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" The loss of IndyCar star Dan Wheldon during the series&amp;#039; season finale at Las Vegas brought up plenty of questions about the safety of open-wheel racing. What&amp;#039;s especially tragic is that over the past year Wheldon has played an integral role in developing a new and safer Indy Car that will debut next year. Wheldon, who test-drove the new car during its development, estimated that the new 2012 IndyCar chassis, built by Italy&amp;#039;s Dallara and code-named IR12, is at least 30 percent safer than the 2003 to 2011 Dallara IR07 chassis it replaces. A few key areas should enhance driver protection once IR12 debuts next year. Head-on crashes and rearward impacts with the guardrails or track walls tend to produce the most severe injuries, and so the new car was designed to minimize their effects. IndyCar&amp;#039;s main goal was to provide the driver more crush space by creating deformable structures that cushion the impact to reduce the massive acceleration spikes that cause injuries. So, in the IR12, the driver sits 8 inches farther back, in a cockpit that is wider, longer, and surrounded with high-impact foam. &amp;quot;I think they&amp;#039;ve made huge gains from a safety standpoint,&amp;quot; Wheldon said after his first outing in the Honda-powered IR12 chassis last August. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s very different to the cockpit we have now. With the [IR07], the driver is positioned as low as possible, so that his head is below the engine&amp;#039;s air intake. But when you sit that low your legs have to arc up over the fire extinguisher bottle, then your lower torso is crammed into a tight space on the floor of the car. You&amp;#039;re compacted a bit. The new seating position is roomier, which leaves space for more surrounding seat structure, and the visibility is very good.&amp;quot;  With ample space inside the car to accommodate drivers as tall as 6 feet 4 inches, most pint-size pilots will require additional padding and support to fill the voids.  &amp;quot;Honestly, you just feel so much safer with all of the extra space around you,&amp;quot; Wheldon continued. &amp;quot;I slipped right into the car and it felt good immediately. You can pull your knees back and it doesn&amp;#039;t have the sensation like the [IR07] has with the dash being close and the [cockpit] sides crowding in a bit. You&amp;#039;ve got less stuff around you\u2014[and] around your feet, so it&amp;#039;s really modern in that way.&amp;quot; In addition to the added space, the head-surround piece that cradles each driver&amp;#039;s helmet has more foam too. This is intended to help decelerate the driver&amp;#039;s head during an accident. And for the first time, foam padding will also be placed beneath the driver&amp;#039;s seat. IR12 is built to minimize back injuries too\u2014they&amp;#039;re common in accidents when cars go airborne and land hard on their wheels, transmitting all the force to the driver&amp;#039;s back. (IndyCar championship contender Will Power suffered this kind of injury in the accident that claimed Wheldon&amp;#039;s life.) There&amp;#039;s little separating a driver&amp;#039;s bottom and lower spine from the solid floor of the IR07 chassis. The 1.5-inch thick piece of dense foam beneath and behind the driver&amp;#039;s seat in the IR12 will greatly reduce the shock. &amp;quot;Safety is something we&amp;#039;ve worked hard to make a lot better, which includes the driver&amp;#039;s seat and padding underneath and behind them,&amp;quot; IndyCar vice president of technology Will Phillips says. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ll learn more as we start to fit more drivers into the car, and we&amp;#039;ll get more feedback as new drivers start [to test the 2012 car].&amp;quot; Of course, the best way to protect drivers is to keep their cars from going airborne in the first place. To that end, the IR12 engineers have come up with a device that could help to prevent the kind of tire-to-tire contact that sent Wheldon, Power and so many others airborne at Las Vegas. The device is basically a carbon-fiber rear bumper designed to prevent the front tires of the following car from contacting and catapulting that car over the rear tires of the leading car. This unfortunate scenario was played out multiple times in the Las Vegas crash, but with the 2012 car&amp;#039;s protective unit affixed to the back of every car, Phillips believes contact-related flights will drop next season. &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t cover for every type of incident,&amp;quot; he said, &amp;quot;but they&amp;#039;re intended to be fairly strong.&amp;quot; The IndyCar series and Dallara have also worked extensively to eliminate the possibility of wheels becoming interlocked. This happens when the tire from one car slips in between the front and rear tires on a competitor&amp;#039;s car, and it can cause cars to go airborne. At the rear of the IR12, the bodywork has been widened to extend 1 inch past the rear wheels, while at the front, the space between the front tires and the side pod\u2014where interlocking usually takes place\u2014has been filled with the car&amp;#039;s floor, which extends into the void that previously existed. Dallara has also lengthened the nose of the new Indy car, providing additional crush space in the event of a frontal crash.  Had the Las Vegas Motor Speedway crash happened next year, with the new car, could Wheldon have survived? One could argue that the new car might have prevented him from being launched into the air, but the fact is that his injuries were not survivable. As Wheldon&amp;#039;s car flew into the catch fence, it rotated so that the top of his helmet hit the steel poles and cables. The catch fence is meant to keep debris from hitting spectators, not to cushion an impact. Allowing a driver to survive the kind of impact Wheldon suffered will take a new round of R&amp;amp;amp;D and brainstorming to create new solutions\u2014perhaps some type of fighter-jet-type canopy. That would have drawbacks, of course\u2014namely, it might hamper the ability of the driver to quickly exit an overturned car\u2014but the discussions and debates are happening.  One thing is certain: Wheldon has played a key role in making racing safer, which makes his passing even harder to bear. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a7260/the-next-safer-indycar-which-dan-wheldon-helped-to-test/>