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It’s also worth noting that flips are rarely ever the cause of driver injury, as said in that thread.
Thread on recent driver injuries: https://twitter.com/b1gnate_11/status/1361574630650089472
Thread on recent driver injuries: https://twitter.com/b1gnate_11/status/1361574630650089472
Newman last year was not injured from the flip. He was hit in the roof by another car at full speed. Larson at Talladega in 2019 hit Bowman at full speed and all his forward momentum came to a sudden stop, breaking a rib.
Aric Almirola had a compression fracture from either the sudden impact with another car or slamming back to the ground, both of which could be causes based on the fact that Denny Hamlin had a near identical injury from the impact itself and not landing.
Kyle Busch’s crash from Daytona in 2015 was 90G, and that was only at around 100 mph. It was still enough to shove the left front tire back toward the driver compartment, breaking his left foot, which was on the brake, as well as his right leg. Note the damage.
When a car rotates during a head on impact, the driver is thrown both forwards and sideways. When the car hits at the dreaded 1 o’clock angle, it doesn’t do that, doesn’t dissipate energy, and just throws the driver forward and all the energy goes to them. https://twitter.com/b1gnate_11/status/1361578631756083203
Dale Jr’s two documented concussions came from high G impacts as well. At Talladega in 2012, he was hit right behind the headrest by another car. At a Kansas tire test, he had a tire failure and hit at a bad angle. Hamlin also had a major incident in the same test.
The 2019 and 2020 Brickyard 400’s both featured a number of crashes similar to what Jr experienced by all accounts. These impacts to me are more concerning than crashes that look more dramatic.
Michael Annett suffered a dislocated and broken sternum after a similar impact at Daytona in 2013 where the car hit at an angle where it couldn’t rotate and dissipate energy over time.
Injuries from sudden impacts are present in all motorsport. Sebastien Bourdais suffered a broken pelvis in 2017 after a 100+ G impact. James Hinchcliffe had a similar impact in 2015, causing a suspension piece to impale him, which was nearly fatal.
Robert Wickens suffered a spinal cord injury (not severed), broken neck, broken back, broken tibias and fibulas in both legs, and a broken arm when he hit the fencing at an angle that stopped all his forward momentum.
Another SPM driver, Mikhail Aleshin, suffered chest injuries including a near fatal internal injury involving the aorta in a practice crash in 2014, where his car similarly speared straight into fencing at an angle where all forward momentum stopped.
Give me about 20 minutes and I’ll continue the thread, I’m in the process of finding pictures.
Drivers’ side impacts were also a major concern before headrests and altered seating positions. The energy of the impact goes directly to the driver with no crumple zone, and in some cases, their heads hit the wall. Dale Sr broke both collarbones in this crash in 1979.
Jerry Nadeau was also nearly killed in a similar impact in 2003.
While this was not from contact with the wall, Dario Franchitti suffered a broken ankle in this crash in 2008. The door was severely damaged, but held, while the area around his feet was crushed.
Back to the theme of head on impacts with no energy dissipation: Jacques Laffite, the car on the far right, suffered career ending leg injuries in a relatively slow speed crash. The car went straight into the wall, and back then the driver’s legs were almost unprotected.
Nelson Piquet, a 3 time F1 champion, had a crash that resulted in severe leg injuries in his first attempt at the Indy 500 in 1992. The car rotated, but this shows the importance of leg protection and keeping the legs behind the front axle. The red and green is his helmet.
In the midst of an all out teammate rivalry that ended in the death of his teammate, 1982 F1 points leader Didier Pironi suffered career ending leg injuries when his car went airborne and speared into the grass nose first, like a dart. All his momentum just stopped.
Eric McClure was concussed in 2012 when his car hit at a similar angle to Kyle Busch in 2015. The only difference is that the wall was not sharply angled and there was a SAFER barrier.
Back to the topic of flipping. Injuries from flipping used to happen often in the 1970’s and 1980’s in NASCAR, when drivers would often have their arms and heads flail outside of the window during a crash. Window nets weren’t what they are now.
Tom Usry suffered a severely broken arm when it flailed outside of the car during a flip in 1989. Francis Affleck was killed when his head was outside the window while flipping.
Notice that aside from the NASCAR flips in the 1980’s, almost all of the major driver injuries and fatalities in motorsports come from sudden impacts with a lot of force and little ways to dissipate energy.
I included this picture because Kevin Harvick said he hit an unprotected wall head on in the 2014 Daytona 500 at a similar angle to Busch in 2015. He mentioned soreness and said Daytona needed to protect the entire track.
Aside from the 1980’s NASCAR flips, you’ll notice a common trend among these. Almost every driver injury came as a result of a sudden, high G impact with few ways to dissipate the energy of the initial impact.
Someone once said something along the lines of: “Speed doesn’t always kill you, it’s the sudden stop that does.”
As a motorsports fan, remember that quote. It’s usually the incidents that don’t look as visually frightening that are equally concerning, if not more.
#NASCAR
As a motorsports fan, remember that quote. It’s usually the incidents that don’t look as visually frightening that are equally concerning, if not more.
#NASCAR
As someone interested in medicine, the topic of driver injuries has always interested me. Even though I’m more likely to go into a lifestyle specialty like radiology than I would something that involves repairing injuries like these, it’s a way to tie my two interests together.
If you also like medicine, I highly suggest reading the books by Steve Olvey and Sid Watkins. You’ll never look at races the same way again, and it teaches a lot about the effects of motorsports on the human body in incidents like those in the thread.
