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Indycar 2011 @ Las Vegas
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Author:  Ferrari [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 1:43 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

Jordi wrote:
Thank God for AJ and Mario. People like Johnson and DC are talking about knee-jerk reactions, and I think knee-jerking is the last thing needed now.


How is Mario and AJ opinion any more valid when they themselves didn't race in era when IndyCar had 220 mph pack racing on high banked cookie cutters? The issue isn't oval racing in general. The issue is IndyCar 220 mph pack racing on high banked cookie cutters.

Its not as if oval racing is no longer large part of IndyCar. Its no longer sustainable for many track owners. The series has only 4 oval races scheduled for next season. While Indy and Iowa seem to be the only two oval races that have certain future.

Author:  Tommy Vercetti [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 1:46 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

Thank you ISC/SMI :roll:

Author:  Gabriel [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 1:51 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

Gaara wrote:
JJ clarifies his comments on IndyCar.

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/ ... statements


I'm actually surprised with what he said about considering racing at Indy. During the Month Of May, a lot of people from the IndyCar community tweeted him about that and asked him if he wanted to do the 500, and he always replied that "his wife won't let him race anything without a roof".

Author:  Ferrari [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 1:52 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

Tommy Vercetti wrote:
Thank you ISC/SMI :roll:


What about Milwaukee, which Bernard co-promoted? What about Las Vegas, which Bernard promoted and had gave away free tickets?

Author:  Tommy Vercetti [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 2:01 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

Milwaukee: low attendance, poor promotion

Las Vegas: fairly obvious, especially when the track was banked for NASCAR.

Author:  NVirkkula [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 5:25 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

ChasKrall wrote:
How sad this situation is all the way around. Dan is gone, as is the car he won the race with - destroyed in a crash at Texas. The pole winning car, also a heartwarming story, driven by Alex Tagliani, was the car Dan was driving at Las Vegas. The 2011 Indianapolis 500 was all about underdogs beating the superpowers, and now they're all gone.



Didn't even think about that. How awful tragedy that really went from the top underdog story to down the worst tragedy in modern motorsports.

I noticed that Greg Moore died in the year '99 with a car number 99 and Wheldon in the year '11 with car number 77. Both double digit odd numbers, the years and the car numbers. :(

Author:  Sunoco [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 7:01 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

I still can't believe that this terrible tragedy actually happened. For some reason it still hasn't sunk in yet.

Author:  phil1993 [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 8:31 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

Mark Webber's column
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/formula ... 376777.stm

Author:  Xen [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 10:45 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

Some people talked about closed cockpits. Why don't they replace the catch fences with ultra-strong plastic glass ? Problem solved !

Author:  micha [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 11:41 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

Plexiglass has another problem. It will never be 1 sheet covering the entire track. Even if you manage find a way to get rid of direct exposure to the bars and poles, what will happen if 1 sheet gets dislodged and a car hits the side of the next sheet of plexiglass? I think it will cut tru the car as a hot knife tru butter.
If the nose of a car can cut tru a tub (Zanardi), plexiglass can as well.

Author:  kals [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 1:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

Perhaps the answer with plexiglass is to angle the face of the sheet slightly towards the track, say about 20 degrees, then tightly overlay the edges of each sheet. Doing that would remove the need for supports between each sheet.

Author:  electrodevo [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 1:42 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

Ferrari wrote:
How is Mario and AJ opinion any more valid when they themselves didn't race in era when IndyCar had 220 mph pack racing on high banked cookie cutters?


They both raced on ovals and they both raced on stock and open wheel cars. They both had raced on tracks where many drivers have voiced concerns about safety (Michigan in the 1980s comes to mind). Hell they both raced in an era where no one gave a darn at all about safety.

Problems get solved. Michigan became safer when they got rid of the armco and the tubs became carbon fiber. AJ's bad crash at Elkhart Lake was one of a few that led to a redesign of the CART car to prevent bad foot injuries that were happening at the time. It is a knee-jerk reaction to say "ban open wheel oval racing".

But I think JJ's clarified things to specifically mean the pack racing. And I'm not sure AJ or Mario would disagree that the pack racing is a problem.

Author:  ellis [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 1:49 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

Scotty wrote:
There is no way to say Wheldon would've survived the accident even if there was plexi-glass, safety foam, or 20 foot of tyre barrier. The angle of attack he hit that barrier at, there was very little chance he was going to walk away from it, regardless of what it was made of.


The angle of attack wasn't as severe as it appears. The damage was done by traveling along the fence and clipping the fence pole, not the chain link fence itself. You can see the sudden deceleration when it reaches the pole. This ripped the roll bar backwards, sheering it off, rather than destroying it downwards with brute force, which is what'd happen in a top heavy impact normally.

I actually disagree with almost all of your post because it seems to work on the assumption that they would just put up some ice hockey rink glass and be done with it, which is of course ridiculous and not what anyone is talking about at all. The problems you bring up such as sections and fence posts are actually the least of the issues since sections can be overlapped, and poles can be engineered to be behind the glass, not alongside it.

Catch fences aren't the best of a bad thing, they are simply the *only* thing we have now. And the reason it's the only thing is it's because nobody has even looked at a replacement. Concrete walls were the best we had for a long time, until someone worked out tyre barriers. And then someone worked out SAFER barriers. Fences are by far the worst thing we have, especially on ovals, and apart from Tony George, nobody has even made an attempt at looking for something else.

The downside of replacing fences are it'd be hideously expensive, and the fences work for NASCAR because they are extremely strong, and work fine for fully surrounded stock cars, so getting ISC to adopt any new system would take some doing.

Author:  NVirkkula [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 2:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

The debate between steel fence and plexiglass is pretty much the same that was with Ice Hockey back in the day. "The reflections would blind people, glass is expensive, glass would shatter and be dangerous, glass wouldn't hold the impact, glass would be too heavy and glass fall on people." There are types of light weight and yet very strong ballistic glass that could be used in high risk areas at least.

Or you could have poles that would break (say, carbon fibre covered with rubber to reduce splinters ) upon impact, the catch fence would held the car on track side by taking the force and staying up by directing forces on other poles that are still standing. FIA used woodpoles and chicken fence in 70's and 80's and few rows usually was enough to stop the car before the guardrail. This would be similiar in the way, but as it would be a real catch fencing, it wouldn't have that wood shattering and fear of car landing upside down on the poles or getting stuck under the fencing. These were the problems at the time, mostly the car getting stuck and strapping the driver there. This wouldn't be a problem with oval catch fencing.

Also, who's view would a two or three times higher safer barrier blocked on Vegas backstraight? Same could be asked about Indy's turns and short chutes, the grandstands are already raised up by three meters betwee the long straights.

It's not really a rocket science, a reasonable solution will be found soon. It is just sad that it had to be fatality to start the developement.

Author:  aerogi [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 3:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

I am totally not an expert on the matter, but glass that could hold an impact of a +200 mph racing car compared to glass (which is already quite thick) in an ice hockey match seems te be quite different.

Besides, the safety walls we now have at the ovals absorps quite some energy. The same goes for these fencing. 'Glass' I think wouldn't, except if the whole construction would be made that it absorpts the impact. But then you will need again posts and all kinds of these things to make it work (like in ice hockey).

Author:  NVirkkula [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 3:22 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

Look, it doesn't have to be same formula of glass or transparent material than in a hockey rink. Why is that the first thing that come to people's mind? There's ballistic glasses on motor vehicles that can take a shot from a machine gun. And it doesn't weight a ton per square meter. Yes, it's very expensive material to cover a whole oval track and yes it would require poles. But these two things can be overcome. The poles would be in line or behind the glass, meaning that if the glass can take the impact, the car would change it's direction and not to great along the wall or hit the pole in bad angle.

The grating against the steel fence is the biggest problem that needs to be solved, as it was for the hockey too. It causes horrible injuries in both sports. The fence will also flex, allowing the car or hockey player to hit the more solid pole when grinding against the fence. The steel fences were used in almost every hockey rink just some twenty years ago, and the horrible facial and upper torso injuries were the main reason to go for the more expensive plexiglass. Many were against having the glass walls, but the time showed that the problems were exaggerate. Less injuries have been caused by plexiglass and the ratio of career ending injuries have dropped at the same time.

Author:  MaTT [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 3:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

In other news...

... just ordered this as an 800mm x 535mm canvas. £80 from Sutton's website, if you are interested...

Image

Author:  Jordi [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 5:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

Quote:
"I think the start is you have to take a calm and scientific approach, and look at all the things you can do to make it less likely that somebody gets hurt," said Mosley during an interview with CNN. "It is all about probabilities.

"You can never make it safe. F1 is not safe but you can do a lot of work to reduce the probability of somebody getting hurt. They should do that and call in experts from around the world, including those at the FIA.

"There is already a lot of contact between European racing and American racing, but I think it is quite surprising what could be done once people get behind it."

"It is very annoying but it is difficult to get people to think seriously about safety unless there is an incident," he said. "We are doing research all the time but you get some weight behind it when there is a serious incident, and this will probably provoke that.

"Having said that, one must remember that when you look at the footage of the crash it is actually quite remarkable that it did not produce another or two or three other fatalities. So it says a lot for the work that is already being done that there was only one.

"He [Wheldon] was very unlucky. He was well behind the incident and nothing to do with the original crash but he could not stop. So it is reminiscent in a way of Imola, and I think we will see changes. And I know the FIA will assist the Americans any way they can if they want to do some research on it."
"I think it [closed cockpits] could work," he said. "We get occasional incidents like the spring which hit [Felipe] Massa and the wheel which came off in Formula Two and killed John Surtees' son Henry.

"You're always in danger, in an open cockpit, of objects striking the driver ... It might also help, if it's reinforced with another roll bar, in things like the Dan Wheldon accident. But that's something that needs careful investigation."

He added: "One of the troubles is that it would probably make the car quicker, which is just what we don't want. But there are other means of slowing them down.

"There are a lot of objections to canopies, how do you keep them clean? How do you get somebody out in an emergency? But all of that will be looked at by a technical working group if it turns out the thing would protect the driver better."


Max Mosley in Autosport, being more sensible than some...

Author:  cookie [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 5:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

I don't agree much with Mosley, but his opinion in that article is spot on.

Author:  phil1993 [ Thu Oct 20, 2011 5:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Indycar @ Vegas

Retweet to get the Austin GP to name a corner after the late great Dan Wheldon. #F1 #DanWheldon #AustinGP @
User avatar
austin
GrandPrix @5LiveF1

Saw this; I know a few of you guys have Twitter accounts.

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