Porter death casts shadow over Bathurst.

[ballast]

evening all just a quick note on the porter/clark crash
first of all at 170+kph you don't get a lot time to react,secondly porters car was droping fluid and was possably the reason he walled it,and in my opinion clark was out of control cresting the rise just before
porter's car i don't think he could have done much to miss porter anyway.
while i'm on the subject i don't think siting on a forum attacking someone for what was a accident is going to help anyone least of all porter or clarke,clarke is going to live with this the rest of his life and that good people is not going to be easy.
and unless you've got currant v8 racing experance at bathurst then maybe you can critisise and if porter hadn't of crashed then clarke couldn't have hit him
i'm not blaming porter but i canot blame clarke either for what was probably an unavoidable accidant.
as for car safty i doubt you could make a race car strong enough to withstand an impact of that size and if you did the human body won't.

[nota]

Originally Posted by ballast

evening all just a quick note on the porter/clark crash

while i'm on the subject i don't think siting on a forum attacking someone for what was a accident is going to help anyone least of all porter or clarke,clarke is going to live with this the rest of his life and that good people is not going to be easy.
and unless you've got currant v8 racing experance at bathurst then maybe you can critisise and if porter hadn't of crashed then clarke couldn't have hit him
i'm not blaming porter but i canot blame clarke either for what was probably an unavoidable accidant.

Evening to you

Presumably my posts are a focus of your comments. If so I'd like to make it clear that I'm not out to convict Clark, or Porter. Rather I've entitled myself to proffer my individual comment towards a major motorsport event, via this internet chat forum

For what it's worth I don't feel the obligation to have a CAMS V8 portfolio to enable myself to comment on this topical occurance, nor require it of others. I dunno whether you yourself have 'V8 racing experience at bathurst' either. I certainly don't claim or allude to such

I agree with some of your observations

[motorsportnerd]

Originally Posted by Daz27

I dont think they can move the seats further over to the centre. They are basically against the trans tunnel as is, now. And as low as possible too. Basic race car design really.

Maybe not, unless the design of the transmission tunnel is also changed.
Those who followed the 2-litre Super Touring class (ie: BTCC & the like) in the mid 90s may remember that teams responded to a couple of fatal accidents in 1995 (Greg Hansford's fatal crash in the Mondeo at Phillip Island and Keith Odor's fatal crash at Avus, Germany in the Nissan Primera) by moving the drivers seat as close to the centre as was possible in the following seasons in order to give more crush space between the door and seat.
IIRC, the racing TWR Volvos retained the SIPS side impact technology from the road cars in the race cars. May have helped save the life of Kelvin Burt who had a momumental side impact with a tyre barrier at Knockhill (I think) in his Volvo 850 in 1996.
Today's DTM cars run with the drivers seat in a relatively central position. Also, the DTM cars feature some sort of safety cell around the drivers seat/capsule. This or the NASCAR seating system may be worth investigating.
Also, perhaps it worth investigating racing applications for side airbags/curtain airbags?
While high-speed side impact crashes will always result in the highest G-force loads and will be the hardest impacts to protect the driver in, its worth investigating every possible angle to prevent injury or death.

[fpv_gtho]

Airbags could prove to be a pioneering step, although i'd imagine there'd be alot to consider with configuring them. You'd need to make sure they activated at the right circumstances, and not when the cars capable to continue and the drivers going 100% still. Moving the seat sounds like a much easier proposition, perhaps even with the seat moved further back to give the driver more protection from the B pillar.

[motorsportnerd]

Moving the seat back further could be worth considering.
However, lets also remember that the drivers need to be able to get in and out relatively easily and quickly as well (not just for driver swaps in enduros, but for safety reasons after crashes to avoid fire, etc). This will make it harder to change the position of the seat too radically. Moving it to the centre and then rearwards may be too hard to access...

[fpv_gtho]

I dont think anything VESA come up with will make it any easier for the drivers though. Whether they go closer to the centre, more side beam protection or even the airbag idea...its going to be harder for the drivers.

[Daz27]

Whens the last time you guys stuck your heads in a V8SC? The drivers head is level with the pillar. The rear mounts of the driver seat are in roughly the same place as where the front of the rear seat would be. Moving the seat further back would make the car almost impossible to drive. Pure and simple. In 95% of the cars the drivers seat is hard against the trans tunnel. Modifying the tunnel would take clearance away from the tailshaft, and what ever ancilary's that run through there.
I think Ballast made a very good point, even if you do make the cars stronger, that transfers the load to the driver themselves. I guess with an impact like that suffered by those guys, who can say if it were survivable even in the perfect world.
I dont think anyones blaming anyone else for Porter's death. Its a trully sad thing to happen. However he won't be the last. Its not exactly a game of marbles those guys are playing.

[blackhonda]

A little off topic here, apologies to acemotorsport the thread starter. I thought I would just try to show what some have alluded to here, and how other series build their cars. Just for the record, let me just state that in no way do I consider myself an expert on the subject, there are others far more qualified to speak on that matter, I am just trying to illustrate some alternative thinking. Also these pictures and ideas should not be interpreted as to my thinking that the current V8 Supercars are unsafe, again I am unqualified to make such statements.
#1-3. DTM cars. V8 front-engined, RWD drive four-door touring cars but done a lot differently to the way we do it. These cars appear to have almost managed to get the driver in the centre of the car, despite having to make room for a gearbox and drive shaft. The drivers also sit in a carbon-fibre safety-cell, much like current single-seater thinking. They are a very different animal to our cars of course, being a space-framed facsimile of the parent car. Some of you may remember that when Mark Larkham first entered Touring Cars, he tried the same thing with his EL Falcon but abandoned the concept for a more conventional set-up.
#4-6. Transam cars. A bit more agricultural than both our cars and the DTM cars, what these photos don't show is the bar-work inside where the doors would normally be (these cars are entered through the windows a la Dukes of Hazzard style). There are three horizontal bars that bulge outward into the space where the doors would be. The drivers also sit next to the B-pillar in accordance with current touring car thinking.
Both of these class of cars weigh considerably less than our cars, around the 1000-1100kg mark. Additionally our cars are considered to be over-powered, overweight, under-tyred and under-braked. That coupled with a dry weight of 1350kg (which must be up around the 1550kg mark fully loaded for Bathust) must make for an enormous amount of energy to be absorbed in an accident. In my opinion, for what's worth, perhaps we might have to look at some sort of DTM/Transam hybrid style car to get the kind of safety that we are seeking.
What do you think?

[motorsportnerd]

Anything that will improve saftey for the drivers is worth a look at. Mark Larkham's "safety cell" seat idea may be revisited for a start.
Anything that is done must be able to be implemented in the current cars. Although the VE is about to come on stream next year, Ford teams still have at least another season to go with BF chassis and the Development Series uses the older cars, so any modifications for safety must be able to implemented in the current racecars so as not to make them obsolete overnight.
Its worth noting that in 13 years since the V8 Supercar class replaced Group A (first season for the V8 class was 1993) there have been only two fatalities and relatively few serious injury crashes. The cars are already relatively safe, so we're only talking incremental improvements to make them even safer if at all possible.

[2ndclasscitizen]

Originally Posted by motorsportnerd

Mark Larkham's "safety cell" seat idea may be revisited for a start.

I've never heard anything about that before? What is the basic idea of it?

[SlickHolden]

Our V8's are still so unique if they went the way of DTM they would probably go faster wider wheelbases even with more weight. Is that what they want? then they might try and slow them more, They look like big wide things our cars still resemble the road cars they got to find another way.

[blackhonda]

Originally Posted by 2ndclasscitizen

I've never heard anything about that before? What is the basic idea of it?

Essentially the driver was encased in a carbon-fibre tub that fitted within the confines of the cockpit of the car. If you look at the Audi DTM picture in my post (pic #3) you get the idea. It is fairly commonplace in that type of car, it was also used by German GT competitors as well, there was a Honda NSX that used that concept. It is an integral part of the car, it doesn't lift out or move. It had an added bonus of stiffening the car as well. As I said, Larkham used it for the first EL Falcon he built, but when the car didn't perform it was replaced by a car with more conventional V8 Supercar thinking.
I agree with motorsportnerd comments about current V8 Supercar safety in terms of statistics, but my concern is that they are big, powerful heavy cars that are getting faster (admittedly incrementally) every year and I wonder if they are starting to out-grow some circuits as a result of that. That in turn brings discussion about changing circuits/not running at others and so on. God forbid there should be another accident of type we are discussing, but I can't help but wonder (with no disrepect to anyone intended) what the ramifications might have been if a similar accident had happened during the main race.

[motorsportnerd]

Looking at the damage to Paul Radisich's TKR Commodore (see: http://www.motorsport.com/photos/sel...ce&Y=2006&O=72) and team owner Daid John's description of how little is retrievable (see http://www.v8dailydump.com/news/allA...WSITEMID=4833), it is VERY lucky that this accident did not result in far more serious consequences. And this was a head on impact, not a side one. I was very worried when I saw that impact - you could see the whole left side buckle backwards when it hit the wall.
Radisich is well known in world motor racing circles, not just Australian/NZ cirles, and has been a front line driver for some years. Thankfully, we don't have to consider the ramifications that could have resulted from this accident being much worse.

[Daz27]

I think the Rats saving grace in that crash is the fact it WAS a frontal impact. It enabled the HANS device to work as it was designed for a start.
Was amazing to see it in slow motion and to see how the shock of impact made its way through the vehicle.
I still think that bridge should be removed.
Touching on the other point, where can we say that a car has out grown the track its racing on? F1 has been racing like this since the 70's, if not the 60's. I mean honestly, who in their right mind would say sure, put an f1 car on the streets of Monaco if they were starting the series this year?
RPM is on, have to go.....
Footnote, when I build my XE this off season, I'll be looking at having a side impact area design based on the Nascar series, reason? It makes me feel safer and thats enough for me.

[fpv_gtho]

Wel they dont exactly go to Monaco anymore for the racing. F1 did however have to stop going to the original Nurburgring for reasons of safety.

I'd be interested to see how some moves to change the cars performance, rather than safety, would impact. Changing from locked diff's to LSD's alone would have some interesting effects on setup and driveability as the cars wouldnt have to be as sloppy. That could make them alot easier for the drivers, perhaps removing some of the effect fatique plays as well as all the foreign drivers Bathurst attracts.