Story and photos by Dwight Drum
Web work by Gary Larsen

Gary Nelson
NASCAR Vice President / Research & Development

"They pay attention to their role models."

Place: SAE International conference, Dearborn, Mich.
Time: Post 2004 Season

High-Speed Safety

"Give engineers all the gold on the planet and time in a millennium and they still could not perfect a risk-free race car."

There may not be enough gold on the planet or time in a millennium to perfect a risk-free race car, but NASCAR engineers under the guidance of Gary Nelson are trying to do just that. A new boxier model will be on future NASCAR tracks designed with safety first, speed too. NASCAR doesn't have any corner on gold and time, but they have taken their safety focus from the garage to the laboratory too where results have paid injury dividends already with improved restraint systems.

Nelson highlighted NASCAR's safety concentration during a panel discussion at a Society of Automotive Engineers convention at Dearborn, Mich., this past winter. The air might have brought freezing moments to that northern ground, but the warmth of the progress all about that meeting transfers to the sport of summer with a cool breeze.

That cool wind is all about speed and safety.

"When the single engine rule came out we were very prepared for it, but there was a little fingernail biting until we got through it. We were concerned about piston, cam and lifter wear. As always when a rule like this comes up it's on our shoulders to make it work. I think it's a matter of focusing and being in the right point technologically in your engine design. When that rule came about it was just on the edge of being able to do that and we were able to advance and go ahead."

"We keep working to come up with more and more ways. We really have three goals at NASCAR. Obviously safety is the first thing. We make our decisions to try to make the sport safer. Competition is the next thing. How do we have good competition on the track? Enacting a rule that could cause a lot of cars to not finish goes against that one. So the third thing on our list is can we accomplish safety? Can we improve competition? And can we do those two things at a lower cost to the car owners. We can debate that forever, how rules changes save money, because there is probably an expense that comes with any change. But with that expense there is a benefit to competition and obviously if there is a benefit to safety and you have to think about it that way. The single engine rule proved to be so successful early on. It's worked very well.

"Try to find out what the priorities are. What should we be working on? How do we get furthest down the road when it comes to safety? We really started expanding out of the garage area.

"If I was a racer and somebody asked me where to put the fuel, I'd say as close to the center of gravity and as low as you can get it. Because you don't have a change in handling once the weight goes away from the back of the car. That makes all the sense in the world from an engineering standpoint, but from a NASCAR take on it, why the fuel remains in the back of the car."

"We looked very hard at putting it right behind the driver at the left side of the car. The reason we decided not to is refueling. Cars in NASCAR refuel quote often and we are trying to go to even less fuel onboard and more fuel stops. The most likely chance for a gasoline fire in a stock car race is in the pits. A fire can happen during refueling. All forms of racing have seen that.

Looking at Dale Earnhardt Jr's accident in a Corvette and knowing the fuel tank was located just ahead of the rear axle. When the system was breached, the fuel went into the driver's compartment. That was probably the tail end of our own studies saying we are going to refuel live in a NASCAR race. When we refuel we are at a most likely chance of a wreck. If there is a spill in a wreck or in a spill, let's have the fuel as far away from the driver as we can. "

"How do you improve safety? At the time that I asked this question, I said let's fix the front bumper of the car. The front bumper is not absorbing enough energy. If we had spent three years working on the front bumper of the car, we wouldn't have gotten much. We would have guys with serious injuries while we were trying to fix the front bumpers. Based on urgings from the engineers and the experts we put our efforts into driver restraint systems. We put a lot of work into changing our rules. Our rulebook went from 3 lines on seat belts to 3 pages. A lot of work was done on driver restraint systems, seat belts. We found out that most of them were quite antiquated and we upgraded it.

"For the first time after hard crashes for the first time drivers are describing the accident from start to finish.

"People think about fire. People think about rollover. We look at our database and say what's the most likely type of crash to cause an injury. That's the crash we work on. That's the place where we can make our biggest gains. Fire, it's big. The rollover crash, it's big. But if we injured four or five guys in between those from just hitting something hard, that's where we going to make our gains on safety. We're going to continue to work on the whole car, we're going to keep working on our priority list and as we move through that priority list hopefully we'll never put our feet up on a table and rest. We just keep working. That's all I have to say.

I've interviewed many racers in NHRA and NASCAR what the difference is between them and drivers on public highways. Most all say: I'm more aware. I look ahead. What do you think is the best way to get that out to the public?

"My experience with fans is that they really follows role models. Comments from the top, the elite drivers about safety on the highway go the furthest. There's a big push right now in America for not drinking and driving. We're hearing great things about it from all sources, just fans walking up and talking to them. I think the same thing when it comes to public safety. They pay attention to their role models."

I'm a journalist. For a guy who struggled with calculus in college, it was a treat to be in the presence of so many deep minds and not worry about mathematics. I wasn't able to comprehend all the technical details presented, but I was able to glean the right words, snap up-close photos and bring an SAE story to the motorsports public. We thank the good folks at SAE for their courtesy and their constant professional demeanor.