New Technology Keeping Nitro Funny Car Pilots Safe

Couresty of Ford Media and PCGCambell

Two years ago this month, the drag racing community lost John Force Racing Mustang driver Eric Medlen in a tragic Funny Car testing accident. In the aftermath of that accident, John Force Racing and Ford Racing banded together to form The Eric Medlen Project, with an eye on finding and improving safety innovations for the sport. Along with the NHRA, John Force Racing and Ford Racing have instituted a series of safety measures ranging from significant Funny Car chassis modifications to the instillation of the Ford Blue Box (crash data recorder) on all nitro cars. This important work continues and This Week In Ford Racing recently caught up with 14 time Funny Car World Champion John Force and with Pat DiMarco, Ford Racing Vehicle Dynamics and Electronics Supervisor, for an update on The Eric Medlen Project and ongoing safety developments.

JOHN FORCE – GTX Castrol Mustang– CAN YOU GIVE US AN UPDATE ON THE ERIC MEDLEN PROJECT?
“Our shop is out here in California, 50,000 square foot, but most of the race teams are out in Indy, the Ford Motor program is in Indy, the Eric Medlen project is in Indy, everything now is housed under 50,000 square foot. You can see everything that we have developed working with NHRA, working with Ford Motor Company and their technicians. You can go there because we built a virtual reality tour and you can walk through and see it, what we’ve done. If you don’t want to believe us you can read the documentation that Ford has provided us that you can walk through it and get an education. When we do our car shows that’s where we are going to educate the people, to show them what we created from the crash of Eric, the loss of Eric something has to come out of that, and it has, a better and safer race car and it will still run for the title.”

THE 1,000-FOOT ASIDE, WHAT’S THE BIGGEST CHANGE YOU’VE SEEN IN THIS SPORT SINCE YOU’VE COME INTO IT?
“You know, in the sport, the biggest change was the technology of computers. That you can get the data after the car had made a run, that is, over my career of over 30 years. That was big, but to see the change to what made this car run faster. Now, the computer couldn’t run anything but it could to tell the crew chief what the fuel pump was doing, what the blower was doing, everything it was doing they could make that happen. So the computer was important, but the one thing we did wrong in the 50 years of our sport, as much safety as we evolved with, one of the biggest changes I believe is what we did with Ford Motor Company and NHRA. We evolved the chassis.

The chassis, if you look at the car I drove 30 years ago, was the same car that Eric and I crashed in ’07, and the new chassis evolved from a four-rail to a six-rail where the driver’s cockpit that protected the driver with the tub around him, and we got that through the Ford technicians and all of those guys were able to study those cars. This has been an on-going process since March of ’07, since we lost Eric, and all of ’08 and it’s not going to stop. We’re working on helmets with the impact and testing, all of that stuff is going to continue to grow. But Ford came up and got the idea to put a black box, we call it the blue box. They paid for it, it was put in by Delphi but it was put into every car. Ford said put it in the GM cars, put it in the Toyota, put in the MOPARS, let’s find out what happens when something goes wrong, and that is a big change. We’ve always been about horsepower, well, now, safety and that’s the biggest change in the sport.”

PAT DIMARCO, Ford Racing Vehicle Dynamics and Electronics Supervisor — IT HAS BEEN TWO YEARS SINCE THE PASSING OF JOHN FORCE RACING DRIVER ERIC MEDLEN IN A TESTING ACCIDENT FOLLOWING THE GAINESVILLE NHRA EVENT. THAT ACCIDENT REALLY TRIGGERED A NUMBER OF JOINT SAFETY INITIATIVES BETWEEN NHRA, FORD RACING AND JOHN FORCE RACING, MOST NOTABLY THE ERIC MEDLEN PROJECT.
“Yes, and I’d go as far as saying the NHRA has been involved in these safety initiatives as well. [The NHRA] has implemented a lot of things that we have started: the Ford Blue Box program, as well as the chassis changes, were all a combination of our work, John Force Racing and NHRA. Last year was the Blue Box implementation for all nitro cars, as well as the new chassis design. This year, we’re also moving forward with some of our production car technology and personnel. We’re modeling the occupant within the computer to simulate accidents similar to Eric’s, as well as a crash similar to Scott Kalitta’s. We can evaluate anything that the body can touch, as well as any vibrations that are put into the body on the computer, as well as a physical test, that’s being replicated as well.”

UP TO THIS POINT, THE CHASSIS CHANGES HAVE COME FROM EVALUATING NOT ONLY THE ACCIDENT WITH ERIC, BUT ALSO THE SIGNIFICANT ACCIDENT JOHN FORCE HAD AT DALLAS AND LOOKING AT WAYS TO REINFORCE THE CHASSIS. YOU’RE SAYING THERE ARE ADDITIONAL INOVATAIONS THAT CAN BE FOUND IN THE CRASHES?
“Definitely. Maybe not so much in the chassis itself, but innovations in the padding, the helmets, the surrounding areas and what the driver can physically touch. That is where we will be looking at for improvements. It’s things like that where the occupant model will help us evaluate.”

TAKE US THROUGH THE EVOLUTION OF THIS PROJECT AND HOW IT’S GONE STEP BY STEP.
“After Eric’s accident, the first thing we looked at was the area surrounding the driver’s head, which was the cause of Eric’s injuries. By widening the surround and putting more padding in there, it helped reduce some of the loads on the driver’s head during a similar accident. Those changes were instrumental in saving John Force’s life in his crash at Dallas. The next step was to look at the chassis and why it broke, and John’s chassis broke in the same places that Eric’s chassis broke. That allowed us to focus on looking at those hot spots and how to remove them from the chassis. Or, in the case that we have now, they’re completely out of the chassis for a torsional event that was seen in Eric and John’s accidents. In order to do all that, we needed data, and the Blue Box data that is running in all of the Nitro cars now was very instrumental in gathering data for all the chassis that have cracked on the track. The data collected from the boxes also helped us reproduce the accident from Scott Kalitta last year.”

WHAT’S THE NEXT STEP? WHAT DO YOU SEE ON THE HORIZON FOR THIS INITIATIVE?
“There’s various production car technologies that can be applied going forward. Although nothing is finalized, there could be things like automatic shut offs, seat belt pretensioners, air bags around the head … just about anything that’s already in the production car. We are working closely with the Ford safety office to see what we can physically put in the car, as well as what’s feasible from a racer’s standpoint with the NHRA.”

WHAT COMES OUT OF THIS PROGRAM THAT CAN GO BACK INTO PRODUCTION CARS?
“We’re pushing the limits on the models that we’re using from the standpoint of the head and the brain models. Production cars don’t usually look at vibration as significant as we’re seeing in the Funny Cars, so they’re evaluating their models using our data to improve our production car safety as well. That’s important for the racers, as well as for our consumers.”

FORD AND NHRA TEAM UP ON SAFETY

You’ll never guess who’s a new member at Ford’s media site? MyRideisMe! We’ll keep an eye on what’s happening with the performance cars and racing action over at the Ford site and post it here so you won’t have to look around.

This first story hits close to home for me. When Eric Medlen died I had trouble watching drag racing. I’ve always liked John Force so I cheered for his teammates as well. Eric just seemed like a good guy from watching him in interviews too. That whole incident hit me hard.The John Force Racing team reaction was over the top. They’ve re-examined EVERYTHING about safety in their funny cars and is doing the right thing by sharing all of the data with the NHRA and the other racing teams. The latest step is illustrated in this story from Ford Media. At Force’s request (I’ll bet) Ford’s doing the in depth engineering study needed to make sure these 7000 HP monsters are as safe as they can be. Great work guys!

Courtesy of Ford’s Media:

DEARBORN, Mich. – Accelerating safety development in the sport of drag racing, the NHRA and Ford Racing jointly announced today that all cars in the Funny Car and Top Fuel classes will be outfitted with the Ford Racing “Blue Box” crash sensors for the 2008 season.

“Ford, like the NHRA, is committed to continuously improving safety. It’s important to further improving our passenger cars and trucks and also to what we’re doing in racing,” said Dan Davis, director of Ford Racing Technology. “We’re supplying Blue Boxes – at no cost – for all nitro cars for next year. It’s the right thing to do for the sport and the millions of customers who will benefit from whatever we learn on the track.”

The announcement comes after seven months of initial testing and data analysis of the Blue Boxes on the Mustang Funny Cars of John Force Racing (JFR).

Ford Racing offered the crash sensors and engineering support for their use after the death of JFR driver Eric Medlen in a testing accident in March, which led JFR, in cooperation with Ford Racing, NHRA and the sport’s suppliers, in August to launch “The Eric Medlen Project,” a wide-ranging program designed to further improve safety in the sport.

Ford Racing and NHRA will work together during the next several weeks and prior to the start of the 2008 POWERade Drag Racing season on specific program elements.

“NHRA has, since its inception, always been committed to improve safety in the sport,” said Graham Light, senior vice president of racing operations. “And, during that time, NHRA has worked on an ongoing basis with manufacturers and the racing community to enhance the safety of these vehicles. We are very proud of our safety record, given the inherent risks in the sport, and look forward to analyzing the data we anticipate to receive from the Blue Box initiative to further our commitment to safety.”

In addition to initial testing on the Force Mustangs, the Blue Boxes were tested for the final two races of the 2007 season on the Top Fuel dragster of Larry Dixon, to start a prove-out process on that class of vehicle.

This marks the second time in recent years Ford Racing has stepped to the forefront in safety development in racing. From 1996-2006, Ford Blue Boxes were mandatory on all cars in the Champ Car World Series.

In the Champ Car program, Ford’s Safety Research & Development group analyzed the raw crash data, along with the supporting medical reports, photographs, and video.

Ford then developed a CAE model of the driver inside a racecar cockpit to recreate the accident through computer simulation. The purpose of the research was to predict responses and injury potentials to the drivers in high “g-force” impacts.

(CAE stands for Computer Aided Engineering, it often means some high-tech software was used for simulation by Finite Element Analysis. It’s pretty common now because it’s alot cheaper than crashing cars! Here’s an example of what a CAE model looks like for the funny car. Click on the thumbnail to the left)

The results were then compared with the actual response and physical condition of the driver from the medical reports. Based upon the research, Ford evaluated the effectiveness of contemporary safety devices used in the cars, and communicated the research with Champ Car and its chassis suppliers.

“This work has great potential because it provides information we simply can’t get anywhere else,” said Davis. “That’s why we’re so committed to doing the same type of program for NHRA. The experience we gained in Champ Car gave us an excellent baseline to work from. It helped us correlate the crash models our engineers and safety experts had been working with.”

During the first seven months of the latest initiative, Ford’s safety effort has focused in on four main areas:

• Data collection through the Ford Blue Boxes and accelerometers in the drivers’ ears
• Helmet and driver restraint testing
• Computer modeling of the current chassis, as well as seven-post shaker testing
• Occupant modeling of the driver cockpit area

Initial changes already made by Ford Racing, based on the data collected, have included the addition of extra head padding in the driver’s cockpit, and several changes to the chassis that helped strengthen it during the 300 mph runs.

Those changes have been tested several times during on-track incidents this season, including a crash in Dallas by John Force that left him with serious injuries on his extremities, but no head or internal injuries.

“It’s important to note that these are just first steps in what we hope will be a long-term effort toward making drag racing an even safer sport,” said Davis. “Having the Blue Boxes on all cars in Top Fuel and Funny Car will allow us to gather more data in a shorter period of time, so that everyone in the sport can use it to benefit all of the competitors.”

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Nissan GT-R is Almost Here

It’s been a long time coming and I’ve been waiting like so many. The GT-R is a race car built for the street. For those of you who don’t know why the GTR’s so cool, compare it to the Corvette. Except the GT-R’s a racing Corvette (think Z06 + Callaway upgrade) that’s NEVER been offered for sale in the US. Here are the pictures Nissan is releasing of the car:

The GTR’s all business and always has been. Consider that in 1989 the R32 version of the GT-R was undefeated, winning 29 of 29 races in the 1990 Japanese Touring Car Championship. Then, the next generation R33 became a legend by lapping the famous Nürburgring race course under 8 minutes. At the time, that was unheard of for a “street” car.

In the released photos of the GT-R, it retains its signature round tail lights. Other than that, the details are all rumor since Nissan is keeping extremely tight lips on engine and suspension details. If you want to know the truth, you’ll have to wait until the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show in October. When it’s release, look for Nissan to confirm that it STOMPS the Z06 Corvette for about the same money and beats the Porsche 911 Turbo’s 7 minute 40 second lap time at Nürburgring. Ever priced a 911?