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"Our whole operation jumped into service Monday morning," Nelson said of the event that happened on a Saturday night. "We (quickly) had a bulletin written, had eight tests done -- we knew exactly what broke and how to make it better.
"Before another car went on another racetrack, every car had changed their (restraint) system to the stronger one."
More often than not, such projects are long-term works in progress. But Nelson anticipates a number of steps he said are coming soon.
"We've been working on the alternate exit (rooftop escape hatch) since last summer, so that may be the next thing we see," Nelson said. "A lot of the guys (drivers) have come by the shop to look at it.
"What I'm really looking forward to now is a test with a crash dummy in which we'll do a rollover. That is coming within the next two weeks, I would say."
The most recent initiative the R&D center has begun is an investigation of side impacts, and how their effects might be lessened. As with many other aspects of NASCAR's behind-the-scenes safety work, the possibilities are endless.
"Oh yeah, changing the position of the driver in relation to the side of the car is a big part of that study," Nelson said. "That is the car of the future."
Nelson's willingness to sit down with a group of media members at New Hampshire International Speedway on the verge of last Sunday's New England 300 is indicative of NASCAR's new policy of an open discussion of safety developments.
It has impressed the media, the public and, most importantly, NASCAR's competitors.
"The thing that has really impressed me with NASCAR recently is the fact that they have looked at so many different (safety) things, and that's really unheard of," two-time Winston Cup champion Terry Labonte said. "They've really done a good job, and they've kept the competitors informed on what they're working on and the progress of it."
At New Hampshire, Nelson addressed a variety of topics, including soft walls and fires.
Q: If solutions to these safety issues are typically slower than the quick way you addressed the issue of hood tethers, what's the next thing we're apt to see put into place?
Gary Nelson: We've got a real big project under way that is a two-pronged deal, and that's fire prevention and fire extinguishing. When you think about making the sport better, preventing fire would be a pretty big way to make that happen. And if a fire occurs, getting it extinguished quickly would be the second thing.
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| Bobby Labonte escapes from his car two weeks ago at Chicagoland. |
It may be a longer-term goal to never have a fire again, but that's our goal. The reality is if a fire is going to occur, how are we best going to deal with it in the cars? We started really stepping up our investigation with Jason Keller's fire (in the Daytona Busch Series race at Daytona) in February.
But that occurred at the front of the car. We went to Pocono in June and Dale Jarrett and Ken Schrader had fires in the back of the car. There are a couple others we've investigated as well. Each one of them was unique and had different contributing factors, so it's hard to say what's coming next.
With the fires involving Jarrett, Schrader and Bobby Labonte, they did not involve fuel cell failure. They all had issues with either the (filler and vent) hoses in or out of the cell, and they had full cells. We're still looking at those issues.
But I can say we've got a lot of energy going into fire prevention, fire control and fire extinguishing. What may come out next since we've covered so much ground on it is the alternate exit (roof escape hatch). The carbon monoxide system, we feel like we've covered a lot of ground there, but there's still more details to finish.
We've got a pretty exciting investigation underway on side impacts, with what happened with Kyle Petty last year at Bristol and Jerry Nadeau at Richmond. Taking those cars and studying them in great detail, we then came up with some ideas that we think are close right now.
Q: How do you initiate and reevaluate your priorities for ongoing projects?
Nelson: We always maintain a priority list -- at least I do -- of what we're going to work on. I feel real comfortable that our resources are second to none in motorsports. But even at that, they have limits, so you have to prioritize what you're going to use.
Our engineering department, our involvement with the automobile manufacturers, guys like John Melvin, all of that, to us, is at our fingertips. But we have to make sure we stay focused. If we're working on the front of the car, we can get diverted to the back, or to the side. I'm not sure that's the most efficient way to get end results.
 | VIDEO CLIPS |  | Gary Nelson reviews the development of the roof hatch.
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|  | Nelson discusses the development of soft wall technology.
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We try to be careful not to get diverted by everything that comes along. But in the case of Ryan Newman's tire at Talladega (that sailed over a wall and out of the facility), it was a case where, we've got all these resources and we can have an answer in two days, so it's not like we're going to take the next two months figuring it out.
We simply said, 'Let's test the strength of this, let's see if it's feasible and then get back on our other projects.' The Robby Gordon hood issue was the same, where we took just a few days and we were back on our other projects, which are taking longer, like our side impact study -- which isn't an overnight fix.
It's a very complicated issue, like our fresh air study or the air deflector that we put on the back window at Daytona. All those things are continuing to move along on my priority list.
Every Tuesday I meet with our engineers and lay out the priorities for the week. The items that are on the top, in the top-five, usually don't fall out. There's progress on everything. The things that we're able to do in a couple days, we'll do.
Q: What is the R&D center's top priority right now?
 | ALSO | | With flames engulfing them, Bobby Labonte and Ryan Newman had to keep calm while scrambling out of their fiery race cars. |
| | Both made it out without serious injury in the separate accidents, plunging out of their burning cockpits before safety crews even arrived to assist them. |
| | The two recent brushes with danger have some teams pressing NASCAR for upgraded firefighting efforts, ranging from redesigned fuel cells to fire extinguishers placed near the gas tanks. |
| | Others are looking at a bigger picture: NASCAR is one of the few top racing series that doesn't employ its own full-time traveling safety crew. NASCAR maintains that using local emergency service crews works just fine. |
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Nelson: Fire extinguishing is at the top today and it's been at the top since Pocono (in June). The drivers' alternate exit is second on our list and then it just comes down. The alternate exit study was begun last summer. The fire-extinguishing thing was begun in February.
Q: Bobby Labonte's fire at Chicagoland was the latest in a series of similar incidents. How did you analyze that?
Nelson: We've really studied that video (of Labonte's crash), using slow motion to try to understand all the details of what happened. We presented that to our think tank and asked, 'How do you learn from this?' We had five cars at Chicagoland that backed into the wall, and three of them hit harder than Bobby did (as determined by the onboard data recorder), and his impact matched one. But his was the only one to catch fire.
Those made us look at not only how it happened, but also can you provide an onboard system that will cover the areas that need it and not compromise the driver? We want it to be automatic and for the deployment to not involve the driver.
We have looked at a remote control system with which we could initiate the fire extinguisher from the control tower. Every link that you put in the chain, done properly, helps you.
Q: How will fire prevention be accomplished?
Nelson: There's one product that we spent a lot of time with. We looked at a powder that is used in fire extinguishers. We got into a pretty extensive study about if you could automatically deploy this powder if the car hits the wall.
We wanted, in a simple, basically foolproof way -- though I hate to say that -- to put something under the hood of the car and the trunk, that glues or bonds itself to the sheet metal and that when it gets crunched in a wreck releases the powder automatically, so the driver doesn't have to do anything.
We've done a lot of crash testing with that at our R&D center. There are some issues with it that we're trying to overcome, like if the car is moving through the air (after crashing) and you release the powder, it's here and the car is now over there. There's some challenges there we're trying to figure out how to overcome.
Q: Are you looking at doing anything to the fuel cells themselves?
Nelson: We've thought about using the smaller fuel cell at more tracks. Hitting the wall is inevitable, and for the drivers, hitting the wall backwards is the best way, since they're against a solid backrest, with the seat. A frontal impact is more likely to produce injuries.
But hitting in the back is where the fuel cell is. If we use the smaller cell, it's still the same basic dimension so that doesn't put it further away from the wall. But we've considered mounting it upright, or on edge, which would put it further into the back of the car and further away from the wall.
Q: How do you see the application of soft-wall technology proceeding?
Nelson: John Melvin and Jim Raddin told us early on that our No. 1 gain would be in driver-restraint systems -- as much as 50 percent -- and our first rules in terms of safety were in restraint systems and head and neck restraints.
The No. 2 area was in the walls -- the SAFER barrier -- that would be as much as 35 percent. There's no question the SAFER barrier does a better job (than a concrete wall). Any energy from an accident is going to be felt by the car or the wall, and the wall doesn't feel much, or absorb it.
In the case of wall contact, the driver is going to feel a certain amount of that force, so the biggest gains we could make would be if the wall could absorb more, in the case of the SAFER barrier, or the car could absorb more.
The (SAFER) wall is coming along. We're continuing to test it and it's going to be installed at New Hampshire and Richmond. What we need to get is some data from real world accidents, and we'll be able to continue to improve it.
Where will it be next? It's real easy to talk about, but when we study the data it will tell us where we need to go next. Once we determine that every track from this size to this size will have it, as quick as you can get it out and install it. But that will be determined by some key information we don't have.
Q: When an incident such as the hood flying over the fence happens at Daytona, do you look at recommending putting a different curve on the debris fence, or extending it higher?
Nelson: Whenever something happens you need to understand every part of it. So our accident investigation team looked at all the video, walked the track and measured everything and figured out how the dynamics happened. Our engineering team took all that information and figured out how to make it better.
We basically figured that we couldn't make the fence go far enough, so why not make the cars stay together better? I didn't think it would be a good approach to say, 'Put another two feet of fence here or there, and to ignore what made the hood come off the car in the first place.' Obviously the last link in the chain was that the hood came off the car, and that was the way we approached it.
We don't get into the blame aspect of it, when two cars hit the wall. We start at the wall and investigate how to keep it (parts coming off) from happening again.
Q: What is your thought on implementing rule changes, especially regarding safety?
Nelson: Our responsibility is to understand a situation totally. It's great, regarding the fire issue, that teams have undertaken changes on their own, within the parameters of the rulebook. But if we're going to mandate something, we better know what we're talking about.
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