annoyed at the distance between them and the cars. The big sterile race tracks of today just don't do it for the spectators.

It is all a big trade off; what do we want? An ultra safe race track with no spectators, or one with happy spectators and bent vehicles?

There are now two local race tracks in my area. One was opened last year with safety as it's massive selling point; it had everything going for it. However in the past 12 months there have been 12 rolls at the new track, and 1 at the old.

Another trade off with having a lot of run off is that drivers will try harder. When they try harder they often come off, and as they are trying hard it would be at a faster speed. Faster speed=bigger crash.

Have a look at Michael Andrettis crash a few years ago at Mid Ohio, and Carpentier's one at Road America last year as a few examples. They were massive shunts, and luckily they walked away. Neither of them hit walls, but they did hit sand. No matter what there was there, sand, water, air, anything, when a car gets loose at that speed it is going to be a huge stack.

The only way to stop big shunts is to slow the cars down, but as Formula Ford will go to show, big stacks still happen at slow speeds...

I've been standing back & watching this one develop for awhile with amusement - it's amasing how Frankie is able to bring in totally irrelevent factoids & present them as if they were really relevent. ( Actually, I've been on the road testing & couldn't get a posting connection for some reason )

But in Frankie's defence, I've got to agree with his original thread - removal of walls. It is extremely obvious that if walls aren't there to hit at full bore, the likelyhood of injuries is decreased rather dramatically. The problem lies in what to use to replace them with.

Water traps will slow a car down very nicely - except if it is sideways, and then it is not so nice - but the thermal shock to all the various hot parts will be rather destructive. You could expect probably about $1.5 million worth of damage on the average CART car, & even more on an F1. ( The engine is the biggest contributer to this price tag ). If the water is only about 2 inces deep, this may not be such a problem, but I have no idea how effective such a shallow depth would be.

Sand traps can work if sculpted properly, but can also be dangerous to a sideways car. Flat bottomed cars also have a tendancy to just skip across like a flat rock across water, even on the traps that are highly sculpted.

Nets can be extremely effective without being destructive at all. The problen lies in extracating the car in a reasonable amount of time, and ensuring that the driver doesn't get wrapped up such that he can't escape a burning car. Replacing the nets in a reasonable timeframe is also a big problem.

The only solution that can be implemented that will allow plenty of stopping room that doesn't have a ton of drawbacks is great expanses of asphalt. Cleveland is a great example.
The main problem here is how to incorperate this into existing facilities. It simply can't be done without costing so much that the facility is no longer viable. Brand new facilities may be another story, such as raising the grandstands and allowing te runoff room to be underneith them, but the insurance companies would go berserk at the thought of a burning car being parked under a grandstand full of people!
This leaves us with only one viable solution - energy absorbing walls.

That subject was hacked to death elsewhere.

Tyres work in F1 but CART is diffrent they won't work their will they??

Liz so you are that Mysterious cleark of the Course administrater person that does all of the dirty work round here?

So u are a clone so their is two of you. Nah that is just a person any moderator/ Senior moderator can use right?

So, Enzo, you've never heard of SPRINKLER systems? You know, those little inverted mushrooms you see in the ceilings of office buildings?

There would be a few things that would need to be done...
1. The height of the grandstand would have to be high, in case the thing rolls.
2. There would have to be something very solid between the run off and the grandstand to stop heat/fumes from penetrating the spectator area.
3. They would have to be pretty darn strong sprinklers...
4. Once again, would there be any track owner in the world who could afford all this?

Brett, if you take a peek at the bottom of this thread (or any thread) you will see that the current Administrators are Gerard, Invader, KC and I. Any of us can and will and indeed are taxed with the responsibility of keeping things from deteriorating into a flaming match or a hockey game. :)

I like the whole setup just the way it is, so have no more to add about walls.

Frankie : Yes, I've heard of sprinklers. The only problem is that water isn't what you want for an oil or gasoline fire, and a real no-no for magnesium. Yes, a foam system could possibly be used, but would have to have the provision of site selection ( limited area foaming) to be any good. Also, just randomly dumping on a lot of foam doesn' cut it. One of my best friends, who happens to be in risk analysis for an insurance company that insures most of the tracks in this country, and I talked at length about this some years ago. Believe me when I say that the insurance companies are paranoid about that scenario !

The next problem with raising the grandstands is the structural requrements if there are to be no posts for a depth of say 50-75 ft or so. Not a real problem from the design & construction standpoint, but a real problem from the cost stance. Expect the cost of a grandstand to double, if not triple. I doubt that any track owner will want to go to that extreme.

The other problem with trying to use watertraps is that on an oval, the track is usually banked all the way around. As water refuses to cling to a sloped surface, this means that any car leaving the track will fly through the air for some distance, and the big problem being that the greater the banking at the point of exit, the greater the flight distance, and the higher the stands have to be for the car to clear. All in all, not very practical, or effective !

Sorry to say, your idea has very little chance of ever being implemented, so we are left with energy absorbing walls, or large expanses of concrete.

C'est la vie !

Enzo, considering you're the guy who thought Nemesis was built on a budget of $1,000,000 instead of the actual budget of $25,000 I'm wondering how much credibility to give a flat statement that suspended grandstands would have two to three times the cost of conventional grandstands.

And exactly why would flying through the air for a distance before landing in a trap (gravel,water, whatever) be as bad or worse than slamming into a wall at a closing speed of 60 to 100 mph? (When Art Arfons survived at 600+ mph the fastest crash in the history of motorsports -- with just scrapes and bruises -- his car traveled 527 feet on the first bounce.)

Well Franklin, i have seen cars get aribourne when they leave the circuit, and in favct i came within a couple of feet of being cleaned up by one. The problem is that the cars don't slow down in the air, and the driver flapping his arms isn't going to help steer the car.

Well why not you give us proof of how cheap they are?

(Hang on, did i just ask Franklin to prove one of his ideas? Am i on drugs? Do i think i am going to get a response without me being called a bad spelar??)

Go on Franklin, prove us wrong for a change :)

Three words....

"Wild" Bill Vukovich.

Crash Test,

"Leaving the circuit" IS THE CONCEPT.

In the architecture I've been proposing, once cars leave the racing surface they would not be bouncing back onto it so cars can engage in a game of 200 mph billiards.

Flying through the air is not what paralyzed Sam Schmidt and killed Greg Moore. Their problem was coming into contact with a substantial fixed object -- i.e., a concrete wall.

I nominate Franklin to Auto Racing Safety Czar! Do we have a second on that?

HEY HEY, YOU DID NOT ANSWER THE QUESTION!!!! WHAT A SURPRISE!!!!

YES THAT IS TRUE, FLYING THOUGH THE AIR DOESN'T KILL, IT IS THAT ACCIDENT THAT FOLLOWS BEING AIRBOURNE THAT HURTS. TRUST ME. DO YOU WANT TO SEE SOME PICTURES OF DAMAGED CARS? MAYBE IN YOUR NECK OF THE WOODS THERE IS EXTRA GRAVITY OR SOMETHING WHICH MEANS THAT CARS DON'T HEAD FOR THE SKY, BUT DOWN HERE CARS, WHEN THE CARS LEAVE THE ROAD, THEY LEAVE ON THE SAME PLANE AS THE ROAD. IF THE GROUND DROPS AWAY, THE CAR GOES INTO THE AIR. IT'S PRETTY SIMPLE FRANIE....

I noticed the driver who experienced the third (and most spectacular) of the Mercedes blowovers at Le Mans last year managed to come away from it not too much the worse for wear.

True, but apart from the fact that he had the benefit of a roof, a substantial rollcage, soft sandy soil, scrubland and the occasional tree to break his momentum...

What exactly has that got to do with an open wheel car becoming airborne off a banking in a purpose built racing facility?

Crashtest....Holy Cow!!! We all forgot about Franklin's parachutes (parashoots???)!!!! When the car becomes airborn after running off a wall less banked track , the emergency chute will return said vehicle safely to Earth!! Or is it spelt earf??
Where the hell is my hooked on phonics tape????

Crashtest....Holy Cow!!! We all forgot about Franklin's parachutes (parashoots???)!!!! When the car becomes airborn after running off a wall less banked track , the emergency chute will return said vehicle safely to Earth!! Or is it spelt earf??
Where the hell is my "Hooked on Phonics" tape????

Sorry Franklin, just reading my post now at home and i see i spelt your name FRANIE. That was an honest typo. You now have the right to pick on me forever...

I think you will find it was the most spectacular because it was the only one to get on tv, and also wind up in the shrubs..

But a lucky thing about that is that nobody was standing there, also the camera man was lucky to be missed.

Also, what are you going to do about the inside walls? remove them and let the cars drive into one of the lakes at indy or daytona?

Crash Test,

I thought the FRANIE thing was probably an honest typo.

As far as the infield is concerned, I see several remedies.

1. Two-story or underground garages that occupy less space so infield walls can be moved farther back.

2. No infield walls that angle toward to the track or run parallel to it.

3. Tire walls or other energy absorbing barriers in front of all infield walls.

What about the Fitch 'Cunningham' Inertial Barrier System?

Anybody heard of that?

Instead of sand traps that the cars skip over and launch into tyre-covered concrete walls, John Fitch's Impact Attenuation Inc has designed a series of 'Inertial Barrier' systems, similar to the water bags you see at the end of intersection walls on US freeways. The fact is, these bags, filled with either sand, water or beads, are able to slow and contain wayward vehicles, can be arranged in different ways for different corners/situations/depths and are easily rebuildable. (unlike wire netting)

I can't understand why these systems haven't been used yet.

Franklin my friend you are approaching the problem from the wrong side. If you put the grandstands in the center of the track you wouldn't need to have anything other than a gently sloping hill on the outside edge. Of course the slope would match the projected trajectory of cars that are traction challenged at the moment. The stands could be tiered just like a birthday cake. The pits could be in the normal place, and those lucky fans near by could keep a close eye on the action. That does leave the problem of visibility..... Hmmmmm.

What about this. A giant spider web of rigging that fans could hook up to before the race. This could be raised over the track before the race, and lowered after. The supports would have to be far away but I have faith in your knowledge of exotic materials, so I am sure you could recommend the proper way to construct such a device. That does leave the problem of going to the loo...

What if we built this giant badger?
Nevermind.

How about we hold all races on dry lakebeds and the fans can watch on giant screens at the nearest big city arena. All officiating takes place from helicopters. The course is painted on and if a driver leaves it, nothing is hit except a longer lap time.

"That does leave the problem of visibility"
-how about a big mirror? completely impractical i hear you say? ehhh....