BY TEAM FORD RACING CORRESPONDENT

Daytona Beach, Fla. — NASCAR is making steady progress with its safety technology. Take for example the SAFER softwall technologies. This project, which has been spearheaded by Dr. Dean Sicking of the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility, appears to have finally provided the desired results and will be installed at Richmond, Va., and New Hampshire in time for both venues’ second events later this year.

Any delays in the implementation can be attributed to Sicking’s credo of “do no harm” with any fix that he might develop with the new Steel And Foam Energy Reduction (SAFER) barrier.

“There was a time there when everybody was really on NASCAR about soft walls, ‘Just do this. Just do that. Just do that.’ Then I participated in a review of films and stuff and I didn’t want what the people said that they needed,” said Roush Racing’s Jeff Burton. “There was some bad stuff going on in those tests.”

Now, the SAFER barriers will be used on two of the tours’ more challenging tracks, Richmond International Raceway and New Hampshire International Speedway.

“We are very pleased to announce that following Dr. Dean L. Sicking’s recommendation to NASCAR, we will be installing the SAFER barrier at New Hampshire International Speedway,” said Bob Bahre, Chairman of the Board of NHIS. “It is our plan to have the SAFER barrier in place for the NASCAR Winston Cup Series Sylvania 300 weekend this September.”

"We're proud to be one of the first tracks to have the system installed," Richmond International’s president, Doug Fritz told the Richmond Times Dispatch of his tracks plans. "The installation of this state-of-the-art safety system is an example of Richmond International Raceway and International Speedway Corp.'s ongoing commitment to driver safety."

Both New Hampshire, where Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin Jr. lost their lives, and Richmond, where several severe driver injuries have occurred in the past several years, are logical places to see if Sicking’s work will meet the “do no harm” yardstick that he has set forth.

TOPPING IT OFF
Another area where NASCAR is attempting to address safety issues deals with driver escape hatches, and how to best implement a workable system into the roofs of the cars to allow for easier driver exit in the case of a wreck.

“In my opinion NASCAR needs to work on expediting a roof hatch,” Jeff Burton said of the ongoing project. “The effort is there. The desire is there but there are times when I wish they could expedite a little better.

“How can you make it so it opens to the left or to the right because you might have to open it one way or the other way, or the bottom or the rear? When you start getting into OK, how do you do it?

“NASCAR painted some scenarios where the thing wouldn’t open with what they had done [in an original design]. So they had to go back and come up with a different idea. There are a lot of things that go into it and that’s why it feels like it doesn’t happen quick enough.

“NASCAR tries to paint every scenario and then they go through a practice and they come up with something. Then they’ve got to go paint another scenario. Then they’ve got to redo everything.

“Their unwillingness to compromise on the unknown is why it’s slow,” Burton added. “Some people could say, ‘Well, I’d rather have something that doesn’t work very well versus something that doesn’t work at all and so those people get impatient. But then it’s wrong to do something that’s worse than what you’re doing.

“There have been many examples where I’ve had conversations and I’ve said, ‘What the hell, let’s just do it.’ And it’s like, ‘Well, yeah but look at this’ and they’d walk me through some scenarios that I hadn’t thought about and I’d say, ‘Yeah, it was more complicated than I thought it was.’”

NASCAR’s Darby told TFR Thursday that the full court press is on to get the roof hatch completed and that some crash testing will be required before the system is implemented.

Darby cited several reasons why the roof hatch is not as simple to implement as say roof flaps. The roof flaps, which are the only approved pieces that are supplied as kits, attach only to the cars’ roof sheetmetal. The roof hatch, however, would need to be secured to the roll bars to give it the strength it needs in the case of a rollover accident. Slowing the process somewhat are the roll bars which, while close to being standardized, are not at a point where a “one size fits all” approach can be taken, such as is the case with roof flaps.