John Force Crash Raises Question of SAFER Barriers for NHRA

• John Force suffered a serious head injury when his Chevrolet Camaro SS Funny Car exploded and crashed into the concrete walls lining the drag strip at Virginia Motorsports Park near Richmond on June 23.

• Somewhat surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of cries for installation of SAFER barriers—sometimes called soft walls—at NHRA tracks to help soften the affects of such crashes.

• Calls for SAFER barriers' use in NASCAR came from all corners following Dale Earnhardt's death at Daytona in 2001.

On June 23, the NHRA's winningest driver of all time, John Force, suffered a serious head injury in an explosion and crash that sent his Chevrolet Camaro SS Funny Car hard into the concrete walls lining the drag strip at Virginia Motorsports Park near Richmond.

Ask drivers in NASCAR or IndyCar, and they might tell you that hitting a SAFER (Steel And Foam Energy Reduction) barrier instead of a concrete wall may have made a difference in the outcome of the crash.

Somewhat surprisingly, there seem to be no cries for SAFER barriers to be installed at NHRA tracks. For now, the NHRA community is taking the Force crash and the issue of SAFER barriers for their sport with a "let's wait for all the information to come in" mindset.

SAFER barriers these days line the walls on all ovals and many high-speed sections of road and street courses that host NASCAR and the NTT IndyCar Series. The barriers, which are made primarily of polystyrene foam wrapped around a tubular steel skin, are attached to the existing concrete walls that encircle the racetrack. They were invented by Dr. Dean Sicking and his team at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Midwest Roadside Safety facility in the 1990s.

When a car hits the barrier—even when the impact is in excess of 200 mph—the barrier absorbs much of the energy of the impact and softens the hit to a driver.

Calls for SAFER barriers' use in NASCAR came from all corners following Dale Earnhardt's death in a head-on crash into a concrete wall at the 2001 Daytona 500. The SAFER-barriers era in motorsports began when the walls were first installed at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2002. NASCAR quickly followed suit, and by 2003, under the leadership of NASCAR's then-president Mike Helton, its member tracks began installing the energy-absorbing walls initially at strategic places along the track before eventually encircling the racetracks.

You still won't, however, find SAFER barriers at tracks that host NHRA drag races.

Chad Head, vice president of the NHRA ownership group PRO (Professional Racers Organization) and general manager at Kalitta Motorsports, says he doesn't want to see the sport knee-jerk a decision based solely on the John Force accident.

"I think the first thing that anybody does when an accident happens, everybody wants to start talking about what about this, and what about that, and why did we do this, why did we do that," Head told Autoweek during the recent Summit Racing NHRA Nationals at Norwalk, Ohio, one week after Force's crash. "So I think the biggest thing is to let NHRA do their investigation—look at the car, see exactly what happened.

"Sitting here today, all we know is what the team [John Force Racing] puts out. I think it's really, really important to look at what we have, get as much information from that team—and are there things short-term that we can improve on? But before we start talking about anything, I think it's only fair that the sanctioning body does their investigations and then reports back to the owners and the teams. Let them say, 'This is what we found, what does everybody think.'"

Head is a drag-racing lifer who wears multiple hats in the series. In addition to Head's seat as vice president for PRO alongside president Allen Johnson and his leadership role at Kalitta Motorsports, he is a former NHRA Funny Car racer. His father, Jim, was also an NHRA racer.

In the immediate aftermath of the Force crash, Head made it clear he was speaking on behalf of Kalitta Motorsports and its team owner Connie Kalitta. PRO had yet to meet formally to discuss the Force incident.

"You'll never hear us talk on behalf of PRO without PRO's back," Head said. "We never speak for the owners unless the owners are all on the same page.

"We need to get more information. All we have right now is what we've witnessed and what little we've gotten from the team and press releases. And we've gotten a little information from one of the crew chiefs about parachutes and what not. You never want to be reactive—you always want to be proactive—but things like this always open your eyes as to how do we get better.

"It's always important to not have a knee-jerk reaction," Head said. "What we need first is to figure out why it happened. We need to find out why the parachutes didn't deploy like they're supposed to. And what injuries does John have. And did the formed seat do its job."

Head said that while the thought of an NHRA Funny Car hitting a concrete wall at 300 mph may sound next-level unsafe, the sport has come a long way in terms of safety.

"We used to have guardrails," he said. "That posed its own pros and cons versus a concrete wall. We used to have openings, and thank goodness they got them closed and now there are steel gates. There have been a lot of things over the years that have gotten better.

"We've instituted tethers on our [car] bodies, and I will tell you that has done a really, really good job of minimizing large parts of the bodies flying into the stands. That's a credit to the sanctioning body recognizing a problem and then working with the teams."

NHRA president Glen Cromwell says the sanctioning body makes providing a safe environment to its competitors the top priority. That said, incidents like the Force crash can open up a discussion about things like SAFER barriers.

"We've talked about it," Cromwell said. "We have said in the past that there's a difference in SAFER barriers for NHRA versus NASCAR and IndyCar, where you have one category of car. You have one weight of a car in NASCAR and IndyCar. We run 10 to 15 different categories on a given weekend.

"The SAFER barriers are set by the weight of the cars. We run four professional categories and from seven to nine different Sportsman categories—stock, super stock—cars that go 150 mph and some that go 330 mph. The weight of the cars is something you have to look at when you are putting up SAFER barriers. My understanding is there's an adjustment when different series run there."

NASCAR and IndyCar racers swear by the SAFER technology.

"As we look forward, those are discussion points that we'll have," Cromwell said. "We've had them in the past. We're straight-line racing, and typically, you do no not have that direct hit versus in NASCAR or IndyCar, where you have corners and more of a direct hit directly into the wall."

But in what instance—even if not directly head on—would hitting a concrete wall be better than smashing into a SAFER barrier? NASCAR and IndyCar racers know it has saved lives and saved drivers from serious injury.

"Economics for the tracks can be a discussion point, but at the end of the day, we will talk about it," Cromwell added. "NHRA, from day one, we stand on safety. We feel the sport is extremely safe, and we're always working hard to keep it safe."

Defending Top Fuel champion Doug Kalitta said that the SAFER barriers in use at NASCAR tracks could be an intriguing option for NHRA.

"The NASCAR guys have done a hell of a job with [SAFER barriers], so you look at the construction of what all that is," Kalitta said. "It seems like they would definitely take some of the impact out of it.

"But with our cars, we have the safety system that when your engine blows up, it shuts the fuel off, it throws the chutes out. That safety system also happens after the finish line if the driver hasn't shut the thing off—it shuts the fuel off, and the chutes come out.

"For some reason, it didn't go off on John's car. The chutes didn't come out, and the thing definitely didn't shut off after it blew up initially. That seems kind of strange—why that maybe failed."

Kalitta says he trusts the process and trusts the NHRA with any decisions it makes in regard to safety.

"The NHRA, they do a great job with making all these decisions," Kalitta said. "We'll leave it up to them.

"It's not very common like it is with NASCAR where they're banging and crashing into the wall every week. I think just the overall percentage of this happening [in NHRA] is really low, but when it takes out our key guy...

"It might not be the worst time to start thinking about it."