Unsafe at any speed?

Friday, Jan. 14, 2000 | 10 a.m.

A list of Indy and Champ Car drivers who have suffered spinal-cord injuries during the past five years, with an "X" denoting career-ending injury:

(X) Emerson Fittipaldi, CART, 1996, Michigan International Speedway, race.

Scott Goodyear, CART, 1996, Emerson Fittipaldi Speedway, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, practice.

Buddy Lazier, IRL, 1996, Phoenix International Raceway, practice.

Davy Jones, IRL, 1997, Walt Disney World Speedway, Lake Buena Vista, Fla., testing.

Mark Blundell, CART, 1999,

ateway International Raceway, Madison, Ill., testing.

Steve Knapp, IRL, 1999, Atlanta Motor Speedway, race.

(X) Sam Schmidt, IRL, 2000, Walt Disney World Speedway, Lake Buena Vista, Fla., testing.

As tragic as it was, last week's accident at Walt Disney World Speedway that left Indy Racing League driver Sam Schmidt paralyzed from the neck down did not come as a complete surprise to Dr. Steve Olvey.

Olvey, a critical care physician who serves as director of medical affairs for Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART), said the open-wheel racing community has been "lucky" that more drivers involved in the same rear-impact collision as Schmidt have not suffered the same fate as the Henderson resident.

"We have known for a long time -- both in CART and the IRL as well as Formula One -- from our studies with the crash recorders and the types of accidents we've been having lately that rear-impact is the biggest cause of cervical neck injury," Olvey said.

"We have had severe (spinal) fractures, but the sport has been extremely fortunate that there hasn't been more paralysis. There were two in Formula One (Clay Regazzoni and Didier Pironi) and those, to my knowledge, are the only two in open-wheel racing since 1967."

Two, that is, until Schmidt's unfortunate accident last Thursday during an open test session on the 1-mile oval in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

Although Schmidt's accident will no doubt bring the issue of auto racing safety into the spotlight, Olvey said it is because of strides in safety that Schmidt was able to survive such a violent crash.

"Most rear-impact (accidents) severe enough to cause cervical fractures to the extent that they cause paralysis can also be fatal because of a type of injury called the distraction injury," Olvey said.

A distraction injury, Olvey said, can occur upon violent deceleration, such as in a crash. The force can cause the skull to separate from the spinal cord because the driver's body is restrained in the car and the head is propelled forward at the same speed the car was traveling before it stopped.

"This has been the mechanism for a couple of the fatal crashes over the last 15 years," Olvey said. "(Schmidt's crash) is the type of crash that ... very likely may have been a fatal accident years ago but because of safety changes in both CART and IRL cars, that has been improved because of attention to the headrest, the padding in the seats, the shape and design of the seats and the headrests.

"All these things have been improved in the cars so that the risk of fatal injury has actually decreased -- although (CART) had two fatal crashes last year."

The injuries that killed rising star Greg Moore and Gonzalo Rodriguez in 1999 were not spinal-cord related.

Spin cycle

While advances in safety have made open-wheel cars -- as well as other forms of race cars -- more forgiving in crashes, technological advances actually have changed the way open-wheel cars crash.

In the 1980s, Olvey said foot, ankle and leg fractures were the most common injuries among open-wheel drivers involved in accidents because the majority of crashes were frontal impact.

"What happened was that the cars, in the corners, were going at slower speeds than they are now and they would do a complete 360-degree revolution and then hit the wall frontwards," Olvey explained.

At that time, both CART and Formula One undertook measures to strengthen the nose cones of the cars.

As speeds increased in the late '80s and early '90s, Olvey said, he started noticing more hip and femur fractures because the cars began going faster into the corners and spinning only about 270 degrees before hitting the wall.

CART and F-1 responded by strengthening the sides of the cars, adding energy-absorbing materials to the cars' side pods and drivers' cockpits.

In the past five or six years, as speeds continued to increase, the cars began spinning only 180 degrees before making contact with the rear of the car, Olvey said. Hence the rash of rear-impact crashes.

In addition, because the cars are traveling faster, they scrub off less speed before hitting the wall, resulting in a more violent impact.

As a result, both CART and the IRL have made changes to the cockpits of their cars in an attempt to stabilize the drivers' heads in rear-impact crashes, as well as attempting to reduce speeds on oval tracks.

The IRL, in introducing its 2000 chassis specifications, made no fewer than seven improvements in chassis design -- all aimed at better protecting the drivers' heads.

Safer cars

"We heavily restricted the manufacturers on the changes they could make (to the chassis) that would be performance enhancing," Brian Barnhart, IRL director of racing operations, said. "We kept all our templates and rules and regulations in place to help control speeds, yet we widened the cockpit by three inches, which affords much greater and improved head pads around the driver (and) it improves driver extrication in the case of an injury.

"We moved the side pods forward and raised them higher so there is more crushable structure beside the driver and to keep stuff away from the cockpit and driver's head. The most drastic changes we allowed the manufacturers to make were all safety related."

But Schmidt was not driving one of the 2000 G-Force chassis when he crashed at Walt Disney World Speedway. Because of Treadway Racing's limited funds due to a lack of sponsorship dollars, Schmidt was driving a 1998 G-Force that had been upgraded to meet 1999 league specifications.

According to a league spokesman, there is no evidence to suggest that Schmidt would have avoided a spinal fracture had he been driving a 2000 G-Force.

"Sam was in a car that we are very confident and comfortable in the configuration and what was on the car," IRL technical director Phil Casey said. "Racing will always be dangerous and it's a terrible tragedy when anything like this occurs; it's a gruesome reminder of how dangerous this sport can be.

"But it's something we never accept and it's something we never stand still on -- we're always striving to improve the car."

Although the IRL will not release the data it has compiled from Schmidt's wrecked car, including the G-force load he sustained at impact, Barnhart said Schmidt's car behaved "in a very typical manner" during and after the accident.

"We have done a pretty thorough report on Sam's accident ... and we didn't see anything from a loading standpoint or a damage standpoint that we haven't seen several times," Barnhart said. "The car was pretty predictable in how it broke up."

Eddie Cheever Jr., the 1998 Indianapolis 500 winner and a veteran of 25 professional racing seasons, said he believes the IRL is at the forefront of driver safety.

Drivers satisfied

"When the Indy Racing League started, it was first series I ever raced in -- and I've raced in a lot of series -- where there was a group made up of the drivers, the engineers and the people that made the rules that all sat down and tried to come up with the best possible package on safety by using all the technology that was available to us," Cheever said.

"The first cars that came out I thought were very safe ... (the league was) proactive and they made some changes when we had problems. Then these new cars came out and we have made big leaps forward in safety. All of our head protection areas are enormously improved upon from what they were three or fours years ago and they even made big jumps from where they were last year."

Olvey said open-wheel drivers could benefit from a new head restraint device that has been under development for the past 12 years.

Dr. Robert Hubbard at the University of Michigan has been working on the HANS Device, which, when adapted for use in open-wheel cars, could decrease the likelihood of serious neck injuries in violent rear-impact crashes, Olvey said.

The HANS Device is a yolk-and-collar mechanism to which a driver's helmet is tethered and allows the head and neck to move as one entity rather than the head moving violently from front to back or side to side in a crash.

The device has been used in other forms of racing where the drivers sit upright in stock cars and sprint cars, but is still being adapted to open-wheel drivers, who sit in a semi-reclined position.

"The HANS Device is very good in decreasing the loads put on the neck in the event of any kind of crash," Olvey said. "All of the studies done have shown that this decreases the loads put on the neck in any type of crash and should decrease the chances of neck injuries.

"We are working with (CART driver) Christian Fittipaldi and he has worn it at Sebring in a test this year and we anticipate having it available for all CART drivers starting this spring."

Barnhart said the IRL is awaiting additional research and testing before introducing the HANS Device in the IRL, but reiterated that he is confident with the safety changes the IRL has implemented for this racing season.

"We're very comfortable with our equipment (but) we certainly are not complacent -- we're always trying to improve. (Sam's injury) probably caught us a little off guard because in looking at it, it certainly was not the type of accident that we anticipated that type of injury to come out of it.

"We'll evaluate all the data and we'll see if there is something we can do to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Cheever said every racing sanctioning body owes that to every driver who sits behind the wheel of a machine capable of reaching speeds in excess of 200 mph.

"Are we making a lot of progress in terms of driver safety? Absolutely," Cheever said. "I have never been in any series that has been as proactive on safety issues as the IRL. And I would have to say that even the other open-wheel series in America (CART) is doing the same thing. There is so much technology available now that it would be a sin not to take advantage of it."

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