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Anybody else catch the big wreck that McDowell took at Texas Speedway on Friday during practice?? He went into the wall with the left front first, then flipped about 8 times and climbed out of it to wave at the spectators!!!!!! Sez a lot about how the new car is built, and the safer barriers on the tracks..... Car was total junk except the driver's area......
Saw it last night, looked BRUTAL!!!!:eek: When he walked out I thought, Man, that is INCREDIBLE! Like you said, credit the builders!
Maybe the NHRA would be well advised to talk to the chassis builder?
John Force and company are addressing the issue and have been since the death of Eric Medlen. The improvements made so far are what saved Force when he crashed last year in Texas.
How old is that McDowell kid?
If an old toot my age had been driving that car they would still be looking for pieces ..... of ME.
My daughter and I were stopped for a traffic light one night and were rear-ended by a drunk dude in a 3/4 ton Silverado. It rang my bell good, and the next morning I hurt all over when I crawled out of bed. I called her and asked how she felt. Her response was "Huh? Why, Dad?"
Fifty or sixty years seems to make a bit of a difference in situations like that.
Just read a very interesting article on the funny car/top fuel chassis and what they are finding. Written by Bill Mitchell (Bill Mitchell Eng.). Site is www.bmeltd.com/dragster/tubulartales.htm
Some very interesting insite on the Medlen accident, the later failures in funny car chassis, and the behind the scene BS that goes with it.
Sorry, article written by Jon Asher, site is Bill Mitchell Engineering.
Interesting article.... Can't even imagine the forces put into a chassis by an 8,000 (or whatever) horse engine. Doubt I'll ever have anywhere near that kind of power, but I think I'll stick with the normalized tubing. Engineering types for the most part say it's better then the heat treated tubing, that's good enough for me....
Force's big crash in Texas and now this one, seems like a lot of bad ones are occurring in Texas recently.
It appears that McKinney is in CYA mode.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dwayne
Yeah, kind of read that in there.... Hard to argue with McKinney, but the engineering points to the heat treated moly being effected by all the welding. I'm certainly no metallurgist, but I have noticed that moly does some weird things when you have a lot of tubes attaching to a main rail in close proximity...... No idea if it's any different with the normalized tubing, haven't built anything with it yet that would show anything....
I noticed that (as usual) they took a couple shots at Goodyear!!!!
A somewhat similar approach as NASCAR took in regards to Bill Simpson and Dale Sr's crash.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Severson
I don't believe the tires had anything to do with the chassis breaking in half. It would be interesting to know what the off road guys and the Indy cars use.
Well, as usual all the "experts" have to play the blame gang..... I like Force's approach, let's do whatever is necessary to make the car safer....
Racing is racing. I'm all in favor of analyzing the crashes to see what the reason for it was, but then just fix it, improve the car, and move on. Cars are going to crash and there are going to be injuries and fatalities. All this find someone to blame crap usually accomplishes very little that could be construed as for the betterment of the sport.....
I was watching the qualifying when the crash at Texas happened. That was really brutal, but what if they hadn't had the safer barrier there to take some of the impact. Also they played a clip of it later that had in car sound and that was really something. I hope they will publish the G-Force figures later on. It does say a lot for the car design and safety equipment.
Ron :)
I found this on You Tube. It makes me hurt just watching it. :eek:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI96AKMswLM
I was sitting right down there by turn one when it happened. You could hear the gasp of the entire crowd when he hit the wall, then everyone sat in stunned silence. When he got out, the whole place gave him a standing ovation.
That wreck was the second hardest I've seen, the hardest still being Geoff Bodine in the Craftsman Truck series at Daytona. Took out several hundred feet of fence, hurt several spectators and the engine and rear end where completely ripped out of the truck in that one. He spent a short time in the hospital but was fine after that.