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BRUCE LOWITTEscape hatches and fire extinguishers might make for a faster escape while cooling drivers' concerns.
Here's the quandary: NASCAR, faced with a sudden burst of fiery Winston Cup accidents, is trying to find the balance between protecting drivers when they crash and getting them out of their cars when flames engulf them.
Gary Nelson, NASCAR's managing director of competition, manages engineers at its research facility in Concord, N.C. It's his job to eliminate as much as possible driver comments such as, "I smell like a barbecue pit."
That was Bobby Labonte making light of the fire that swept through his No.18 Chevrolet after it hit the wall two weeks ago at Chicagoland. Labonte had to struggle to escape the inferno; he was not injured.
Neither was Dale Jarrett nor Ken Schrader in similar incidents. Ryan Newman, though, was burned in a crash last month at Michigan.
Beneath Labonte's dark humor lies the fear of fire. "It seems they're happening too often," driver Ricky Craven said. But the apparent increase is more perception than reality.
The crashes involving Labonte, Newman, Jarrett and Schrader the first half of this season match the four in the first half of 2002: Ward Burton at Texas, Johnny Benson at Talladega, Jeff Gordon at Pocono and Brett Bodine at Daytona.
Crashes in which a car slams backward into a wall are the most volatile. The fuel cell, a flexible bladder wrapped in metal, is in the rear. As driver Jimmy Spencer observed: "When you put 22 gallons of fuel against a wall, you know there are going to be sparks and you know you're going to have a fire."
NASCAR is experimenting with the number and location of fire extinguishers in cars.
"It's up to the teams' discretion to put them where they think they're needed," Newman said. "There's no justification for not having a fire extinguisher in the trunk so if something does happen a driver can have access to a localized fire; he can pull a pin in the fuel cell area.
More than cars, Newman said, "the racetracks are the things that need to be fixed." So-called soft walls are at Indianapolis and Talladega. They've been approved by NASCAR for Richmond, Loudon and Homestead.
"There's no reason we don't have soft walls at Chicago and Pocono, Kansas and every place else," said Newman, whose burns at Michigan, he said, were "like a super bad sunburn that blistered up."
All drivers wear fire-resistant suits and gloves, but heat - 1,800-2,100 degrees in a car fire - seeps through the layers in 40 seconds or less. Escape, then, is most important. And it isn't easy.
A driver, already under extreme stress, has to unhook the HANS (a collar tethered to a harness to prevent the head from snapping forward or to the side during a wreck), unhook his seat belt harnesses, remove the steering wheel, disconnect the two-way radio cable, remove the window net and extricate himself from a snug seat designed to keep him in place. If the left side is flush against the wall or another car, the driver has to scramble across to the right window.
Labonte's escape was delayed briefly because the radio cable still was attached to his helmet.
"Obviously, if you don't wear seat belts and you don't wear the HANS you can get out really quick," Nelson said. "Each thing you add brings you a higher level of safety. But if you're trying to get out of the car in a hurry, all those things have to be dealt with."
Roof hatches are being tested this year as a potentially faster escape route. "They have to be easily operated by the driver no matter what condition the car is in after an accident," Nelson said. He thinks most cars will have roof hatches next year, possibly mandated before the 2004 series ends.
Schrader, who has tested them, told the Associated Press they are "going to make a big difference, especially after an accident that ends with the driver's side up against the wall," forcing him to scramble to the right window. "With the escape hatch you can get out just as quickly as any other situation. It's also easier for emergency workers to get to the driver in that situation."
Safety crews have become a sore point with some drivers. Unlike CART and the IRL, NASCAR doesn't have a full-time medical crew who travels from race to race. It relies on each track to supply its own.
And unlike CART and the IRL, which permit safety crews to rush in their emergency vehicles to an accident the moment it happens, NASCAR delays them until track officials have decided the rest of the cars have slowed sufficiently. Because of that, Newman, Labonte, Jarrett and Schrader had to escape by themselves.
Traveling safety teams, Winston Cup champion and former IRL driver Tony Stewart said, "know every driver, they work with them all the time. ... And the repetitiveness of treating every injury, responding to every accident, makes them the best in the business."
Nelson said rescue workers at each race "aren't just guys that walked up looking for a job. These are daily firemen and emergency medical technicians. Then we train them exactly how the cars are at this moment. They have all the information they need."