NASCAR’s evolution of safety: Fuel cells, inner liners and window nets | Shift
In this episode of 'Shift', Richard Petty walks us through the evolution of driver safety in NASCAR and how all parties contributed to where we are today.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Fireball had a big wreck at Charlotte.
00:10NASCAR got really involved.
00:17Firestone was the one that came up with the fuel cell.
00:20If a car flips over or crashes like Richard Petty's,
00:23the balls in the valve fly up and close off the tank openings,
00:27keeping the fuel inside.
00:29They tested that thing and said,
00:32okay, everybody's got to run with it.
00:34But it stopped 99% of all the fires.
00:38After that time, we had a uniform at the racetrack.
00:42They mixed up a bunch of whatever, and you had to go dip it.
00:46I guess it was fireproof. I don't know.
00:50DuPont had just come with a fireproof material,
00:54so my mother made me a fireproof suit.
00:59NASCAR started demanding, okay, this is a new rule.
01:03Everybody's got to have this kind of stuff,
01:06and it's got to be fireproof.
01:08So there was no more dipping. Everybody went to uniform.
01:12And at the same time, Goodyear was testing their interliners.
01:17The culprit for the last race, they said, was tires.
01:20The Goodyear engineers came up with a new design.
01:23They said, okay, I want you to go out, get up to speed.
01:27I want you to run across this thing and blow a tire.
01:29Okay.
01:32I just could not believe knowing the thing was going to blow.
01:35I mean, I blew a bunch of tires and didn't know it,
01:38but I didn't have time to think about it.
01:40When they asked you to go out and run over these things
01:44and blow a tire, at what speed were you running?
01:47Probably 170 miles an hour, something like that.
01:50So you just intentionally run over something
01:53in the middle of the racetrack at 160 or 170 miles an hour.
02:02It took a while for me to do it.
02:04I had to talk myself into doing it.
02:08Anyhow, it proved to really be a big, big safety deal for us,
02:13and they still run them.
02:16Once they seen me wreck in Arlington in 1970,
02:24come in, hit the inside wall,
02:27and then it went up and turned over three or four times.
02:30I think my arm kept going out the window,
02:32and it wound up upside down.
02:34There's been a crash on the home stretch.
02:36A car upside down.
02:38A blue car. It is Richard Petty.
02:40So it happened, I think, that Dale and Richie
02:43were the first ones in the car.
02:45Pulls the seat belt, and I hit the roof upside down,
02:49and I said, ooh!
02:51And they said, oh, he's okay.
02:53Another confession.
02:55When you go by that spot on the track,
02:57do you think about that crash?
02:59No, I don't think about the crash.
03:01I just know that I can crash,
03:03because that cement wall was awful hard up there.
03:05I think after that, one of the first things they did
03:08was mandate that you've got to have a winter net.
03:10What's this device I see on the top of your car here, Richard?
03:13What will that do?
03:14Well, this is what we've got now
03:16that comes down and fastens to the roll bar.
03:18We made this out of nylon.
03:20Basically, 1970, middle of the year,
03:23it was an automatic thing.
03:25Another safety feature.
03:32To do something well is important,
03:34and to die doing it well is more important
03:37than not to have done it at all.
03:41Life should be measured in terms of achievement,
03:44not in years alone.
03:48And they win glory,
03:50and they suffer,
03:52and they die.
03:55The sport goes on.
03:57The world of sport continues to turn,
03:59just as the Earth itself.