|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Turning down safety Plenty of NASCAR drivers opposed to HANS device
Updated: Tuesday March 06, 2001 3:06 PM
About an hour after he'd qualified for last weekend's race at Rockingham, N.C., a testy Mark Martin answered questions thrown at him by a few reporters who had followed him to his hauler. Mark, do you wear a HANS device? Martin, disappointed because he'd qualified 17th and fatigued by endless safety questions over the previous six days, gave a rueful shake of his head before answering very deliberately. "I wouldn't wear a HANS device for anything," he said. Why not? "I can tell by looking at it that I won't wear it," Martin, 42, said. "It's just, uh, it's not for me. I been racing 25 years, I'll keep my fingers crossed I got a few more years left. I'm not going to tangle with that ... that thing. Just doesn't look like something I could wear." Martin is by no means alone among drivers in the garage area with barely-masked disdain for the Head and Neck Support device, a piece of safety equipment that has, for sadly obvious reasons, become Topic No. 1 in NASCAR lately. But, by the same token, if Martin isn't alone in his apparent contempt, his words are depressingly representative of stubbornness within the stock-car racing community that seems to regard this potentially life-saving device. The attitude toward HANS is similar to views on the restrictor plate -- that is, it not only might be unnecessary, it's just plain dumb. The clearest consensus damning the device seems to be that it's simply too uncomfortable. "I've been working with the HANS device," Jeff Gordon said after his Saturday qualifying run. "I haven't been able to make it work for me." And if the HANS isn't doomed by discomfort, then it's dismissed with the caveat that Winston Cup cars are the safest race cars in the world, a somewhat dubious claim served up by many within the NASCAR community. And if those two smoke screens aren't employed, there's the Martin defense: Heck, I've made it this far without it. Whatever the reason for the drivers' reluctance, NASCAR has itself a little problem after four deaths within the last year all were due to a basal skull fracture ... the type of injury the HANS is designed specifically to prevent. The HANS is uncomfortable? Then make it comfortable. Winston Cup cars are the safest race cars in the world? That's all well and good, but it would certainly appear they could be safer still. You haven't died yet? Lucky you -- we just want to do everything within our power to reasonably assure that you don't. While some would probably rather not hear it, there is one Winston Cup team out there that has heard all the excuses ... and deemed each of them to be unacceptable when measured against being dead. Cal Wells lost a driver in 1996 when he was an owner in open-wheel racing. Now, as owner of PPI Motorsports, the outfit that fields cars driven by Ricky Craven and Andy Houston , Wells requires each of his drivers to use the HANS. "Safety is second only to being competitive at PPI," says Mark McArdle , Technical Director for the team. In addition to the HANS, PPI is working with NASCAR on the development of a poured, bead/foam seat that is contoured to each driver and designed to absorb much more lateral stress than a typical welded aluminum seat (McArdle believes the seat will be operable in another few months.) McArdle acknowledges there's no guarantee the HANS could have prevented any of the past four fatalities. "If a driver hits hard enough for that device to fail, then nothing will save him. But," he continues, "so far, we haven't had anything bad happen to someone wearing a HANS." McArdle says the costs incurred as a result of PPI's safety initiative are negligible -- the seats, approximately three times as expensive as conventional seats, are the most expensive ingredient. And if cost isn't a factor, neither is a driver's simple unwillingness to adapt. "By having an owner who is committed to safety," McArdle says of Wells, "the driver has to do what the boss says. That's our strongest hammer. If he doesn't like it, he can go somewhere else. But we think that by educating athletes, by working diligently to overcome legitimate problems, we feel we've adequately addressed many of the perceived problems." For example, many drivers complain that it's difficult to get out of the HANS. But thanks to the efforts of drivers like Scott Pruett (who drove for PPI in 2000), Andy Houston and Ricky Craven , PPI developed a quick-release system. That system has been incorporated by Hubbard Downing, the company that makes the HANS, as a standard feature. (PPI has also modified the vertical members that go over a driver's chest, enhancing comfort.) "If the driver has an issue," McArdle says, "we attack it and fix it." But while Rome burns, Nero seems content to fiddle. "I'm dedicated to try to make [the HANS] work," Gordon said last Saturday. "There's a lot of work that goes into it and there are other issues. It's not just that we're stupid and that we don't want to have something that's cumbersome. There are other safety issues about getting in and out of the car, if you have to, in a hurry. I think it's a good idea ... [but] how do you do it?" How? Apparently, you just do it. Stephen Thomas covers NASCAR for CNNSI.com
| ||||||||||||||||||||
