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At Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS), as well as at a large number of other tracks and temporary racing circuits, the pit lane is separated from the racing surface itself by a wall. The wall is intended to reduce the dangers to pit crew members, spectators and racers themselves, and to prevent interaction between racing and pitted cars. We examine the effectiveness of an attenuation device placed at the head end of the pit wall at IMS. Calculations are presented which show that the device can reduce the potential for injury to drivers by absorbing kinetic energy, by distributing the impact load over a large car area and by reducing and smoothing the acceleration pulse presented to the driver. Because driver restraint systems are not designed for high-g lateral loading, this attenuation represents a real safety feature in the case of a sliding situation. The device itself was (inadvertently) tested by a NASCAR vehicle during a practice session at IMS.

Open-wheel dirt-track racing represents one of the most dangerous forms of motor racing. The potential for touching and/or interlocking of rotating wheels, combined with the frangible and rutted nature of the track surface itself, makes the occurrence of x-axis [8] rollovers routine. In addition, the rollovers themselves are usually at a high enough speed so that very violent dynamics and occupant accelerations occur. The accelerative vectors present an unusual set of challenges to the restraint systems employed. In this work, we examine a single dirt-track rollover event.