Matt Powers 2012 Formula D ride Part 2

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Costa carefully welds all the tubes shrouded by the roof panels.
Next, the main tubes are all welded to the chassis and all floor plates are fully welded in.  Now the cage is solidly part of the chassis.
The door bars are built next.  Costa uses an uninterrupted X closed off with full gussets at the juncture.  The door bars cant outward into the door to give extra clearance for the driver.  This style of door bar is the stiffest and strongest.
Because of the bad experiences of Matt's prior accident, Costa also added this rally style extra roof bar to close up the door aperture and give extra side and rollover strength.  This is pretty common in rally and road race cars but unusual to have such an inclusive cage for a drift car.  Modern drift cars are getting really fast and they now need just as good protection as wheel to wheel race cars.
With the additional bar from the main hoop to the roof bar and the extra A Pillar bar, the door opening is much smaller and the cage is much stronger too as a result.
Finally on the drivers side, this NASCAR type side impact bar extends all the way into the door skin and comes up high to afford the greatest possible protection for Matt.  In a severe side impact this structure is designed to collapse and absorb impact.

 

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