Most of you probably didn’t tune into the Jackson Nationals WoO show on Sat to watch the Wisconsin WingLESS series. There was a crash as they completed lap 1 of the feature and one of the drivers (Shawn Swim) took a hard ride, got a precautionary trip to the hospital. He was ultimately ok, but I saw pics on Facebook of his helmet, which was white... had orange streaks on it from smacking his orange roll cage during the crash. My observation was, geez, this guy was lucky.... and why didn’t he have roll bar padding?! I then recalled that it seems like quite a few traditional sprint car drivers used to have roll bar padding... but not so much anymore. Why is that? With full containment seats and HANS, the cars are definitely safer than they used to be. It seems like it sure wouldn’t hurt to have roll bar padding in case you get in a violent flip that stretches belts, etc. Am I crazy??

You bet. all cars with roll cages should have proper roll cage padding. Everybody, including the sanctioning bodies think since you have full containment seats, you don't need padding. True you will probably never get out of your seat enough to hit the roll cage but what happens is the roll cage bends down to meet you in a bad crash. Nothing can be worse than a head hitting a un protected roll cage tube than maybe an arm getting mixed up in the cage during a flip. Sometimes I think nobody cares anymore.

Mike Devin

I feel the Containment seats and hans have probably improved the survivability a ton. However I still see wrecks were belts slip/stretch and even seats losen. Cheap as heck prevention measure to put pool noodles and electric tape and zip ties on.

Just do it.

I agree with Mike. Charles, foam padding like pool noodles, pipe insulation or even the bright colored foam tubes sold as roll bar padding to the unsuspecting is useless for driver protection.

If you are going to add roll bar padding, the only way to go is the SFI spec 45.1 approved stuff.
BCSI offers it in a pre-contoured "U" shape to fit different size roll cage tubing and has a peel and stick adhesive already attached for simple and quick installation. Comes in colors and a few thickness/durometer options that all still meet the spec. It's pretty readily available in the Indy area or online.

Well it's not useless, However if like you pointed out, Stuff has become safer and available since my 25yrs ago even working on a Sprint. GO FOR IT! And thanks for the info.

Friend of mine raced a sprint, I bought him some good roll bar padding, not that pipe wrap stuff either. Got to watch what you get, some of that apdding will burn & melt on the driver

What I bought a few years ago, rock welled harder than the moly! Glad I never hit it, that I remember!

This is what the car looks like. Also not exactly trying to start a chassis war, but i'm not a chassis person. So I just have a question on something. How come the chassis seems to break right beside a weld? Not the weld breaking, but the cage breaking beside the weld at another piece of the frame.

if you think safety equipment is expensive make a trip to the hospital for a while.they make taller cages,better helmets,better suits etc etc so you can use them and be safer.we do this as a hobby so protect yourself .im not gonna retell the grundy speedway crash again but a guy was racing a dwarf car with a nylon go cart suit,crash and burned.cg

Because it's 4130 chromoly and most do not weld it properly. Cooling too quickly causes embrittlement and you see the breaks away from the weld joint. It also needs to be preheated to at least 80 degrees before the weld process, I like it even hotter than that. Ideally we would have an oven to preheat it do the welds and then back in oven to post heat.

I'm not an expert but when in welding class many years ago that is what they taught me and I never had tubing failure on any chassis I built or repaired.