Bumper cars

Thursday, June 7, 2001 | 11:19 a.m.

As is the case with most great ideas, the latest safety device being developed for NASCAR Winston Cup Series racing initially was drawn up on a cocktail napkin during a casual lunch.

The "Humpy Bumper" -- an energy absorbing and dissipating device that would lessen the impact on drivers during head-on and near head-on crashes -- is the brainchild of Paul Lew and associates Jason Schiers and Ted Love of Las Vegas-based Lew Composites.

Lew contends that the device would lessen the type of fatal injury that Dale Earnhardt suffered as a result of his head-on impact with the concrete wall on the final lap of the Daytona 500 in February.

Schiers, vice president of Lew Composites, said the idea came to the three while they were watching a press conference concerning Earnhardt's death.

The company, which is located in the Las Vegas Motor Speedway research and development complex, had been developing nose cones made out of unidirectional graphite for winged cars and technicians were beginning to understand the high impact-absorption properties of the material.

Up until March, Lew Composites primarily had been using the lightweight but extremely strong unidirectional graphite in the manufacturing of rims for competition bicycles. In fact, Olympic cyclist Jeannie Longo set the world 1-hour record on rims produced by Lew Composites.

"We were sitting at Mulligan's (Bar and Grill) on Craig Road -- we eat lunch there just about every day -- and that (Earnhardt) news conference came on TV and we started tossing some ideas around about how we could do it for NASCAR, very easily," Schiers said.

"We jotted some things down on a napkin and nothing really came of it because we had so many projects in the works."

Then, in March, Speedway Motorsports Inc., president Humpy Wheeler -- an avid cyclist -- paid a visit to Lew during the Winston Cup race at LVMS.

"We introduce Humpy to Paul Lew, they started chatting a little bit and he asked what else we had done ... and he asked if we thought we could do some kind of energy-absorbing device for the front of a NASCAR car," Schiers said.

Eight weeks later, Lew met with Wheeler in his Charlotte office and showed him the prototype of the device and Wheeler was sold. After a few modifications, Wheeler introduced the device, which was named the "Humpy Bumper" in his honor, at a press conference prior to The Winston all-star race.

Schiers said that neither Wheeler nor SMI is receiving any compensation as a result of the development or manufacturing of the device.

Lew was in Dayton, Ohio, this week to oversee simulation tests at the University of Dayton Research Institute and the "Humpy Bumper" will undergo sled testing at General Motors next week.

Schiers said that every NASCAR team could be supplied with at least one "Humpy Bumper" within a month of NASCAR approving the device for competition. He said the device will cost about $6,000 per unit and the company could produce two a day.

"We have talked to a number of drivers and they are all very enthusiastic about it," Schiers said.

Wheeler was optimistic that NASCAR would give serious consideration to the "Humpy Bumper" once testing is complete.

"NASCAR officials have been very cooperative," Wheeler said. "In fact, there is some specific testing data they want to see and we are complying with their request."