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At 90 years old, the Pike's Peak Hill Climb is the second oldest auto race in the US behind the Indy 500. But it's also one of the safest with just two driver deaths, Wallace Coleman in 1921 and Ralph Chandler Bruning Jr in 2001, as well as one motorcyclist, Bill Gross.
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| The car lost pretty much every body panel from the front and rear bumper, roof, and front fenders to the front windshield glass, rear lexan window, all the doors, hood, and even the trunk. |
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| An FIA spec rally cage includes more support bars on the A pillar and a cross pattern at the top of the main hoop to strengthen the roof from collapsing. The cage also ties into the chassis more. The seats are often tied into the cage structure. Cars designed to race Pike's Peak may consider the rally cage a safer option given the likelihood of careening down a rock field versus road racing with more runoff space, safety walls, and gravel pits. But rally cages are not required to run Pike's Peak. |
The safety director for PPIHC was impressed with how well the cage held up, and probably happy he didn't have to hold a more tragic press conference. Of course, they will also take the photos and discussion afterwards to perhaps make changes around cage design or safety since everyone learns from these accidents. If cage designs with crumple zones and cages built to protect like tanks become mandatory, many cars won't be able to compete which takes away from the grassroots motorsports event Pike's Peak tries to be. Bottom line- racing involves an element of risk that every driver and navigator accepts when they pull up to the starting line.
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| “Never run out of real estate, traction, and ideas at the same time.” |
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| Best autograph ever! Too bad I couldn't sneak this in my carry on flying home. |
Kevin is actually spending a lot of time analyzing how the cage fared in order to improve future designs. The cage has been drawn in SolidWorks 3D CAD design software for Finite Element Analysis (FEA), a tool engineers use to simulate real world environments. They can use the loading estimated from the crash to virtually test different roll cage designs. One thing they already “tested” and discovered was that a dual A pillar brace wouldn't have been any more effective at keeping the bar from bending. A windshield diagonal may have helped here. They've also tested a number of changes to the B pillar design which will be shared at a later time and employed in future race car design.
