Insider's View: Humpy Wheeler

Lately, talk of the "Humpy Bumper," has lost a little bit steam, but I wanted to use my monthly column on NASCAR.com to update the fans about where we stood with its development.

Work continues to proceed on it, but part of Lew Composites, the primary manufacturer of the bumper, is in the process of being sold. I've met with the potential new owners and they're excited about getting into this project and progressing it further.

My role in the development of the bumper was simply inspirational. All I did was challenge Paul Lew to build it. Directional carbon fiber had worked so well with Indy cars, and I knew it'd work for stock cars, too. So I challenged him to put something up in the front of the car to lessen the blow these drivers were taking.

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Well, Paul has since left Lew Composites, and that really stalled the bumper's development.

He's now built a protype of an unmanned airplane that can stay up in the air for 24 hours. That's pretty amazing to me. He was pouring a lot of his time and energy into the bumper, and that plane took him away from that.

Still, I think the bulk of the work is done. It just needs further testing, and more work on how the bumper attaches to the frame rail and front of the chassis.

My bumper is just a small idea, though, in NASCAR's new proactive approach to safety. I think that we've seen the results of that, with head restraints and the progress of the seats. I've always said from scratch, though, that it's not up to the sanctioning body to solve safety problems.

The Humpy Bumper

Primarily, other companies have solved safety issues in the past. We had the last rash of lethal accidents in American motorsports in the 1960s and Firestone came up with the fuel cell, Goodyear came up with inner liners, Nomex drivers suits were introduced and better restraint systems were developed for the seats.

The result was that it didn't crop up again in number until the last two years.

So we were in that cycle, and hopefully we're out of it now. I think our concern now, safety-wise, should be directed at the short tracks across the country where we continue to have fatalities in the minor leagues. I'm very excited about the larger car that NASCAR is working on. We might actually see that in a couple races in 2003.

That car's gonna be a significant safety boost. One of the things it does is moves the driver more towards the center of the car and away from the vulnerability of the left door impact. In racing, bigger is better. It's more car for the fans to look at, particularly on bigger speedways.

And safety-wise, there's no doubt that bigger is safer. Having a bigger body spreads impact energy out in the car.

Also, soft walls are encouraging. I'm excited about what Tony George did at Indy. I think for flatter tracks like Indianapolis, that's a major milestone.

I think that on higher banked tracks, your hard-wall hits at some of them are not on the outside wall, but the inside wall where you're picking up speed coming down the track.

"We've had soft walls at Lowe's Motor Speedway on the vulnerable part of our inside wall for two years now and it's really paid off, particularly this past month. Those soft walls seemed to have a target on them. We'd had very few hits there, but in May, we had one after the other.

One was in the ARCA race - a driver hit head on, got out and wasn't hurt very badly. Those are quite similar to what Indy has got. Indy's are more sophisticated, but both are based on Styrofoam to absorb the energy.

I think what we'll see, sometime in the next decade, is the use of directional carbon fiber like we have in the Humpy Bumper, in stock cars. I think you'll see door panels with carbon fiber crush panels in them.

The difficulty with carbon fiber is that not a lot of people in NASCAR understand it. Since we work primarily with steel, carbon fiber is just not a primarily known subject. But it's certainly proved its worth with open wheel cars.

My whole purpose with the bumper was just to get things moving. I'm certainly not a pioneer, because many people just totally discounted the bumper. But believe me it worked, and will continue to work. Having something in the front of the car, like the bumper, is coming, in my opinion.

There are a lot of people who also think it's the way to go. I talked to lots and lots of people about that. I think the bumper does need more testing, particularly for the bizarre type hits that you don't think will ever happen.

That's what ends up hurting drivers. So I think with this new company, we'll see a resurgence of that bumper.