Driver safety, a crucial issue

There are always problems when a new race car is introduced. Problems are often related to reliability.

In the case of the Next Gen car, reliability has been pretty good for most of the season. This is because the chassis was extremely rigid.

The team’s cost-cutting mandate resulted in a car that was much less crashworthy than the previous Gen 6 car. When those cars crash, those forces still have to go somewhere. It appears that these forces were directed directly towards the drivers.

And the sad truth is that this probably could have been avoided.

NASCAR spent a lot of time crash testing the Next Gen car. Sports Affairs JournalMatt Crossman’s interview with John Patalak, NASCAR’s senior director of safety engineering, in 2021 on the testing process. At the time, Patalak described using eight years of black box data, as well as a medical database of injuries from drivers of the Gen 6 car and the car of tomorrow, to determine the areas of the car on which ones to focus on. Extensive testing has also been carried out on the foam used in the new car, both in computer models, simulations and in real life.

Read all Front stretchRetrospective 2022 content here

We can never do enough tests for this type of situation. However, the problem that has emerged as the season has gone on is that the types of crashes that have injured drivers in 2022 haven’t really hurt anyone in previous years. Or, if they did, these accidents didn’t hurt drivers enough for them to feel the need to comment on them or seek treatment.

Because there were Next Gen car crashes before the competition debut during February’s Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum – quite a few, in fact.

Before the COVID-19 lockdowns, William Byron crashed a test car at Auto Club Speedway in 2020. Testing at Charlotte Motor Speedway in November and December 2021 resulted in a series of spins. It is likely that the biggest accident was the one that occurred Austin Dillon in November, where he slammed headlong into the wall.

The Phoenix Raceway test in January also saw a number of spins. Front-line motor sports Todd Gilliland also turned and backed up against the wall in round 2.

On the surface, Gilliland’s accident ended up looking pretty harmless. However, it is this type of accident that has played a much bigger role than it ever should have during the 2022 season.

Once the race started, it became clear that something was going on. You regularly heard drivers describe accidents as the hardest hits of their career that felt like anything but.

The Next Gen car made it possible to continue racing after crashes that would have disabled a Gen 6 car. One example was Kevin Harvick crashed into the lead at Texas Motor Speedway after clipping a right rear tire and backing violently into the wall in Turn 3.

Despite this fall, Harvick not only continued the race but also managed to finish on the first lap in 19^th.

Speaking of the AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 500, it was probably the worst race of the year due to crashes, tire failures and slow pace. The five-hundred-mile races in Texas are not expected to last four hours and 21 minutes (not including the red flag due to rain showers). If this event had been a regular race, the biggest stories to come out of it would have been Tyler Reddick winning his first Cup race on an oval, or the ridicule surrounding Byron and Denis Hamlin.

Instead, the biggest stories were two nasty accidents. The first was Alex BowmanThe fall of at turn 4 on lap 97.

Bowman was in visible pain after the hit and said on the radio that he thought he was done for the day – which ultimately was not the case; after repairs were made to the Ally Chevrolet, Bowman finished the race even though he complained of a headache. Four days later, Hendrick Motorsports announced that Bowman would sit out Talladega Superspeedway due to concussion-like symptoms. Bowman only ended up returning for the season finale in Phoenix.

His concussion was the second of the year that we are aware of. The first happened when Kurt Busch backed into the wall exiting Turn 3 during qualifying at Pocono Raceway in July.

The situation ended up being much worse for Busch than it was for Bowman. He still hasn’t raced in five months since suffering a concussion and will not race full-time in the series in 2023.

The other accident took place Cody WareFall at turn 4 following a mechanical failure on his Ford Nurtec ODT. Ware drove violently into the outside wall before going down out of control on pit road and narrowly missing an opening in the pit wall.

Ware suffered an impaction fracture to his right foot and a number of partial ligament tears in the accident. He raced at Talladega the following week but ultimately missed the Bank of America ROVAL 400 at the Charlotte ROVAL.

After Texas, drivers effectively forced NASCAR to perform additional lab testing on the Next Gen car to address their concerns that computer models during crash tests did not reflect what they felt in the car. Additionally, a series of regular driver meetings was instituted so that the sport’s leaders could hear the drivers’ opinions directly. Previously, NASCAR had more or less denied what the drivers were saying because it wasn’t consistent with its research.

For 2023, changes will be made to the Next Gen car that will allow for additional crushing capability. The hope is that this will reduce the forces drivers experience in crashes.

The car itself wasn’t the only safety issue in NASCAR in 2022, however. It brought new low-profile tires that ended the use of interliners in the Cup Series.

The interliner was instituted as a safety measure around 1970. Not having one on high-speed highways can mean that a small outage could lead to an almost immediate disaster. The Harvick and Bowman crashes above are just two examples of what can happen when a tire fails at high speeds.

Then there were refereeing problems which caused security problems. Most notable here is the sudden downpour of rain that caused a huge crash at Daytona International Speedway in August.

It was painfully obvious to anyone at the track and everyone watching that day on CNBC that rain was heading toward the track. Daytona is not Martinsville Speedway; you can’t keep going until it rains with drivers racing three at 190 mph. It’s too dangerous. If NASCAR had called the yellow 30 seconds earlier, the big wreck probably never would have happened.

Admittedly, NASCAR realized it had messed up the situation, which is why it has since become much more conservative when it comes to rain.

Speaking of tires, another major topic of discussion was single knobby wheels and the various issues with keeping them on a car. It was a nightmare from day one and it never really got better. There were 39 four-week suspensions assessed during the season due to lost tires (crew chief, jackman and tire iron each time), while a mid-season rule change prevented more suspensions. Team No. 31 was eliminated twice.

The scariest incident regarding the new wheels probably didn’t even involve any of these suspensions. This happened in Phoenix in November when Caleb Binks, Jackman on Christopher Bell‘s n°20, found his fingers stuck between the wheel and the brake caliper during the last pit stop of the season. The general public didn’t really see what exactly happened until Joe Gibbs Racing posted a video on Twitter almost a month after the season ended.

Here are images of the #20 Jackman Caleb Dirks from the final pit stop of the championship race. Caleb’s fingers got caught between the wheel and the brake caliper. It’s a miracle that Caleb didn’t suffer serious injuries (unlike the hot dog in our illustration). #NASCAR #races pic.twitter.com/M8YwX6tTIm

–Joe Gibbs Racing (@JoeGibbsRacing) December 5, 2022

Binks wasn’t seriously hurt here, but it could have been a lot worse. He just had to deal with bruised and very painful fingers.

The increase in pit stop speeds in 2022 with single-lug wheels has made pit road a little more dangerous for crews. Something like Binks’ problem is just one reason they’re more dangerous. Another possibility is the possibility of greater interaction between teams completing stops and those arriving, which previously only happened at the start of races. NASCAR is not Formula 1 or the Repco Supercars Championship; No penalty will be imposed on anyone for an unsafe release.

Add up all the different situations in 2022 and you get a very competitive season but full of enough shenanigans to drive everyone crazy. With all the time NASCAR spent developing the Next Gen car, it sometimes seems like it didn’t really listen to those driving the car.

The outrage that followed Bowman and Busch’s concussions and the various other hits that were harder than before and took longer to heal could have torn the sport apart. If NASCAR had done nothing after all this outrage, you could very well have seen the Race Team Alliance try to force some sort of action against NASCAR.

2023 will be a big year for NASCAR. Changes to the Next Gen car will need to show an appreciable improvement in driver safety for drivers to maintain their trust in the sanctioning body. The tests were positive, but as we discovered last season, a lab is not a lead. We hope that additional modifications to the hub will reduce the number of loose wheels and, therefore, suspensions.