2015 NASCAR Thread - And then there was 1

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Probably has already has been pointed out elsewhere.....but has anyone noticed the NBC camera-man positioned 30ft upstream from where #3 collides with the catch fence? When you see the catch fence give way and the debris field created, I can imagine that camera person may not have survived had they been placed 30ft further down the track for the broadcast. :eek:

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I just saw that vicious wreck of Austin Dillon's car getting owned but able to walk away. I mean, you could barely tell that was a car the way that car got wrecked- no front and no rear. Greatest news of all was that the driver was able to walk away. Either it was being very fortunate or incredible advances in safety. It also speaks to the level of safety with the catchfence doing its job. Had it not been for these advances in safety, this could have been something similar to Le Mans 1955 in a different discipline of motorsport.

I hope Austin Dillon and others will be okay. We love racing, but we also know this is incredibly dangerous. Traditional sports reporters will probably complain about racing being too dangerous with this being an example. Some may even look at this incident as an example of racing's danger, as if you're better off playing gridiron football or basketball instead of motorsports. It is still great seeing all of the advances in safety to minimize what could have been much more disastrous.

Most of all... all congratulations to Dale Earnhardt Jr. on winning last night's race at Daytona. I didn't see a single lap last night because I thought the race was going to be postponed to Monday or something. I just got through seeing some of the highlights on NBCSN.
 
@R1600Turbo

Here's what @sk8er913 came up with:

sk8er913
Well it didn't some to a complete stop... It was still going about 35... So...

Converting to Meters per second:
185 -35 = 150 MPH...
150MPH /3600 = 0.0416 Miles per second.
0.0416 * 1600 = 66.56 Meters per second.


Gravity.
Gravity = 9.8 M/s^2
9.8 * (0.64) = 6.27

Final
66.56/6.27 = An average of 10.6 G forces

10.6 * 1550(Kg) * 2.2(Kg to Lb) = An average pressure of about 36146 pounds.
Click to expand...
 
R1600Turbo
I wonder if they can give us a hard number for the G forces involved in that fence slowing the car from 180+mph to almost nothing in probably less than 100 feet.
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A few pages ago I worked out that he averaged 10.6Gs from 185 -> 35 in 0.8 seconds. I don't know that the peak was tho. Also a more accurate amount of time for to 185 -> 35 would change it a lot. someone said it slowed down in 0.8 seconds, I didn't check myself.

edit. @GTRacer22 tree'd me with my own post. lol
 
I said .8 seconds let me take a second look and I'll get back to you.

Edit: I did it five or so times. Watching from Tony's view to see the best angle. Timing from the time he lifts, to when hes in the fence stopped. It was between .88 seconds and .72 seconds. So do an average, around .8 seconds. And speed was roughly at 191 when he lifted. Dale crossed the line at 198, them stacking up probably slowed him a good bit. Definitely not 180 though,
 
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Cole Brown
I said .8 seconds let me take a second look and I'll get back to you.
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I looked at a replay and im sure its less than that but Youtube doesn't display time in frames anymore in the stats for nerds column. It was about 3 seconds in NBCs slow motion shot, but I don't know how much they slowed the footage.

If he stopped in 0.5 seconds instead of 0.8 seconds.

9.8 * (0.25) = 2.45

66.56 / 2.45 = 27.17Gs of force. (Average)
 
sk8er913
I looked at a replay and im sure its less than that but Youtube doesn't display time in frames anymore in the stats for nerds column.
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From the time he lifted, and stopped in the fence it took about .8 seconds, how long it took the fence to stop him flat out? probably around a tenth of a second. If that. It did its job. Definitely.
 
Cole Brown
From the time he lifted, and stopped in the fence it took about .8 seconds, how long it took the fence to stop him flat out? probably around a tenth of a second. If that. It did its job. Definitely.
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The time he first made contact with the post. To the time when it stopped touching/slowing down because of the catch fence.

Because I'm bored. lol. Here's an G sheet. @Cole Brown @GTRacer22 @R1600 Turbo

185 MPH to 35 MPH (150 MPH = 66.56 m/s)

Velocity change in meters per second divided by 9.8 * (seconds ^ 2)

Take your pick:
1.0 seconds = 6.8 G
0.9 seconds = 8.4 G (+1.8)
0.8 seconds = 10.6 G (+2.2)
0.7 seconds = 13.9 G (+3.3)
0.6 seconds = 18.9 G (+5)
0.5 seconds = 27.2 G (+8.7)
0.4 seconds = 42.4 G (+15.2)
0.3 seconds = 75.5 G (+33.1)




My IRL car (328i) acceleration G/s:
0-60MPH = 5.9 Seconds

26.67/34.81 = 0.76 G
 
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I'm surprised that the Around the Horn panel didn't collectively blast NASCAR since they usually do when something like this happens. Most of the guys didn't like racing at and after 2 a.m., but they all did commend NASCAR for the safety improvements. Pablo Torre did have a point though when he said "you can't make motorsports as safe as you want it to be".
 
Motorsports are always going to have that risk factor to them. Always. No matter what you try to do, there's always going to be those dangerous situations. They're unpreventable.
 
Cole Brown
From the time he lifted, and stopped in the fence it took about .8 seconds, how long it took the fence to stop him flat out? probably around a tenth of a second. If that. It did its job. Definitely.
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Not including the air time before or after the fence. I'm basically trying to figure out how much force the fence itself put on that car the moment it hit, to the moment he separated from it.
 
R1600Turbo
Not including the air time before or after the fence. I'm basically trying to figure out how much force the fence itself put on that car the moment it hit, to the moment he separated from it.
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Here's a table for you. :) You know how much the car weighs, so just multiply the weight of the car by the amount of G forces associated with the amount of time it took to stop. As stated this is for slowing down a speed of 150 MPH. Which I believe is roughly how much the fence slowed it down, it was still moving forwards a little after it landed back on the track.



sk8er913
The time he first made contact with the post. To the time when it stopped touching/slowing down because of the catch fence.

Because I'm bored. lol. Here's an G sheet. @Cole Brown @GTRacer22 @R1600 Turbo

185 MPH to 35 MPH (150 MPH = 66.56 m/s)

Velocity change in meters per second divided by 9.8 * (seconds ^ 2)

Take your pick:
1.0 seconds = 6.8 G
0.9 seconds = 8.4 G (+1.8)
0.8 seconds = 10.6 G (+2.2)
0.7 seconds = 13.9 G (+3.3)
0.6 seconds = 18.9 G (+5)
0.5 seconds = 27.2 G (+8.7)
0.4 seconds = 42.4 G (+15.2)
0.3 seconds = 75.5 G (+33.1)
Click to expand...
 
sk8er913
so just multiply the weight of the car by the amount of G forces associated with the amount of time it took to stop.
Click to expand...

So, 1497kg × (10.6*9.8m/s²) = 155kN assuming the fencing caught it for 0.8 of a second and scrubbed 150mph off its speed (as per @sk8er913 numbers above)
 
MatskiMonk
So, 1497kg × (10.6*9.8m/s²) = 155kN assuming the fencing caught it for 0.8 of a second and scrubbed 150mph off its speed (as per @sk8er913 numbers above)
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The .8 Seconds was the total air time to the fence and when it stopped. It's more likely the fence caught it in maybe.1, .2 seconds.
 
sk8er913
Its just 10.6 ... M/s doesn't matter because the calculation was already performed.
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This is what I was looking for:
Cole Brown
It's more likely the fence caught it in maybe.1, .2 seconds.
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So I'm going to guess this is in the ballpark:

0.5 seconds = 27.2 G (+8.7)
0.4 seconds = 42.4 G (+15.2)
0.3 seconds = 75.5 G (+33.1)


Which is insane to walk away from.
 
sk8er913
Its just 10.6 ... M/s doesn't matter because the calculation was already performed.
Click to expand...

Err, Well to be honest I didn't go through exactly what you did, I don't bother with G's normally so I just multiplied it by 9.8 to get it back to SI units, I've had too much beer but I thought I'd give it a go anyway.... Just watched a YouTube clip (not that I know how accurate it's numbers are), but a video with a 60 fps framerate seemed to show the car in the fence for a maximum of about 46 frames .. so 0.76s to decelerate by 67.05m/s = 88ms-² (or 8.9G) ... so ... 1497×88 = 131.7kN. But I could easily be wrong. Doubtless the headline figures will be much more impressive... Raikkonens 150mph shunt at Silverstone was clocked at 47G.

edit:
sk8er913
My IRL car (328i) acceleration G/s:
0-60MPH = 5.9 Seconds

26.67/34.81 = 0.76 G
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0.76 G = 0.76 * 9.8 metres per second, per second = 7.448 metres per second per second, therefore at t = 5.9 seconds, the car would be doing 5.9 × 7.448 = 43.94 metres per second.. or 98.2mph ... faster than my old E36 328i Sport for sure! Must be an F30 :D
 
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Seen some discussion about "fixes". One thing NASCAR needs to do is slow the cars down in a way that they also can't run bumper to bumper. I'm not saying get rid of the pack racing, because that's not going to be possible without removing Daytona and Talladega, but the cars need to not be able to constantly run almost connected together.
 
People are apparently being asked how they would fix superspeedway racing. I don't think you can do too much more to make it safer. It seems like all it takes is one out-of-the-ordinary incident to trigger wanting to find ways to improve safety. And to me, make all the improvements you want- no plan or set of plans are entirely foolproof. Like you can do all you can to prevent certain common injuries, but someone may get injured in a most unusual way. What do you do then? You can certainly learn from such incidents and try to find ways to minimize a certain thing from happening, but you're not going to be able to fix all the dangers and would-be dangers. Just to say again- it is great the advances in safety with cars and tracks come to work effectively.
 
GTPorsche
Seen some discussion about "fixes". One thing NASCAR needs to do is slow the cars down in a way that they also can't run bumper to bumper. I'm not saying get rid of the pack racing, because that's not going to be possible without removing Daytona and Talladega, but the cars need to not be able to constantly run almost connected together.
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Well...

JohnBM01
I don't think you can do too much more to make it safer.
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I just don't see how NASCAR can remove the current formula and retain fans. After 198 laps the field can be released from a 5-lap caution and be back racing to balls-for-glory. Those of us (which is probably most of us) who've raced long oval races in Forza, GT, or similar know that falling off the packs can lead to an hour of uncompetitive misery - in real life nobody would pay to watch that poop.

I think most of us would honestly say that we don't mind seeing an impressive wreck that a driver walks away from - in fact there's a thread in this very forum that suggest that we love it. This accident was part of what NASCAR is although I certainly think that some consideration could be given to the strength of the catch-fences.

I'm just glad to see the guy walk away from that one.
 
Oh, I know. They do need to do something that keeps the danger within the confines of the racing surface and not have it escape out into the spectator areas. The only fix they can absolutely make is improving the fences, which is in development currently.

The cars are at a point now where, as we saw in the race last night, it only takes one car to prevent anyone else from passing for the lead. Kind of takes some of the excitement out of the plate races since the shuffling around the pack isn't occurring.
 
GTPorsche
Seen some discussion about "fixes". One thing NASCAR needs to do is slow the cars down in a way that they also can't run bumper to bumper. I'm not saying get rid of the pack racing, because that's not going to be possible without removing Daytona and Talladega, but the cars need to not be able to constantly run almost connected together.
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Slowing the cars down = even more wrecks due to drivers push drafting excessively in order to pass. NASCAR needs to revisit the 1993-1994 superspeedway package where cars could pass each other without bump-drafting and were closely matched, but weren't jammed together in groups of 30 running 3 wide.
 
RVDNuT374
Slowing the cars down = even more wrecks due to drivers push drafting excessively in order to pass. NASCAR needs to revisit the 1993-1994 superspeedway package where cars could pass each other without bump-drafting and were closely matched, but weren't jammed together in groups of 30 running 3 wide.
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Those cars were running slower...
 
I still maintain, for all tracks not just Superspeedways, that racing-wise, the cars have gotten too big and the tracks too small. The SAFER Barrier, as nice and amazing as it is for safety, took away nearly half a lane up near the wall at every track it's on. The cars also have gotten bigger, which again is great for safety, but means there's less track room
 
That's because every track had to be retrofitted for SAFER barriers, and only Iowa Speedway has been built with SAFER barriers in mind.

Also, there's been no further development with SAFER barrier tech. It's been about 15 years now and they're the exact same way they were when they were first implemented.
 
GTPorsche
Oh, I know. They do need to do something that keeps the danger within the confines of the racing surface and not have it escape out into the spectator areas. The only fix they can absolutely make is improving the fences, which is in development currently.

The cars are at a point now where, as we saw in the race last night, it only takes one car to prevent anyone else from passing for the lead. Kind of takes some of the excitement out of the plate races since the shuffling around the pack isn't occurring.
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They could put cut outs over the wheels like there is in LMP to help keep cars grounded.
 

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