Originally Posted by
RexRacer19
The NASCAR style bars add more metal to the area adjacent to the driver, but are generally full of dead load paths. In nearly every example of a NASCAR bar shown in this thread, there is a nice mesh of tubes forming the side impact. BUT, that mesh of tubes gets attached to a single vertical tube in the front, and a single vertical tube in the rear mid-span. When having to take on an impact such as Richie's, The tubes that the NASCAR bars are attached to will be the first to deform/fail in a massive impact. Just like in Richie's crash, they will be in tension, which is less than ideal.
-Jeff