In the spring of 2009, my friend and business associate Doug Shaw, was at a crossroads in his well known and reputable sprint car chassis manufacturing business. With the faltering national economy and real estate bust hitting southwest Florida very hard; it has been difficult for any racer, especially local ones, to continue to compete and build new equipment at the same time. New race car chassis sales were almost nonexistent throughout the country as a whole even for the "cookie cutter" car builders in other parts of the country. Doug's business was no exception.
At the same time, I was looking to expand my highly successful ZipFlex Wire Rescue Saw line of products into some military applications as well as the fire/rescue and homeland security venues. With several tool designs and prototypes collecting dust in the interim, I kept getting the feeling we were all missing something important in motorsports safety based on inquisitive phone calls and troubling messages both Doug and I were receiving about sprint car accidents from racers, track safety teams and officials across the country.
Doug then decided it was time to bring out his new chassis design as a way to think out of the box from the mainstream chassis builders to generate a new buzz in sprint car racing. "It's time to be a leader in this industry and not just build the same 'old school' design that everyone else has been doing for years" Doug said time and time again. So with that he started building his new coil over chassis that was imaginative and creative, yet very simple and easy to maintain. His secrets are hidden in the suspension design and have proven to be successful right out of the box.
Jeff Van Dusen, who is the talented and unassumingly competitive driver of the 24 car, has said that it is the most comfortable and responsive sprint car he has ever driven. Jeff comments; "If it wasn't for the fact that we had to deal with the restricted motor problems from day one, we could have been in victory lane almost every race the car has run here in FL. With a few races under our belt, we have only had to make minor chassis adjustments to be really fast thanks to Doug's new chassis. The new motors now being built should take care of our power and reliability problems very soon."
While Doug was tweaking the chassis design during development, I posed to him a serious question. Since we had both received many complaints about safety concerns in open wheel racing over the years, why not take on the challenge of adding several new safety components and changes to the new chassis as well? We both agreed to make sure that we did not change the spirit or intent of the sprint car chassis design because that was important. I also made several contacts to sanctioning bodies, trade magazines and newspapers, safety teams and equipment manufacturers about our attempts and thoughts. The response was overwhelming for us to take the lead and make it happen!
No one has attempted to put all of the safety issues together in a systematic approach to driver, participant and spectator safety in many years especially with relation to car systems and related components. We looked at competition rules and safety designs from other series and used sled test analysis from NASCAR, seat manufacturers and IRL safety issues to help design some components.
My professional expertise in fire/rescue and EMS needs along with track safety concerns also played a big part in these decisions. SFI also provided vast amounts of info and specifications where required and our partnering safety equipment manufacturers provided much needed input, prototype products and support while we assembled this whole program. This has truly been a team effort.
To summarize the project, we took on 3 major areas that we felt needed improvements or changes based on our research, years of experience and technical knowledge of the sport. They are:
