We have to thank the dudes at Racing Head Service for tipping us off to this video yesterday. As weird as it sounds, we have never thought about what race cars would look like getting subjected to the same types of crash testing that normal road going passenger cars have to live through. In this video we see a sprint car getting bashed face first into a wall and then during a second test, getting slit roof first into the same wall by a crash sled. Both of the tests yield interesting results.
The frontal impact test shows that the chassis seems to be a good job of isolating damage to is frontal area and away from the limbs and body of the driver. You’ll see some neat video of the car after the test and it is wild to see how all of the beefy steering components were bend and moved around by the impact. The second test is the one that made our eyes bug out. The chassis is basically laid on its side and then pushed into the wall by a sled type device, simulating an impact where a car has flipped and it sliding into a wall effectively “roof” first (roof being a relative term on a sprint car, we know). The car folds up like a Happy Meal box. The dummy gets all kinds of mashed up into the wall, tubing is bending and failing all over the place and it looks like curtains for whoever would be sitting in the drivers seat. Pretty valuable test for a chassis builder and a racing organization to work on refining the designs for their racing machines.
This is a sprint car and we’d love to see a couple different stock cars and drag cars tested as well. Imagine a dragster being shoved into that wall? Talk about solid gold video…holy smokes it would rule in both the curiosity and carnage senses. You’ll dig this look at sprint car scientific crash testing. Thanks to RHS for sharing it!
PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE A SPRINT CAR GET MASHED AND SMASHED IN THE NAME OS SCIENCE!
Am I the only one who noticed they used the same chassis for both impacts? Even though the halo wasn’t involved in the frontal impact wouldn’t the movement of the front-end tubing still have an effect on the roof test?
They explain why they use the same chassis in the video….makes sense, so perhaps give it another viewing.
Wow the verticles behind the driver seemed near useless.
they used the same chassis because they were simulating a car having a frontal impact and flipping over and having a second impact on the roof.
THIS is why after DALE SR. crashed at Talladega and got T-Boned while on side and roof facing trafficwhen t-boned coming at 200mph with pack of cars having know where to go .. They added a center bar that went IIRC from windshield to the dash bar and then to side bars and toward the rear window bar center down to the floor, I know, wrong “sprint car” but after seeing that crash, I’m kinda shocked the open wheel sprint car’s didn’t add something like it.. even tho. in a wreck they tend to be bouncing around than sliding toward a wall, and really don’t have the weight to crush the roof bars when bouncing onto and over the wall, or getting whacked by another car, as that tends to just push and roll them..