I'm no physics expert but the car turning on 90 degrees instead of a full 180 probably negated any effect the flaps had as the air was cutting through the flaps rather than directly making contact. Scary but just saw he tweeted, so happy he's seemingly alright.
I've been an aero nerd for a while when it comes to NASCAR and other forms of racing. Those roof flaps are designed to stop a flip from happening when a sudden turn of around 130 degrees happens... that's the sweet spot NASCAR figured out the car liked to take off at when they were originally developed. The real issue here more than anything else, as said in the video, is the new flat bottom on the Gen 7. When you allow the wind to rush under the side of it like that, it's gonna take right off like a small airplane. I'd say pave that area, but that would lead to big changes in the Rolex 24 at daytona and other road racing events as it changes sight lines, and possibly makes bolder moves more appetizing to make and INCREASES the danger involved with the bus stop chicane section of the backstretch...
@CnyAutofreakRacingVideo the flat bottom on this car reminds me of when the COT car had the wing on the back of it. When it turned around it negated the roof flaps and that wing lifted and flipped those cars like crazy. I will say this though, I am extremely impressed at how well this car held up around Preece. Nothing around him seemed to crush or deformed.
@@shawnconder4984 that's one of the main reasons I absolutely hate this car. And it's not about being an old boomer either, but you'd think after 50+ years of developing a SAFE car, if they were going to try something new, it would first have to be the same level of safety as what you're replacing. Taking the wing off the COT was easy. This Gen 7 car? They've had to do multiple redesigns and from what I see, it's still a super dangerous car to be driving compared to that 'stone age tech' everyone wanted to get rid of so badly...
@@FloridaManRacerprior gen cars didn't have a flat bottom and took off. The ground dipping down is likely what caused the car to take off like it did. The flat bottom helps suck the car down, not cause it to lift. Go look at Elliott Sadler's Talladega flip.
It's incredibly difficult to determine the crash-worthiness of a car if it hasn't had a few "rapid unschedulled disassembly" events at bizarre angles. Violent wrecks like this one almost need to happen; and happen regularly, to make sure the governing body doesn't get any delusions of grandeur or rest on their laurels.
You're almost right. But the car itself IS the delusion of grandure. We had a car that got developed for 50+ years. The old tube frame live rear axle cars went through all that testing over the years and people died to make it a safe car. Then NASCAR said screw it, let's go back to having less safety. And no one can tell me otherwise because Kurt Busch just retired from injuries in that new car. New isn't always better. And this car has been solid proof of that. NASCAR took a huge step backward in driver safety and they have a LOT of catching up to do. Let's just hope no one has to die to get there this time...
The best part of this new car is the body can take a little bit of a beating, and the driver can still drive. Also the ability to change out some of the rods during a pit-stop can keep the car on the track
Reminded me of Rusty Wallace’s flip in the 1993 Daytona 500 the first time I saw it. I do agree that the underbody has contributed to the cars being able to flip more easier and the roof hatch needs to be more secured to the roof of the car, but still be usable for drivers to get out either getting pinned against a wall or the window net area is on the racing surface.
The most dangerous thing with the escape hatch ripping off early in the crash is how sharp metal debris could have come through that opening over Preece's head on any of those flips. You basically have an open tunnel direct to Preece's head and body with huge chunks of twisted metal and wreckage potentially entering the cockpit that way on each roof flip.
The good news is that NASCAR typically does something to the car when a crash like this happens. The bad news is that it takes a crash like this for them to do something.
It’s just hard to test a crash like this, they can do simulations but you won’t have good real world example until someone goes for a ride. Luckily even for how scary these wrecks look they are at least better than what happened to blaney in terms of energy dissipation.
This kind of thing can only be seen in hindsight, not predicted. If it could be predicted they would know to design for the impacts, or they could design for it not to happen.
@@johnclary729Using your own analysis……. I believe NASCAR has had PLENTY of “hindsight”. Hindsight is another word for history, experience, knowledge, correct? NASCAR has some of the worlds best engineers across the teams and spectrum correct? NASCAR is a smart experienced business correct? These wrecks make MONEY! That’s why nothing has been done. Nothing will be done. The wrecks are by design. They know what they’re doing don’t you worry, you just keep giving them money and talk about hindsight. “Can I interest you in a $10 beer and a $12 hot dog, I’m making a run?”
What? You think anyone can see exactly now every scenario that will happen before it does? In my near 60 years around the sport the one phrase I've said, heard, and lived the experience most is, "I've never seen that happen before." I never thought I would have ever been involved in the driver safety aspect of a car the would break the wall at Daytona. Then flip. Then hit the wall again with the roof of the car. Then come apart with the engine left a couple of hundred feet from the car. Land hard. Spin a few times. Then see our driver get out of the car. Telling me later the thing that he was most afraid of was how mad the owner was going to be that he killed his race car.
He survived with no injuries so obviously car did its job. Gotta have the roof hatch so they can get out so don’t know anything can do to get it to not come off
I think Nascar reinforcing the roof structure and the Newman bar saved preeces life. That body held together really really well. If it was a 2003 car I think he may have died
Not trying to be rude but I think that in 2003 this wouldn’t have killed him because look at rusty wallace Daley Allison and other 90s flips where it was just the roll cage left from the 90s and on they always made sure they car could withstand a flip in the grass like this they never bothered on wall hits like dales and Neil bonnets and others
@@triggyez Ryan Newmans roof almost collapsed in on him in 2003. Which is why Nascar introduced the Newman bar. And Newmans car hit top down once and it crushed in. Preece had his car hit top down TWICE and the roof barely bumped.
The first hit was directly over the drivers compartment. And because of the force of that impact, I'd kind of have to agree. That force compromised the window net. But in a case of cars of the past, it stood a high chance of compromising the cage. Possibly severely.
This was an amazing analysis. I would love to see a series of analyses like this with wrecks like Ricky Rudd at Daytona, Elliott Sadler at Talladega, and of course Rusty's flips
The one thing about this "analysis" is how do you know, without context, that he knows what he's talking about? You can't even trust the "expert" commentators. Cup cars haven't weighed 3500 lbs. since the late eighties or early nineties. Funny how the ex-basketball players got it right. I worked on cars, then the inspection line for ARCA back in the time period when they and NASCAR changed to 3400 lbs. After that, I was the one who inspected underneath the cars. Of course this was after I built and ran my own cars locally before the cost got too high. This goes for every internet expert in any subject. Make sure you have an idea that they actually do know their stuff. I couldn't stand to watch any more of this after about 3 and a half minutes.
I remember that at some point during the 90s or early 2000s, Le Mans prototypes had the same issue with air packing under the body of the cars and specifically the points where the wheels are located (don't remember the english term, foreigner here. Wheel wells maybe?) and causing the cars to be more prone to flip during high speed spins. They kinda solved the problems by cutting slots on the body over the wheels to prevent that, almost the same purpose for the slots cut on the Indycar's floor, in front of the radiator ducts. NASCAR doesn't have any of this, apart from the roof flaps but they're located too far from that "sensible zones". Maybe they can evaluate a solution like this in the future...
Yeah it was those Mercedes Clk Gtr cars at le mans. They took of like paper on the Musilene straight. There was a scene in Top Gear with a driver that it happened to
They have them. They're on the hood. There isn't enough fender to put them there. Those were the parts that were fiddled with on the Hendrick cars that got busted a while back.
My father used to be over Talladega Superspeedway track medics. He was a fire/medic for almost 25 years. When NASCAR told them that they were going to go to this years ago. He and his boss told them that it wasn't a good idea. 1. If there is a fire and they go through the roof when they open it it becomes a chimney. 2. They told them this exact thing would happen. It takes away integrity of the roof. It makes the roof flex more than it should. It's not safe. I was watching the race with him last night and he says to me " I told them years ago that this would happen." Needs to be changed. Because in some aspects it became a open wheel car with the open roof. He could have easily had a part come through the roof and hit him in the head.
Can some kind of strong metal mesh or solid piece be used to enclose the hole still allowing for them to go up to try to prevent the car becoming airborne in other types of crashes? Or, do they need airflow to work properly?
@@marty0063 The "hole" is covered with a hatch. It just happened the come open early in the flip. With the composite bodies they are likely flexing too much to use the same latches as before.
Tell your dad this is the first time I've seen a hatch open in a wreck. They have had them for years. They we steel then. This is the first time a car has flipped this hard since they went to composite materials. It can be fixed.
One of the things I’ve noticed is the visually scary wrecks don’t usually cause injuries to the drivers. I assume it’s because the energy is dissipating as pieces fly off. The bad results (think the fatal wrecks of Earnhardt, Irwin, Petty, and Nemechek, or the severe injuries to Elliot or Busch) come from wrecks that didn’t look terrible at first glance. However, seeing the hatch and net gone is scary in terms of safety. Trying to figure out how to keep the cats in the ground at these high speed tracks is a challenge that I don’t know has a solution. The best solution seems to be making the aero such that when the car turns 90*, it pushes it around to 180* so the flaps and diffuser can do their jobs, but the drivers are going to try to get the car straightened so they’re going to fight that change. I just hope my faith isn’t unfounded that NASCAR will analyze this and see what they can do to prevent it.
Saying this before I watch the vid On further inspection, 1 of the 2 roof flaps failed to open, the Diffuser flap did not open, the window net failed, which is very VERY dangerous and the roof hatched immediately failed. That is NOT good First part of the wrecked looked identical to Harrison Burton’s flip, the first dig in looked identical to Bensons 93 flip, and the rest looked like Rudds 84, both Wallace 93, and Jacobi 81
the roof flap not opening doesnt mean anything, it didnt open because it didnt get backwards enough like every time a car is aroind 90 degrees sideways. if the other flap still opened up, even if the car was sideways, it would not do anything at all to spoil the air as the flap would be parallel to the direction the car is travelling , and same with the diffuser flap
@@pummupenguin3644 Yep, the car got up too quick for the roof flaps to catch enough air to do anything. And didn't spin far enough for the diffuser to catch any useful amount of air.
I would say TWO TONS of DIRT coming through that WINDOW more than likely RIPPED it out ... look at how much DIRT was pouring out of the right rear window when the car came to rest.
Great video! I hope nascar learns from this wreck. People wonder why they restrict the cars power at super speedways... could you imagine if this happened at 215+ mph?! There's not enough safety out there where Ryan could have survived! 😮
I'm no expert nor do I have a degree but I know 43 year5of my life watching NASCAR and I haven't seen anything like that since Ricky Rudd back in the day at Daytona it just proves once again yes even though the cars are definitely safer it definitely still has it flaws and seeing roof and window net was a scary thought and hopefully NASCAR continues to make the cars better. The second thing I was amazed about was that you didn't mention the Blaney crash at all even after clearly seeing it was almost an exact replay of Dale Sr. in 2001 the safer barrier did it's job, but just very scary to watch still and if you go back and listen to the replays of that wreck you here a slight tremble in Jr's voice because it had to be there in the back of his mind too even though he never says it
NASCAR has 3 choices regarding this situation: #1- Slow the cars down (and lose fans, because danger sells, and in the past when they've slowed the cars down too much, ratings plummet since 200mph racing is breathtaking). #2- Pave over the grass to make the cars fly less (which firstly doesn't stop all barrel rolls, and secondly, opens a DIFFERENT danger of nothing stopping a hung-throttle car in a wreck violently accelerating into a wall, such as the Brad Smith wreck in ARCA in 2015 at Talladega). #3- Keep it like it is, and accept the fact that high speed racing is a dangerous profession, and be glad Preece appears to be OK.
@@durn210 Sr’s belts weren’t faulty,Bill Simpson told him on several occasions that the way he had his belts installed that they wouldn’t work as they were intended.Dale would just tell him they weren’t comfortable if he installed them the way they were intended to be.
Essentially, that was my point, the safer barrier, the HANS Device, the full face helmet, would’ve made a huge difference, nobody knows what would happen if he still had the belt that way.
A great example of the flat bottom cars: The aerodynamics 'glue' the car to the pavement. Think of the suction cup that holds your phone cradle to the windshield of your car. That baby is SOLID. You can apply tremendous pressure to that and it will not budge. Peel the edge of the suction cup a bit to break the seal by even one millimeter and it loses (yes, loses) all ability to perform its function.
Nope, if that were the case, they wouldn't have all been complaining about being loose. Ground effects were keeping the cars stuck before. The front air dam was basically on the track and let little air under the car. But what air did go past it, it had more room under the engine, less air pressure there = more on the hood. As the air travels back, higher floor board, even less pressure under that part. Travel to the back you have the area open up more around the rear axle area. Even less air pressure. By the time the air that got under the car gets there, there is no air pressure to speak of. So you have the highest amount of air pressure possible for that particular car, on the trunk and spoiler. That's why the panel behind the axle on the present cars is called a diffuser. For a stock car with limited aero devices on top of the car, the diffuser can't move the air fast enough to allow the other areo parts to make up for the higher presdure under the car now.
I got downvoted to shit on reddit for saying these cars get airbourne way too easily and pointed to examples like Briscoe and Burton getting air so late into their spins.
I rather enjoyed this video, very nice analysis. I appreciate the video and would like to see more videos like this, so lets hope for a blowover at Darlington.
Good video. I like how you pointed out some of the bars and stuff most of us wouldn't have noticed. Some brutal hits last night, glad everyone seems to have gotten away okay.
I also noticed the roof part of the car was gone and felt like the media tried to skim past it. I was wondering if anyone noticed not only that but the timing at which it happened. That roof ripped in half after the 1st flip I think we are getting to cheap with car manufacturing all together
I noticed that the back of the car went quite high in the air when the rear of the car hit the ground. The rear of the car was more intact than the front. Looks like the rear stiffness of the frame is still too high. When the rear of the car hit, it bounced like a golf ball on concrete, resulting in a doubling of G firces on the driver. Also, numerous concussions have occurred during crashes when the rear of the car hit the wall, thus doubling G forces on the driver. It ended Kurt Bush's career. Also numerous drivers stated that rear impacts are some of the hardest hits they ever took. So reduce stiffness in the back of the car. More energy absorption, thus less energy into the driver and into turning over.
@@NASCARDAWGYT As I said, he lost all credibility when he said he doesn't know how or where a window net is mounted. Everything else is obvious and NASCAR knows this and will correct it. Back woods grass roots street stock racers know all of this, to mention he has 2 degrees, one a PhD, I think he is looking alittle foolish. .
Thank you, well said. Some people think they can come in here with all their " fixes " when they don't know the basics of Cup car (or any race car) construction and make these statements.
I don’t think he was trying to claim he knew everything wrong with the cat but saying this is a problem nascar needs to look at which sounds obvious but nascar can be well deaf sometimes
Rusty had a really nasty flip in the second one as well, though thankfully a much different end result. 83-84 Daytona was especially brutal. Some of the most infamously brutal wrecks from there came in those 2 years alone. But yeah, Preece’s flip was reminiscent of what I’ve seen of Jacobi’s flip and that’s jarring.
I'm a pilot, and I agree with your theory. That flat underbody diffuser is definitely playing a big role in this. With aircraft, the lift necessary for flight is achieved when the faster-moving air over the top of the wing creates enough low pressure to lift the wing (and as a result, the aircraft) off the ground. In this case, that solid underbody appears to be acting almost like a parachute. It catches so much wind at such a high speed, that there is no other option than for the car to go airborne. Why aren't the roof flaps working? My guess would be due to the angle of the car to its relative wind. Since the car is not going completely backward, the relative wind is moving along the side of the roof flaps, rather than hitting them head-on. This is just my opinion.
I do think that the diffuser is stupid. It's like he said, even without the diffuser he would've still gone airborne and flipped but probably not as worse with the diffuser but who knows.
It looked like the window net gives way not at the top, but along the B post. Top and bottom attachment points near the A post look to have held in certain shots. If you watch the first AMR responder that gets to him, they bring the window net down but only on the front side of the net(top of the net near the A post.) I can't get a really good look at it though it could have just been jammed up in the wreckage.
The incident you were talking about was Bruce Jacobi in 1983. The photos and replay of the crash are horrifying, knowing his roll cage failed. But considering how ripped apart it was, it’s sadly expected. And Preece’s flip made me think of Jacobi’s quite a bit because so much of Preece’s flip reminded me of it. And considering that end result, we’ve come such a long way even if we can go further.
The 1st safety crew member (in Blue) had to take the window net down. I don't think the net came off, and it appeared to be on pretty good. It took him a couple pulls.
Remember thr Geoff Bodine's crash with the first truck race there at Daytona? That one wasn't and airborn crash but his truck was projected into the catch fence and and you can see his hands on the outside of his truck while flipping in air.
Absolutely fantastic analysis on this one. Great to know that these cars are as safe as they are, yet there's still room for improvement. Ryan is lucky he's able to walk away with his life and health
this is cause for a major concern and nascar need to answer for why this car shredded apart the way it did. i like the look of these cars but ive not been a fan of the way these cars take impacts and this is the final straw. the roof hatch flying off and the loss of the window net means he's lost his protection.
His input is from pure book learning. I worked with an ARCA team in 1994 that the car broke the wall at Daytona during qualifying. He hit the same way Bonnett, Blaney, and Earnhardt did. The only difference was, like Bonnett's, there were no other cars involved. Our driver got caught out by the fact that we got the car running right (faster) and a change in the wind direction. Look for it on TH-cam if you want. Car was destroyed, he walked away. There are too many factors involved that any one can really say that this will work all the time, or a driver will not get hurt if we make them do this. In ARCA we had caution lights in the car. That didn't stop them from shutting them off once they left pit road (or taking their gloves, or neck collars [pre HANS devise] off). You have to always find ways to protect drivers from themselves. I had a suggestion to put a light in the rear window, like a road course rain light, hooked up the caution light system. Not only would it help identify where cars were, it could help indicate, if they were spinning, or what direction they were going through the smoke. And for us officials we can find out who turned them off.
The window netting is fully attached on the bottom “window” roll cage ledge and is held up by a heavy pressured, spring-loaded bar directly flush to the top “window” roll caging. Obviously the spring load was inadequate to hold it in place likely due to roll cage frame flex or mechanical distortion…
Glad you pointed out the absence of the curb, however, there is definitely an elevation change from the grass as it goes up and into the bus stop, so the fact that Preece followed that trajectory upwards in the grass, along with sliding sideways, definitely didn't help in the slightest. Great video, covered everything I had in mind and then some!
in decades of watching stock car racing, this has to be the most spectacular crash I've ever seen, what stands out to me the most is how much altitude the car gets each time it hits the ground, just when you think it's done flying it bounces way up into the air again, amazing to watch, but most importantly, Preece was ok afterwards
Window net is attached to roll cage . There is a certain amount of impact and stuff will come unlatched . The force of dirt hitting the window net is a lot. It probably just needs to be heavier mounting brackets . But without seeing exactly what it looks like it’s all guessing . And they look at everything after a crash
That crash was absolutely brutal and these cars NEED a massive upgrade to their safety devices. Thankfully, based on Preece’s tweet, he is alright. However this needs to be a massive alarm to NASCAR to fix these potentially fatal flaws to the Gen 7.
What fatal flaws? Preece pretty much walked away from this one so I'd say the design worked with the exception of the window net departing its attachment points. The roof flap departing didn't increase the danger of intrusion into the cockpit by more than a single digit percentage point because anything of substance hitting that flap would have penetrated the flap and continued on into the cockpit regardless. There is always a percentage of luck involved in any crash and the injuries suffered by the driver. That is why driver's walk away from wrecks like these and another guy is fatally injured without so much as a tire leaving the racing surface.
@@dciimho2798 The fatal flaws come from when two of these cars come into hard contact with one another. Take Preece and Larson’s impact from Talladega for example. When Preece T-boned Larson, the impact was severe enough for the door bars to completely crumple and for the door chassis to break in two. Fortunately for Larson, the impact happened on the passenger side. However, if that impact were to happen on the driver’s side, it could cause severe if not fatal injuries to the driver in question. Another example would be Newman’s crash at Daytona. Although he was in a different car, the Gen 7’s flat underbody has the ability to cause the same effect of air getting trapped underneath the car and picking it up like a piece of paper. Newman was only able to survive that wreck because of the immense amount of safety modifications on the Gen 6. However, NASCAR has neglected to implement the same safety features onto the Gen 7. So, who knows if that kind of crash could be survivable in the Gen 7? Even if luck does play a factor, it should be NASCAR’s goal to make the possibility of a severe injury or death in these cars as close to zero as possible. Most of the field has already addressed their concerns with the safety on the Gen 7, but NASCAR has only done a handful of the many necessary modifications that these cars need. Preece’s wreck last night was another red flag that NASCAR needs to address before the results of another horrifying crash end up being far worse than this one.
I don't disagree with your summation, I did say that these cars are still in need of improvements. The modular chassis design was way to stiff to start with and lacked enough crush to protect the drivers from serious injuries as witnessed by the career ending concussions that several drivers suffered. Back in the 80's as many as 7-10 drivers from different short track circuits lost their lives to minor crashes due to the cars being built to stiff and their bodies taking the damage internally. How did these lessons get lost in less than 3 decades with the introduction of the NexGen cars. I raced back then and witnessed these results personally. In the incident with Larson I found it hard to believe the severity of the roll cage separation, you expect the cage to collapse to some degree but not for the welds to come apart. I know driver's safety and survivability is the key issue but at some point race cars are going to start looking like the image of the American Cowboy on his horse after OSHA got ahold of him. It is after all a dangerous sport. @@austinreed5805
This IS a a massive upgrade. Changes to stop the lifting problem they overcame once before, yes. But since it DID happen and Ryan pretty much walks away, at worst, feeling like got jumped by a gang of thugs. I call that a success from the standpoint of the safety equipment.
Wow this is insane. Ryan is so lucky and congratulations to him, his wife and their new baby girl. Prayers for him for a full recovery before next race. He is going to hurt for a few weeks.
If you'd review the car specifications to pass tech for NASCAR, the window nets are secured to the cage, top and bottom. The bottom is bolted in, the top is on a detachable rod that goes through an eyelet on one end, and has a catch at the other. The catch is at the back of the window opening. If the mild steel rod gets bent far enough, or breaks, the front of the window net can get torn free. I've seen the response team actions at the end of this footage, a responder still had to release the catch for the window net to let Mr. Preece exit the car. Nothing in motorsports is fail safe, the materials used are intended to make it possible for responders to quickly clear stuck components while providing adequate security during normal operation and side impact. Side impact doesn't include landing on your roof in spongy grass. I'm glad Mr. Preece is okay, bet he's gonna be a little sore for a while though.
The grass being forced in through the drivers side window shoved the escape hatch off and likely broke the window net mounts since the window net mounts directly to the roll bar
The smooth bellypan basically turns the entire car into an airfoil when it gets off the ground. But if you go back to splitters, then you have drivers like Clint Boyer using it to cut other’s tires.
Couldn’t agree more with the flat bottoms and diffuser-and all of those Venturi elements is your culprit…these cars are wrecking too spectacularly. I ponder if they can add slots to the floor like IndyCar did for superspeedway racing.
I understand that if the roof hatch detaches it leaves the driver exposed. But when you added the "what if" another car impacted him at that point of contact. Well that flimsy panel isn't whats protecting the driver from impact. I can see where the driver would be subject to random objects from the crash debris, but that thin layer of body panel wouldn't do jack nor squat as far as a hard impact from another car. Edit: spelling.
I wonder if the car would still flip if the passenger side window weren't a window but something that air could pass through, just like the window net. I know some tracks don't run a window, I assume for aero.
Nets are attached to the cage. Top and bottom. But I don't doubt it's failure is directly related to the emergency escape hatch's failure. I agree both failures need to be addressed immediately. Debris could have penetrated the driver. Puncture the right artery under those forces and he could have bled out before crews ever got to him.
I did fatal crash reconstruction as a Cop. The g force on him as he flipped and hit its amazing he didn’t suffer a basil skull fracture that would have killed him. He’s strapped in and he’s part of the car. Dale Sr died if a basil skull fracture, he was dead when he hit that wall. I thought the right side tires collected dirt and tripped the flipping. Amazing he’s alive.
Flat bottomed cars will always do this. The compression of the air will act before flaps can deploy, and all you need is for the side facing the air to get high enough to defeat the flaps. We've had flat bottomed cars in racing for half a century, and we never learn.
Well yeah that would work for this instance, but not do much for the racing. There are also other ways to skin this cat. They did it before, they find a way again.
Well you also had Matt Kenseth’s 2016 spring Talladega flip where Danica hit him in the right front fender and sent him down the track. From the time he got hit his whole car picked up off the ground and the right rear picked up in the wind and blew it over. So the way both cars took off looks similar in the wind looks similar
See, here's the problem. How do you know he's knowledgeable? Not everybody who has college degrees have a basic understanding of how it applies to scenarios outside his particular course of study. I've got 60+ years as a fan, then crew member, then safety crew member, owner-driver, builder, crew chief, ARCA crew member (same as cup cars in my time), spotter, ARCA inspector-official. How do you know, I'm knowledgeable? I think I am, but you don't know for sure. A friend of mine and I were talking at a race track about how his new car was handling. A guy was listening to us. Turns out he was a mechanical engineer from the GM tech center, but this was the first time he was ever in a pit area of a track. He couldn't understand what we were talking about. Once we showed him on the car, he understood and told us how he would describe it. Totally lost us. We all knew the concepts. We just didn't speak each others "language". That's all.
A noticeable difference between this and Elliott's '03 Dega crash: When Elliott landed after the initial flip, he landed on the pavement deck lid 1st, and he was parallel to the racing line. Slid through the grass until his car rotated and dug in into the dirt with the passenger window. He likely lost a fair amount of momentum before digging in and flipping. Preece lost no momentum before immediately digging into the dirt after the initial flip. I'm sure NASCAR will investigate and make changes accordingly, but Daytona may have to follow suit and have the entire backstretch be paved like Dega to reduce the potential of violent flips.
Yeah, at most tracks they got fake grass. Daytona has real grass and that’s why you see cars flip it because it catches the grass. They need to put fake grass in and then the cars won’t catch it.
When racing cars at high speed, they will blow over from time to time. It happens in every motorsport discipline. The main things to focus on in my opinion is not to try to stop flips entirely, but ensure isolation of outside elements from the driver and find ways to keep moving panels more secure in crashes like this. No longer seeing the roof hatch after the first flip was terrifying, if he flipped like that on the front stretch coming to the finish line, this crash could've been fatal.
Stock cars on Superspeedways didn't blow over for a good long time. They did everything they had done to virtually end it with the old car, with the new car. I don't know if they didn't take in the possible effects of the underpan, or if their computer modeling gave them some bad numbers. I can tell you from fact the trying to smooth out the airflow under the older style cars made them less stable and prone to get around to the point where the downforce turned into lift.
As someone who has some experience with window nets Thierry design is two fold, keep the driver in, but also keep large objects out, but with the attachment it is possible that the first impact being directly on the driver's side and the car digging into the ground it is possible that the dirt actually knocked loose the latch that holds it, not ideal but you have to have a way to latch and unlatch the net to enter/exit. Another possibility is the body actually cut the straps, the material is strong but its still just cloth. The roof hatch I still question, that needs to be solved. Also I'm not sure about with Nascar but I know another of dirt drivers have straps that hold their arms down in the event of a roll over to negate the Centrifucal forces on the arms
it is extremely rare for a stock car at 200mph to go from asphalt to grass and back to asphalt. But when it happens the car almost always gets airborne. In this case with these new gen cars and their bottoms being completely encapsulated now by skirting and under-belly plates...when they do get airborne there is absolutely nothing stopping them. Makes Ricky Rudd's Daytona crash look almost tame.
So besides reinforcing the roof hatch and window net mountings, would adding a small lip on the side of the underbody like a side skirt help to keep it from lifting off in the first place?
I mean, that was like a worst case scenario. That's by far the worst crash the next gen has seen, you know, I watched those old 144p clips of flips like that in 1970 and figure yeah those won't be happening again, and it just did. Sure, the car didn't do it's job in some areas, but overall, if Ryan Preece is alive and in good spirits, you have to assume a lot went right. Definitely some work to do still, but it's only year 2, and thank god this didn't happen last year, for the result may have been very different...
I don’t think enough ppl are talking abt Blaneys crash either. I have never seen a safer barrier bend that much and the impact is just so violent. Also so eerily similar to Dale Sr
The window net did not become detached during the crash. NBC's live coverage clearly showed the window net being unfastened and lowered by the first safety worker who reached the car after the wreck.
All due respect to having multiple degrees, but there is such a thing as knowing too much and not seeing the obvious. The roof hatch is a thin piece of aluminum not capable of stopping anything remotely close to an impact like Ryan Newman's at Daytona. The roll cage structure around it is still intact (sort of). The window net attaches to rings welded to the roll cage (on both ends), but only extends through those rings by 1/2" or so. The B pillar (visible at 5:09) is supposed to be straight. Given when this occurs in the overall crash, it is safe to assume the A pillar digging into the grass/dirt is the reason it is not. That bending of the roll cage would cause the roof flap to come off because the hatch mounting area is no longer square and cause the window net to detach because the rings to which it attaches are now further apart. The first step in preventing a similar crash in the future is the removal of the grass.
Yeah the window net also helps hold in the arms. But if I'm not mistaken and I dont remember the driver snd ehat year it happend. But the driver hit a wall and then his head hit the wall killing him. So then they developed safety nets. If anyone has real knowledge of this comment.
The net is attached to the cage so either a weak weld or a perfect hit that broke it loose or enough force to bend the whole cage but it looks intact. The escape hatch coming off should be a non issue because it seems to stay attached except in extreme rolls but that is what the cage is for as far as I am concerned with sheet metal only for looks and aero. I think it is about as safe as it can get going that fast but most of us would still jump in the car as is if they would let us. Good video and I will let the experts such as yourself ponder the fix. Sorry just woke up if this is all gibberish
The upper front of the net isn't attached the same way as the rest of the loops on the net. The first two are looped through a bracket so that they can be pulled tight, and then attached with industrial strength Velcro, and then duct taped. You may see a crew member doing that before car rolls off. That was the big controversy with Blaney at the All-Star race in 2020 or 2021. His window net came down and during a yellow he was trying to untape it so he could undo the Velcro and loosen the tension so he could put it back up himself without giving up track position.
Pause at 1:21. I think the root cause of the car getting airborne was the suspension compression and rebound due to the dropoff from pavement to grass. When the suspension rebounded, air got under the car. Pause at 2:48. With the car at that orientation, it's a very good airfoil shape. Your whole discussion about the window net is based on supposition and could be totally wrong. On the old cars, the window net was attached by a seat belt clasp welded to the rollcage. Why would they have changed that? In a crash such as this one, where the car makes multiple impacts, it is very difficult to design the safety equipment to withstand all of them. The roof panel came off at the first impact, so that is something that needs to be looked into with higher priority than the window net.
The Window net attaches via a slot in the roolbar at the upright of the C-post, the at the APl Post, a seatbelt male end is welded to the rollbar. The Female buckle that is part of the net, then clicks in. If you've ever seen them try to snap this window that end it is extremely tight and difficult for the crew member, and nearly impossible for the driver to click in from the seated position in the car. Chances are the metal rod bent and came out of its lot and then causd the buckle part of the window net to snap.
They don't use a rod because it does bend. They use flat steel laser cut. The part that goes along the upper window opening is about an inch tall and about 3/8 thick. The front part of the net is not permanently attached to it. The strap loops through a "slot" for lack of a better word, and is attached to itself with VERY strong Velcro then taped. You usually see a crew member doing that before the cars roll off. The rear slot is not IN the bar itself. There is a mount welded to the bar at the "B" pillar.
Very interesting video and breakdown. Appreciate you knowledge on this. Watching it through on another channel you can see the safety crew unhook and drop what was left of the safety net when they get to the car, so it didn’t completely detach, but I’m sure it had lost its effectiveness by the end.
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I'm no physics expert but the car turning on 90 degrees instead of a full 180 probably negated any effect the flaps had as the air was cutting through the flaps rather than directly making contact. Scary but just saw he tweeted, so happy he's seemingly alright.
I've been an aero nerd for a while when it comes to NASCAR and other forms of racing. Those roof flaps are designed to stop a flip from happening when a sudden turn of around 130 degrees happens... that's the sweet spot NASCAR figured out the car liked to take off at when they were originally developed. The real issue here more than anything else, as said in the video, is the new flat bottom on the Gen 7. When you allow the wind to rush under the side of it like that, it's gonna take right off like a small airplane. I'd say pave that area, but that would lead to big changes in the Rolex 24 at daytona and other road racing events as it changes sight lines, and possibly makes bolder moves more appetizing to make and INCREASES the danger involved with the bus stop chicane section of the backstretch...
@CnyAutofreakRacingVideo the flat bottom on this car reminds me of when the COT car had the wing on the back of it. When it turned around it negated the roof flaps and that wing lifted and flipped those cars like crazy. I will say this though, I am extremely impressed at how well this car held up around Preece. Nothing around him seemed to crush or deformed.
Hes ok??
@@shawnconder4984 that's one of the main reasons I absolutely hate this car. And it's not about being an old boomer either, but you'd think after 50+ years of developing a SAFE car, if they were going to try something new, it would first have to be the same level of safety as what you're replacing. Taking the wing off the COT was easy. This Gen 7 car? They've had to do multiple redesigns and from what I see, it's still a super dangerous car to be driving compared to that 'stone age tech' everyone wanted to get rid of so badly...
@@FloridaManRacerprior gen cars didn't have a flat bottom and took off. The ground dipping down is likely what caused the car to take off like it did. The flat bottom helps suck the car down, not cause it to lift. Go look at Elliott Sadler's Talladega flip.
It's incredibly difficult to determine the crash-worthiness of a car if it hasn't had a few "rapid unschedulled disassembly" events at bizarre angles. Violent wrecks like this one almost need to happen; and happen regularly, to make sure the governing body doesn't get any delusions of grandeur or rest on their laurels.
You don't know what you don't know kinda deal.
@@gailtaylor1636 I'm resisting the temptation to change my whole comment to your one-liner. Perfectly encapsulated what I meant but so much clearer.
@@nicholasbradshaw Dad would have said I didn't use enough words...never use 6 when you can use 38. That's what I normally do.
You're almost right. But the car itself IS the delusion of grandure. We had a car that got developed for 50+ years. The old tube frame live rear axle cars went through all that testing over the years and people died to make it a safe car. Then NASCAR said screw it, let's go back to having less safety. And no one can tell me otherwise because Kurt Busch just retired from injuries in that new car. New isn't always better. And this car has been solid proof of that. NASCAR took a huge step backward in driver safety and they have a LOT of catching up to do. Let's just hope no one has to die to get there this time...
The best part of this new car is the body can take a little bit of a beating, and the driver can still drive. Also the ability to change out some of the rods during a pit-stop can keep the car on the track
You have 2 degrees in mechanical engineering?! Thats awesome dude!
Congrats man
But no practical experience with these cars. I give him a thumbs down.
@@uncledave56do you?
I do, and this is just a rambling without any real info
I have a PhD in mechanical physics. I does research at Cal Tech.
Reminded me of Rusty Wallace’s flip in the 1993 Daytona 500 the first time I saw it. I do agree that the underbody has contributed to the cars being able to flip more easier and the roof hatch needs to be more secured to the roof of the car, but still be usable for drivers to get out either getting pinned against a wall or the window net area is on the racing surface.
The most dangerous thing with the escape hatch ripping off early in the crash is how sharp metal debris could have come through that opening over Preece's head on any of those flips. You basically have an open tunnel direct to Preece's head and body with huge chunks of twisted metal and wreckage potentially entering the cockpit that way on each roof flip.
Exactly what I was thinking.
Think God he is ok, and was able to go home Sunday morning...
And the thing is I’ve never seen any driver actually use it
Yeah, because other than the hatch there wasn't anything else heavy and sharp flying around him.
The good news is that NASCAR typically does something to the car when a crash like this happens.
The bad news is that it takes a crash like this for them to do something.
It’s just hard to test a crash like this, they can do simulations but you won’t have good real world example until someone goes for a ride. Luckily even for how scary these wrecks look they are at least better than what happened to blaney in terms of energy dissipation.
This kind of thing can only be seen in hindsight, not predicted. If it could be predicted they would know to design for the impacts, or they could design for it not to happen.
@@johnclary729Using your own analysis…….
I believe NASCAR has had PLENTY of “hindsight”.
Hindsight is another word for history, experience, knowledge, correct?
NASCAR has some of the worlds best engineers across the teams and spectrum correct?
NASCAR is a smart experienced business correct?
These wrecks make MONEY! That’s why nothing has been done. Nothing will be done. The wrecks are by design.
They know what they’re doing don’t you worry, you just keep giving them money and talk about hindsight.
“Can I interest you in a $10 beer and a $12 hot dog, I’m making a run?”
What? You think anyone can see exactly now every scenario that will happen before it does? In my near 60 years around the sport the one phrase I've said, heard, and lived the experience most is, "I've never seen that happen before."
I never thought I would have ever been involved in the driver safety aspect of a car the would break the wall at Daytona. Then flip. Then hit the wall again with the roof of the car. Then come apart with the engine left a couple of hundred feet from the car. Land hard. Spin a few times. Then see our driver get out of the car. Telling me later the thing that he was most afraid of was how mad the owner was going to be that he killed his race car.
He survived with no injuries so obviously car did its job. Gotta have the roof hatch so they can get out so don’t know anything can do to get it to not come off
I think Nascar reinforcing the roof structure and the Newman bar saved preeces life. That body held together really really well. If it was a 2003 car I think he may have died
Not trying to be rude but I think that in 2003 this wouldn’t have killed him because look at rusty wallace Daley Allison and other 90s flips where it was just the roll cage left from the 90s and on they always made sure they car could withstand a flip in the grass like this they never bothered on wall hits like dales and Neil bonnets and others
@@triggyez Ryan Newmans roof almost collapsed in on him in 2003. Which is why Nascar introduced the Newman bar. And Newmans car hit top down once and it crushed in. Preece had his car hit top down TWICE and the roof barely bumped.
The first hit was directly over the drivers compartment. And because of the force of that impact, I'd kind of have to agree. That force compromised the window net. But in a case of cars of the past, it stood a high chance of compromising the cage. Possibly severely.
@@cpttankerjoe Preece needs to cut that Newman bar out of that car and put it on his mantle.
@@cpttankerjoe nascar introduced the newman bar after his 2009 wreck
This was an amazing analysis. I would love to see a series of analyses like this with wrecks like Ricky Rudd at Daytona, Elliott Sadler at Talladega, and of course Rusty's flips
The one thing about this "analysis" is how do you know, without context, that he knows what he's talking about? You can't even trust the "expert" commentators. Cup cars haven't weighed 3500 lbs. since the late eighties or early nineties. Funny how the ex-basketball players got it right. I worked on cars, then the inspection line for ARCA back in the time period when they and NASCAR changed to 3400 lbs. After that, I was the one who inspected underneath the cars. Of course this was after I built and ran my own cars locally before the cost got too high.
This goes for every internet expert in any subject. Make sure you have an idea that they actually do know their stuff. I couldn't stand to watch any more of this after about 3 and a half minutes.
Thank you for explaining this better and pointing out the hatch and window net
Thank you for your knowledgeable deep dive into this wreck, very informative and concise 👍🏻
The modern Nascar fan never would have survived the 80's
You might be right. People in my generation aren't used to seeing cars going airborne like that.
Just as many or more do so now
I remember that at some point during the 90s or early 2000s, Le Mans prototypes had the same issue with air packing under the body of the cars and specifically the points where the wheels are located (don't remember the english term, foreigner here. Wheel wells maybe?) and causing the cars to be more prone to flip during high speed spins.
They kinda solved the problems by cutting slots on the body over the wheels to prevent that, almost the same purpose for the slots cut on the Indycar's floor, in front of the radiator ducts. NASCAR doesn't have any of this, apart from the roof flaps but they're located too far from that "sensible zones". Maybe they can evaluate a solution like this in the future...
Wheel wells yeah. Those LMP slots & the Indycar floor slots have been doing their job
Yeah it was those Mercedes Clk Gtr cars at le mans. They took of like paper on the Musilene straight. There was a scene in Top Gear with a driver that it happened to
They have them. They're on the hood. There isn't enough fender to put them there. Those were the parts that were fiddled with on the Hendrick cars that got busted a while back.
Bigger roof flaps? Gotta slow em down and keep them on the ground. Air born cars go through fences.
NBR 12:47 is 1981. I’m pretty sure it’s Bruce jacobi
It is
Glad im not the only one who doesn’t like the fact the roof hatch came open
My father used to be over Talladega Superspeedway track medics. He was a fire/medic for almost 25 years. When NASCAR told them that they were going to go to this years ago. He and his boss told them that it wasn't a good idea. 1. If there is a fire and they go through the roof when they open it it becomes a chimney. 2. They told them this exact thing would happen. It takes away integrity of the roof. It makes the roof flex more than it should. It's not safe. I was watching the race with him last night and he says to me " I told them years ago that this would happen." Needs to be changed. Because in some aspects it became a open wheel car with the open roof. He could have easily had a part come through the roof and hit him in the head.
Can some kind of strong metal mesh or solid piece be used to enclose the hole still allowing for them to go up to try to prevent the car becoming airborne in other types of crashes? Or, do they need airflow to work properly?
@@marty0063 The "hole" is covered with a hatch. It just happened the come open early in the flip. With the composite bodies they are likely flexing too much to use the same latches as before.
Tell your dad this is the first time I've seen a hatch open in a wreck. They have had them for years. They we steel then. This is the first time a car has flipped this hard since they went to composite materials. It can be fixed.
One of the things I’ve noticed is the visually scary wrecks don’t usually cause injuries to the drivers. I assume it’s because the energy is dissipating as pieces fly off. The bad results (think the fatal wrecks of Earnhardt, Irwin, Petty, and Nemechek, or the severe injuries to Elliot or Busch) come from wrecks that didn’t look terrible at first glance. However, seeing the hatch and net gone is scary in terms of safety.
Trying to figure out how to keep the cats in the ground at these high speed tracks is a challenge that I don’t know has a solution. The best solution seems to be making the aero such that when the car turns 90*, it pushes it around to 180* so the flaps and diffuser can do their jobs, but the drivers are going to try to get the car straightened so they’re going to fight that change. I just hope my faith isn’t unfounded that NASCAR will analyze this and see what they can do to prevent it.
With Earnhardt he also hit a completely concrete wall
Identical to Darrell Waltrip's flip in the 1991 Pepsi 400 as well as Rusty Wallace's flip in the 1993 Daytona 500
Saying this before I watch the vid
On further inspection, 1 of the 2 roof flaps failed to open, the Diffuser flap did not open, the window net failed, which is very VERY dangerous and the roof hatched immediately failed. That is NOT good
First part of the wrecked looked identical to Harrison Burton’s flip, the first dig in looked identical to Bensons 93 flip, and the rest looked like Rudds 84, both Wallace 93, and Jacobi 81
I really think we are lucky that he did not get hit as the hatch and window failing would have not ended well
the roof flap not opening doesnt mean anything, it didnt open because it didnt get backwards enough like every time a car is aroind 90 degrees sideways. if the other flap still opened up, even if the car was sideways, it would not do anything at all to spoil the air as the flap would be parallel to the direction the car is travelling , and same with the diffuser flap
@@pummupenguin3644 Yep, the car got up too quick for the roof flaps to catch enough air to do anything. And didn't spin far enough for the diffuser to catch any useful amount of air.
Who's stupid idea was it to make the underside of the car completely flat when they know it causes blowovers?
I would say TWO TONS of DIRT coming through that WINDOW more than likely RIPPED it out ... look at how much DIRT was pouring out of the right rear window when the car came to rest.
Great video! I hope nascar learns from this wreck. People wonder why they restrict the cars power at super speedways... could you imagine if this happened at 215+ mph?! There's not enough safety out there where Ryan could have survived! 😮
I'm no expert nor do I have a degree but I know 43 year5of my life watching NASCAR and I haven't seen anything like that since Ricky Rudd back in the day at Daytona it just proves once again yes even though the cars are definitely safer it definitely still has it flaws and seeing roof and window net was a scary thought and hopefully NASCAR continues to make the cars better. The second thing I was amazed about was that you didn't mention the Blaney crash at all even after clearly seeing it was almost an exact replay of Dale Sr. in 2001 the safer barrier did it's job, but just very scary to watch still and if you go back and listen to the replays of that wreck you here a slight tremble in Jr's voice because it had to be there in the back of his mind too even though he never says it
Diffuser needs to be gone asap! Air needs to travel thru the car not lift it up
NASCAR has 3 choices regarding this situation:
#1- Slow the cars down (and lose fans, because danger sells, and in the past when they've slowed the cars down too much, ratings plummet since 200mph racing is breathtaking).
#2- Pave over the grass to make the cars fly less (which firstly doesn't stop all barrel rolls, and secondly, opens a DIFFERENT danger of nothing stopping a hung-throttle car in a wreck violently accelerating into a wall, such as the Brad Smith wreck in ARCA in 2015 at Talladega).
#3- Keep it like it is, and accept the fact that high speed racing is a dangerous profession, and be glad Preece appears to be OK.
Option 4: engineer a system that will keep the roof hatch and window net from failing
I vote #3
The Blaney wreck scared me. So similar to Sr.'s wreck...
True, but now you know all the changes made since then would have saved Sr. Had they been done before.
@@jeffemery7441 Sr.'s faulty belt snapping , no HANS device , age and wear and tear on his body is what killed him
@@durn210 Sr’s belts weren’t faulty,Bill Simpson told him on several occasions that the way he had his belts installed that they wouldn’t work as they were intended.Dale would just tell him they weren’t comfortable if he installed them the way they were intended to be.
Essentially, that was my point, the safer barrier, the HANS Device, the full face helmet, would’ve made a huge difference, nobody knows what would happen if he still had the belt that way.
A great example of the flat bottom cars:
The aerodynamics 'glue' the car to the pavement.
Think of the suction cup that holds your phone cradle to the windshield of your car.
That baby is SOLID. You can apply tremendous pressure to that and it will not budge.
Peel the edge of the suction cup a bit to break the seal by even one millimeter and it loses (yes, loses) all ability to perform its function.
Nope, if that were the case, they wouldn't have all been complaining about being loose. Ground effects were keeping the cars stuck before. The front air dam was basically on the track and let little air under the car. But what air did go past it, it had more room under the engine, less air pressure there = more on the hood. As the air travels back, higher floor board, even less pressure under that part. Travel to the back you have the area open up more around the rear axle area. Even less air pressure. By the time the air that got under the car gets there, there is no air pressure to speak of. So you have the highest amount of air pressure possible for that particular car, on the trunk and spoiler. That's why the panel behind the axle on the present cars is called a diffuser. For a stock car with limited aero devices on top of the car, the diffuser can't move the air fast enough to allow the other areo parts to make up for the higher presdure under the car now.
I got downvoted to shit on reddit for saying these cars get airbourne way too easily and pointed to examples like Briscoe and Burton getting air so late into their spins.
I rather enjoyed this video, very nice analysis. I appreciate the video and would like to see more videos like this, so lets hope for a blowover at Darlington.
Good video. I like how you pointed out some of the bars and stuff most of us wouldn't have noticed. Some brutal hits last night, glad everyone seems to have gotten away okay.
I also noticed the roof part of the car was gone and felt like the media tried to skim past it. I was wondering if anyone noticed not only that but the timing at which it happened. That roof ripped in half after the 1st flip I think we are getting to cheap with car manufacturing all together
I noticed that the back of the car went quite high in the air when the rear of the car hit the ground. The rear of the car was more intact than the front. Looks like the rear stiffness of the frame is still too high. When the rear of the car hit, it bounced like a golf ball on concrete, resulting in a doubling of G firces on the driver. Also, numerous concussions have occurred during crashes when the rear of the car hit the wall, thus doubling G forces on the driver. It ended Kurt Bush's career. Also numerous drivers stated that rear impacts are some of the hardest hits they ever took. So reduce stiffness in the back of the car. More energy absorption, thus less energy into the driver and into turning over.
in my opinion racing on super speedways are extremely hard to perfect the car to withstand a crash like that but it is another step towards progress
True, and this guy is not qualified to critique this flip. No on hands experience.
He’s pointing out problems that need to be fix and why. Nothing much else
@@NASCARDAWGYT As I said, he lost all credibility when he said he doesn't know how or where a window net is mounted. Everything else is obvious and NASCAR knows this and will correct it. Back woods grass roots street stock racers know all of this, to mention he has 2 degrees, one a PhD, I think he is looking alittle foolish. .
Thank you, well said. Some people think they can come in here with all their " fixes " when they don't know the basics of Cup car (or any race car) construction and make these statements.
I don’t think he was trying to claim he knew everything wrong with the cat but saying this is a problem nascar needs to look at which sounds obvious but nascar can be well deaf sometimes
This is the same car that ended Kurt Busch's career last year
Bruce Jacobi was that one crash and it was the first of the two qualifying races at Daytona for the 500 in 1983.
Rusty had a really nasty flip in the second one as well, though thankfully a much different end result. 83-84 Daytona was especially brutal. Some of the most infamously brutal wrecks from there came in those 2 years alone.
But yeah, Preece’s flip was reminiscent of what I’ve seen of Jacobi’s flip and that’s jarring.
The first guy to the car had to take the net down if you watch a clip of the race.
I'm a pilot, and I agree with your theory. That flat underbody diffuser is definitely playing a big role in this. With aircraft, the lift necessary for flight is achieved when the faster-moving air over the top of the wing creates enough low pressure to lift the wing (and as a result, the aircraft) off the ground. In this case, that solid underbody appears to be acting almost like a parachute. It catches so much wind at such a high speed, that there is no other option than for the car to go airborne. Why aren't the roof flaps working? My guess would be due to the angle of the car to its relative wind. Since the car is not going completely backward, the relative wind is moving along the side of the roof flaps, rather than hitting them head-on. This is just my opinion.
I have a feeling that the diffuser might be reconsidered in the same way nascar dealt with the CoT wing.
I do think that the diffuser is stupid. It's like he said, even without the diffuser he would've still gone airborne and flipped but probably not as worse with the diffuser but who knows.
The window net attaches to the cage both top and bottom
It looked like the window net gives way not at the top, but along the B post. Top and bottom attachment points near the A post look to have held in certain shots. If you watch the first AMR responder that gets to him, they bring the window net down but only on the front side of the net(top of the net near the A post.) I can't get a really good look at it though it could have just been jammed up in the wreckage.
Daytona was safer before restrictor plates
The window net coming open was a big deal. His arm could be amputated.
Thats a bad crash no doubt.
The incident you were talking about was Bruce Jacobi in 1983. The photos and replay of the crash are horrifying, knowing his roll cage failed. But considering how ripped apart it was, it’s sadly expected.
And Preece’s flip made me think of Jacobi’s quite a bit because so much of Preece’s flip reminded me of it. And considering that end result, we’ve come such a long way even if we can go further.
The 1st safety crew member (in Blue) had to take the window net down. I don't think the net came off, and it appeared to be on pretty good. It took him a couple pulls.
Remember thr Geoff Bodine's crash with the first truck race there at Daytona? That one wasn't and airborn crash but his truck was projected into the catch fence and and you can see his hands on the outside of his truck while flipping in air.
Absolutely fantastic analysis on this one.
Great to know that these cars are as safe as they are, yet there's still room for improvement.
Ryan is lucky he's able to walk away with his life and health
this is cause for a major concern and nascar need to answer for why this car shredded apart the way it did. i like the look of these cars but ive not been a fan of the way these cars take impacts and this is the final straw. the roof hatch flying off and the loss of the window net means he's lost his protection.
Please review Blaney’s wreck from last night. Your input is fantastic. Well wishes to Ryan Preece indeed. Scary to watch.
His input is from pure book learning.
I worked with an ARCA team in 1994 that the car broke the wall at Daytona during qualifying. He hit the same way Bonnett, Blaney, and Earnhardt did. The only difference was, like Bonnett's, there were no other cars involved. Our driver got caught out by the fact that we got the car running right (faster) and a change in the wind direction. Look for it on TH-cam if you want. Car was destroyed, he walked away.
There are too many factors involved that any one can really say that this will work all the time, or a driver will not get hurt if we make them do this. In ARCA we had caution lights in the car. That didn't stop them from shutting them off once they left pit road (or taking their gloves, or neck collars [pre HANS devise] off). You have to always find ways to protect drivers from themselves. I had a suggestion to put a light in the rear window, like a road course rain light, hooked up the caution light system. Not only would it help identify where cars were, it could help indicate, if they were spinning, or what direction they were going through the smoke. And for us officials we can find out who turned them off.
Side window did not come off some emergency guy took it off watch the video
On earlier wreck you can see a car starting to get air, that one of course came back down
The window netting is fully attached on the bottom “window” roll cage ledge and is held up by a heavy pressured, spring-loaded bar directly flush to the top “window” roll caging. Obviously the spring load was inadequate to hold it in place likely due to roll cage frame flex or mechanical distortion…
Glad you pointed out the absence of the curb, however, there is definitely an elevation change from the grass as it goes up and into the bus stop, so the fact that Preece followed that trajectory upwards in the grass, along with sliding sideways, definitely didn't help in the slightest. Great video, covered everything I had in mind and then some!
in decades of watching stock car racing, this has to be the most spectacular crash I've ever seen, what stands out to me the most is how much altitude the car gets each time it hits the ground, just when you think it's done flying it bounces way up into the air again, amazing to watch, but most importantly, Preece was ok afterwards
Window net is attached to roll cage . There is a certain amount of impact and stuff will come unlatched . The force of dirt hitting the window net is a lot. It probably just needs to be heavier mounting brackets . But without seeing exactly what it looks like it’s all guessing . And they look at everything after a crash
Well done breakdown NBR
That crash was absolutely brutal and these cars NEED a massive upgrade to their safety devices. Thankfully, based on Preece’s tweet, he is alright. However this needs to be a massive alarm to NASCAR to fix these potentially fatal flaws to the Gen 7.
What fatal flaws? Preece pretty much walked away from this one so I'd say the design worked with the exception of the window net departing its attachment points. The roof flap departing didn't increase the danger of intrusion into the cockpit by more than a single digit percentage point because anything of substance hitting that flap would have penetrated the flap and continued on into the cockpit regardless. There is always a percentage of luck involved in any crash and the injuries suffered by the driver. That is why driver's walk away from wrecks like these and another guy is fatally injured without so much as a tire leaving the racing surface.
@@dciimho2798 The fatal flaws come from when two of these cars come into hard contact with one another. Take Preece and Larson’s impact from Talladega for example. When Preece T-boned Larson, the impact was severe enough for the door bars to completely crumple and for the door chassis to break in two. Fortunately for Larson, the impact happened on the passenger side. However, if that impact were to happen on the driver’s side, it could cause severe if not fatal injuries to the driver in question. Another example would be Newman’s crash at Daytona. Although he was in a different car, the Gen 7’s flat underbody has the ability to cause the same effect of air getting trapped underneath the car and picking it up like a piece of paper. Newman was only able to survive that wreck because of the immense amount of safety modifications on the Gen 6. However, NASCAR has neglected to implement the same safety features onto the Gen 7. So, who knows if that kind of crash could be survivable in the Gen 7? Even if luck does play a factor, it should be NASCAR’s goal to make the possibility of a severe injury or death in these cars as close to zero as possible. Most of the field has already addressed their concerns with the safety on the Gen 7, but NASCAR has only done a handful of the many necessary modifications that these cars need. Preece’s wreck last night was another red flag that NASCAR needs to address before the results of another horrifying crash end up being far worse than this one.
I don't disagree with your summation, I did say that these cars are still in need of improvements. The modular chassis design was way to stiff to start with and lacked enough crush to protect the drivers from serious injuries as witnessed by the career ending concussions that several drivers suffered. Back in the 80's as many as 7-10 drivers from different short track circuits lost their lives to minor crashes due to the cars being built to stiff and their bodies taking the damage internally. How did these lessons get lost in less than 3 decades with the introduction of the NexGen cars. I raced back then and witnessed these results personally. In the incident with Larson I found it hard to believe the severity of the roll cage separation, you expect the cage to collapse to some degree but not for the welds to come apart. I know driver's safety and survivability is the key issue but at some point race cars are going to start looking like the image of the American Cowboy on his horse after OSHA got ahold of him. It is after all a dangerous sport. @@austinreed5805
This IS a a massive upgrade. Changes to stop the lifting problem they overcame once before, yes. But since it DID happen and Ryan pretty much walks away, at worst, feeling like got jumped by a gang of thugs. I call that a success from the standpoint of the safety equipment.
Don't forget Davey Allison's Pocono crash! Spun so hard that it burst blood vessels in his eyes!
Wow this is insane. Ryan is so lucky and congratulations to him, his wife and their new baby girl. Prayers for him for a full recovery before next race. He is going to hurt for a few weeks.
If you'd review the car specifications to pass tech for NASCAR, the window nets are secured to the cage, top and bottom. The bottom is bolted in, the top is on a detachable rod that goes through an eyelet on one end, and has a catch at the other. The catch is at the back of the window opening. If the mild steel rod gets bent far enough, or breaks, the front of the window net can get torn free. I've seen the response team actions at the end of this footage, a responder still had to release the catch for the window net to let Mr. Preece exit the car. Nothing in motorsports is fail safe, the materials used are intended to make it possible for responders to quickly clear stuck components while providing adequate security during normal operation and side impact. Side impact doesn't include landing on your roof in spongy grass. I'm glad Mr. Preece is okay, bet he's gonna be a little sore for a while though.
The grass being forced in through the drivers side window shoved the escape hatch off and likely broke the window net mounts since the window net mounts directly to the roll bar
this crash is wors than i expected great video man thanks for do this 😀😀
It’s more like Wallace’s ‘93 flip to me. Blew over, launched 15-20ft in the air and barrel rolled more afterwards.
The smooth bellypan basically turns the entire car into an airfoil when it gets off the ground. But if you go back to splitters, then you have drivers like Clint Boyer using it to cut other’s tires.
Do we really need flat bottoms and diffuser at this point? I view it as a similar situation as with the wing during COT era.
The scary thing about the window net is, that once it’s detached, its just a solid metal rod flying around on a net thats attached 8” from your head….
Couldn’t agree more with the flat bottoms and diffuser-and all of those Venturi elements is your culprit…these cars are wrecking too spectacularly.
I ponder if they can add slots to the floor like IndyCar did for superspeedway racing.
I understand that if the roof hatch detaches it leaves the driver exposed. But when you added the "what if" another car impacted him at that point of contact. Well that flimsy panel isn't whats protecting the driver from impact.
I can see where the driver would be subject to random objects from the crash debris, but that thin layer of body panel wouldn't do jack nor squat as far as a hard impact from another car.
Edit: spelling.
I wonder if the car would still flip if the passenger side window weren't a window but something that air could pass through, just like the window net. I know some tracks don't run a window, I assume for aero.
I think you can see his water bottle fly out due to the window net being open. Proves what you said.
You called it a lever. Wouldn't it really be more of a wing?
Nets are attached to the cage. Top and bottom.
But I don't doubt it's failure is directly related to the emergency escape hatch's failure. I agree both failures need to be addressed immediately.
Debris could have penetrated the driver. Puncture the right artery under those forces and he could have bled out before crews ever got to him.
I did fatal crash reconstruction as a Cop. The g force on him as he flipped and hit its amazing he didn’t suffer a basil skull fracture that would have killed him. He’s strapped in and he’s part of the car. Dale Sr died if a basil skull fracture, he was dead when he hit that wall. I thought the right side tires collected dirt and tripped the flipping. Amazing he’s alive.
Flat bottomed cars will always do this. The compression of the air will act before flaps can deploy, and all you need is for the side facing the air to get high enough to defeat the flaps.
We've had flat bottomed cars in racing for half a century, and we never learn.
For every action there is a reaction.. you would need chimneys to release the air from belly pan to roof once the car lifts a few degrees
Well yeah that would work for this instance, but not do much for the racing. There are also other ways to skin this cat. They did it before, they find a way again.
Well you also had Matt Kenseth’s 2016 spring Talladega flip where Danica hit him in the right front fender and sent him down the track. From the time he got hit his whole car picked up off the ground and the right rear picked up in the wind and blew it over. So the way both cars took off looks similar in the wind looks similar
Really really knowledgeable video, well done sir! You just earned another subscriber.
See, here's the problem. How do you know he's knowledgeable? Not everybody who has college degrees have a basic understanding of how it applies to scenarios outside his particular course of study. I've got 60+ years as a fan, then crew member, then safety crew member, owner-driver, builder, crew chief, ARCA crew member (same as cup cars in my time), spotter, ARCA inspector-official. How do you know, I'm knowledgeable? I think I am, but you don't know for sure.
A friend of mine and I were talking at a race track about how his new car was handling. A guy was listening to us. Turns out he was a mechanical engineer from the GM tech center, but this was the first time he was ever in a pit area of a track. He couldn't understand what we were talking about. Once we showed him on the car, he understood and told us how he would describe it. Totally lost us. We all knew the concepts. We just didn't speak each others "language". That's all.
@@DDS029 Dude….it’ll be alright, trust me. Go outside and touch some grass.
Great analysis, thanks.
A noticeable difference between this and Elliott's '03 Dega crash:
When Elliott landed after the initial flip, he landed on the pavement deck lid 1st, and he was parallel to the racing line. Slid through the grass until his car rotated and dug in into the dirt with the passenger window. He likely lost a fair amount of momentum before digging in and flipping.
Preece lost no momentum before immediately digging into the dirt after the initial flip.
I'm sure NASCAR will investigate and make changes accordingly, but Daytona may have to follow suit and have the entire backstretch be paved like Dega to reduce the potential of violent flips.
Yeah, at most tracks they got fake grass. Daytona has real grass and that’s why you see cars flip it because it catches the grass. They need to put fake grass in and then the cars won’t catch it.
When racing cars at high speed, they will blow over from time to time. It happens in every motorsport discipline. The main things to focus on in my opinion is not to try to stop flips entirely, but ensure isolation of outside elements from the driver and find ways to keep moving panels more secure in crashes like this. No longer seeing the roof hatch after the first flip was terrifying, if he flipped like that on the front stretch coming to the finish line, this crash could've been fatal.
Stock cars on Superspeedways didn't blow over for a good long time. They did everything they had done to virtually end it with the old car, with the new car. I don't know if they didn't take in the possible effects of the underpan, or if their computer modeling gave them some bad numbers. I can tell you from fact the trying to smooth out the airflow under the older style cars made them less stable and prone to get around to the point where the downforce turned into lift.
Thank god he’s alright. That looked like Bushers wreck in Charlotte last year
As someone who has some experience with window nets Thierry design is two fold, keep the driver in, but also keep large objects out, but with the attachment it is possible that the first impact being directly on the driver's side and the car digging into the ground it is possible that the dirt actually knocked loose the latch that holds it, not ideal but you have to have a way to latch and unlatch the net to enter/exit. Another possibility is the body actually cut the straps, the material is strong but its still just cloth. The roof hatch I still question, that needs to be solved. Also I'm not sure about with Nascar but I know another of dirt drivers have straps that hold their arms down in the event of a roll over to negate the Centrifucal forces on the arms
NASCAR needs to hire him I swear
it is extremely rare for a stock car at 200mph to go from asphalt to grass and back to asphalt. But when it happens the car almost always gets airborne. In this case with these new gen cars and their bottoms being completely encapsulated now by skirting and under-belly plates...when they do get airborne there is absolutely nothing stopping them. Makes Ricky Rudd's Daytona crash look almost tame.
So besides reinforcing the roof hatch and window net mountings, would adding a small lip on the side of the underbody like a side skirt help to keep it from lifting off in the first place?
it also reminded me of kenseth’s wreck at dega with Danica in 2017
aspiring MechE here. Loved your video dude!
I mean, that was like a worst case scenario. That's by far the worst crash the next gen has seen, you know, I watched those old 144p clips of flips like that in 1970 and figure yeah those won't be happening again, and it just did. Sure, the car didn't do it's job in some areas, but overall, if Ryan Preece is alive and in good spirits, you have to assume a lot went right. Definitely some work to do still, but it's only year 2, and thank god this didn't happen last year, for the result may have been very different...
The biggest thing I noticed was the rear end. I give them credit for moving away from solid rear axles to independent rear axels.
I don’t think enough ppl are talking abt Blaneys crash either. I have never seen a safer barrier bend that much and the impact is just so violent. Also so eerily similar to Dale Sr
How can they fix the window net and escape hatch issues? The impacts were at freak and unusual angles that happened obliterate the attachments.
The window net did not become detached during the crash. NBC's live coverage clearly showed the window net being unfastened and lowered by the first safety worker who reached the car after the wreck.
The amount of times he turned over took me back to NR2003. It looked like a gaming glitch. Jesus…
Just because this car held up good. During a roll over does not mean it's still not a piece of junk.
At roughly 9:20, there are what look to be hoses coming out the top or side of the car, guessing that was the vent hose
All due respect to having multiple degrees, but there is such a thing as knowing too much and not seeing the obvious.
The roof hatch is a thin piece of aluminum not capable of stopping anything remotely close to an impact like Ryan Newman's at Daytona. The roll cage structure around it is still intact (sort of).
The window net attaches to rings welded to the roll cage (on both ends), but only extends through those rings by 1/2" or so.
The B pillar (visible at 5:09) is supposed to be straight. Given when this occurs in the overall crash, it is safe to assume the A pillar digging into the grass/dirt is the reason it is not.
That bending of the roll cage would cause the roof flap to come off because the hatch mounting area is no longer square and cause the window net to detach because the rings to which it attaches are now further apart.
The first step in preventing a similar crash in the future is the removal of the grass.
Yeah the window net also helps hold in the arms. But if I'm not mistaken and I dont remember the driver snd ehat year it happend. But the driver hit a wall and then his head hit the wall killing him. So then they developed safety nets. If anyone has real knowledge of this comment.
Mark Donohue, Riverside, sometime in the early 70s, IIRC.
The net is attached to the cage so either a weak weld or a perfect hit that broke it loose or enough force to bend the whole cage but it looks intact. The escape hatch coming off should be a non issue because it seems to stay attached except in extreme rolls but that is what the cage is for as far as I am concerned with sheet metal only for looks and aero. I think it is about as safe as it can get going that fast but most of us would still jump in the car as is if they would let us. Good video and I will let the experts such as yourself ponder the fix. Sorry just woke up if this is all gibberish
The upper front of the net isn't attached the same way as the rest of the loops on the net. The first two are looped through a bracket so that they can be pulled tight, and then attached with industrial strength Velcro, and then duct taped. You may see a crew member doing that before car rolls off.
That was the big controversy with Blaney at the All-Star race in 2020 or 2021. His window net came down and during a yellow he was trying to untape it so he could undo the Velcro and loosen the tension so he could put it back up himself without giving up track position.
Pause at 1:21. I think the root cause of the car getting airborne was the suspension compression and rebound due to the dropoff from pavement to grass. When the suspension rebounded, air got under the car.
Pause at 2:48. With the car at that orientation, it's a very good airfoil shape.
Your whole discussion about the window net is based on supposition and could be totally wrong. On the old cars, the window net was attached by a seat belt clasp welded to the rollcage. Why would they have changed that? In a crash such as this one, where the car makes multiple impacts, it is very difficult to design the safety equipment to withstand all of them. The roof panel came off at the first impact, so that is something that needs to be looked into with higher priority than the window net.
The Window net attaches via a slot in the roolbar at the upright of the C-post, the at the APl Post, a seatbelt male end is welded to the rollbar. The Female buckle that is part of the net, then clicks in. If you've ever seen them try to snap this window that end it is extremely tight and difficult for the crew member, and nearly impossible for the driver to click in from the seated position in the car. Chances are the metal rod bent and came out of its lot and then causd the buckle part of the window net to snap.
They don't use a rod because it does bend. They use flat steel laser cut. The part that goes along the upper window opening is about an inch tall and about 3/8 thick. The front part of the net is not permanently attached to it. The strap loops through a "slot" for lack of a better word, and is attached to itself with VERY strong Velcro then taped. You usually see a crew member doing that before the cars roll off.
The rear slot is not IN the bar itself. There is a mount welded to the bar at the "B" pillar.
Very interesting video and breakdown. Appreciate you knowledge on this. Watching it through on another channel you can see the safety crew unhook and drop what was left of the safety net when they get to the car, so it didn’t completely detach, but I’m sure it had lost its effectiveness by the end.