Visiting the canopy idea.

"Grindintosecond" (Grindintosecond) 08/24/2015 at 00:01 • Filed to: None

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With Wilson now in a coma from taking a nose crash structure on the head, Bianchi missing from our world because of poorly managed heavy construction equipment. Massa lucky enough to race on after butting a suspension spring out of the way and looking way back, Mark Donohue passed from sliding into a catch fence post and hemorrhaging a day later, we have to look again at alternatives to the open cockpit.

This is some concept art from !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Striking images of what could be sooner or later. At first, the danger was from the outside world making it’s way in from retaining walls, fencing material, trash from spectators or rocks kicked up from dropping a wheel inside the corner, but now it’s parts from the cars themselves. A slight bump yields thousands of tiny shards of carbon fiber. A slightly larger bump breaks off small wings and end plates. A much larger bump breaks off whole wings, crash protection structures-tires and suspension parts in the most heavy impacts. All of which the following cars blast through at 150 to over 200mph. Some drivers have said that a canopy might not be totally required, but at least something that comes up over the helmet.

I don’t watch the world superbike racing. Can anyone chime in on their recent dangers? Are they having problems avoiding road trash and body contact or is their main threat just high-siding off and sliding into inflatable walls with broken arms and legs?

So, what’s the verdict spectator citizens? Are we soon at a point of seeing single-seat prototypes without fenders? With fenders? Something’s going to come along, the world isn’t accepting of death as part of sport like it did forty years ago.

Enginerrrrrrrrr > Grindintosecond 08/24/2015 at 00:11

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I personally don’t understand the point of open cockpits anyways. Not in this day and age. Why use something so old-school in the pinnacle of racing?

It’s one thing for sports like Moto GP that have to have the racer exposed, but for vehicles of this size, it just doesn’t fit the idea of the race.

Grindintosecond > Enginerrrrrrrrr 08/24/2015 at 00:16

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I’m conflicted myself. The whole idea of today’s open cockpit formula car is spawned from 100 years ago when race cars were just lightened road cars, fenders removed, that never had a hard top i the first place. so here we are with a modern form of a 100 year old idea. I don’t see miata drivers removing the quarters and racing top down-exposed wheels, so why are we racing F1 and indy-cars today? Indy- back in the day was an evolution of the sprint car when we think about it, however, even those cars spawned from the same concept of removing fenders and goin’ racing. So again, decades old base, modern interpretation. The Group-C cars went faster in straight lines anyway. that’s what I’d like to see, the WEC cars racing at Fontana and Michigan and Indy’s ovals.

Wheelerguy > Grindintosecond 08/24/2015 at 05:18

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Probably best if the controls have an “Eject Seat” button. And HVAC, too. If those are in, then canopy it is.