Cracked HANS not unsafe for Busch, inventor says

A crack found in Kyle Busch's Head and Neck Support device after last month's race weekend at Talladega Superspeedway did not compromise the performance of the apparatus, which could have been used in another event, according to tests concluded Wednesday by the company that manufacturers the HANS.

Jim Downing, a former sports-car driver who invented the device along with Michigan State engineering professor Robert Hubbard, said Busch's HANS suffered a 1-inch stress fracture at Talladega. NASCAR sent the device to Atlanta-based Hubbard-Downing Inc. for evaluation, where Downing said it performed just as it was supposed to in a series of tests.

HANS cracked

Kyle Busch's HANS device was cracked at Talladega, either from his Busch accident or a Cup wreck the following day.

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"He got knocked sideways on one of his flips, and it sort of squeezed him," Downing said. "Right there is a point where it can crack. It has nothing to do with the ultimate strength of the HANS. In the normal direction a HANS works, which is 45 degrees left to 45 degrees right, it's just as strong as it ever was. In fact, we have the device now. We've pulled it and tested it and it goes right up to where it's supposed to fail. So it didn't affect the strength of the device at all."

Downing said he's unsure whether Busch's HANS cracked in the driver's flipping accident in the Talladega Busch race (watch video), or in the Nextel Cup wreck he was involved in the next day (watch video). Hubbard-Downing's findings have been forwarded to Steve Peterson, NASCAR's technical director and resident safety expert, who works out of the series' Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C.

Cracks in the HANS device are not uncommon. The lower parts of the yoke-like apparatus, which fits over a driver's shoulder and connects to the helmet, are designed to break once a certain load level is reached, Downing said. Although the stress fracture in Busch's HANS occurred higher up on the device, Downing said the tests prove the effectiveness of the apparatus was not compromised.

"Not at all," he said. "He could have had two or three more wrecks with it, and it would have been perfectly fine. It turns out, that device was about three years old, and he's had a lot of wrecks the last three years. In fact, he totaled a car the day before [the Nextel Cup race]. So who knows, it might have done it then. There's no way to know, because no one picked up on it until after his big wreck there. But it's fine. It's sort of like getting a bent fender in a big wreck. It's sort of a making a mountain out of a molehill here."