Hoping For A better Year In 2004
Wow... what a character building year 2003 has been for me. This has been a year I'd sooner forget.
Starting with the loss of local racer Paul Mumford. Then a week later, the wife of a fellow American Stockcar Challenge (ASC) competitor was killed in an accident while she was driving home from the grocery store. Her Jeep Cherokee rolled and she was killed. Fortunately her infant daughter survived unharmed (she was in a baby seat).
Undoubtedly, my biggest blow came on October 18th during an ASC race at Buttonwillow Raceway when our driver Bill Blauvelt was killed 10 minutes into the race! A simple error (got into the marbles) which led to a slide, then an impact with a common result,a basal skull fracture. Bill was a talented racer, all around great guy and one of my closest friends. Since the accident, his widow and I have become closer than ever and it saddens me to think that his 18 month old son will never get to know his father. Fortunately, Bill did have the foresight to make arrangements for his family in the event of such a tragedy.
Folks,
We all need to worry about safety before performance! I've always been a strong advocate for safety equipment. All our cars are fitted with the latest in racing harnesses, window nets, interior nets, fire systems and rollcages. All our drivers must pass a 10 second exit test, followed by a 30 second blind exit test. Our suits, helmets and gear are replaced every 3 years regardless of wear. Half of our drivers are already equipped with some sort of head and neck restraint protection (HANS and G-Force), while the other half will be placing orders by early 2004. Ironically, Bill was to buy a HANS device at the end of the year in preparation for our GrandAm series entry for 2004. Since the accident, we've removed the seats from every single one of our race cars and have replaced them with RaceTech seats. After intensive research of race seats manufacturers from Recaro, Butler, PPI to Randy LaJoie custom seats, we've decided on the Racetech seats for personal reasons. Most of the other companies offer a seat of equal quality and crash standards. Racetech was commissioned by Daimler Chrysler to develop the seats for the Viper Comp Coupe and provided us with extensive sled crash test data that convinced us that race seat design remains one of the remaining weak links in race car safety. While the information shown to us is confidential, I can only say that I was shocked at the vulnerability of the driver while strapped to 95% of the seats available on the market. The majority of recent race driver fatalities can be attributed to head and neck injuries, and a majority of these injuries are a result of seat design failure.
Whether you road race, rally, circle track or autocross, safety is paramout. We estimate that Bill's impact occured at LESS than 60mph! But our engineer estimated a 26g impact. It's not the speed that kills, it's the sudden deceleration. Under the right circumstances, one could experience a 40g impact at parking lot speeds. Think about this, whether you're competing in an H-Stock Autocross car or a Spec Miata, you need to think about safety.
Our engineer Tim Spencer has posted a brief article outlining his findings at our website (http://www.realride.com "LEARNING FROM TRAGEDY). I encourage everybody to do your own research and make your own evaluations. But please think about your safety!
Instead of buying that new "whiz bang" intake, would the money be better spent on a fire system? How about a well engineered custom rollcage instead of that bolt-in piece?
Regards,
David
REALRIDE.COM RACING
http://www.RealRide.com
