2/20/2018
IBRACN
ANOTHER CAGE IMPACT
FACT - (2-20-18 @ 6:20 pm CST) - The 360 sprint car season got their season off to a start last weekend at Bubba Raceway Park in Ocala, FL. Sam Hafertepe, Jr. was in his first night with his new ride, the TownLine Variety #15H. He was in the B feature when he got caught up in another drivers wreck. Part of the other drivers car made contact with Hafertepe's head and rang his bell. If you get your bell ran, then you sustained a concussion. Anyway, Sam decided to take the rest of the week off from competition to be ready for the kick off to the 2018 ASCS National Sprint Car tour, of which he is the defending champion.
I post this because this is the second incident of a roll cage impact this year. David Gravel escaped serious injury recently when his car went flipping and was hit by Tim Shaffer as he had nowhere to go to avoid Gravel. The impact collapsed part of Gravel's cage. Gravel was battered and bruised but was able to race the following night.
In an effort to make the cars safer, Gravel's crew chief, Barry Jackson, posted a recent photo of changes the CJB Motorsports team is making to his cars to make them safer and make the roll cage stronger and more resistant to cage impacts. Jackson showed a photo on the CJB Motorsports twitter account where he is adding a downtube in the middle of the roll cage on both of the sides. This will shorten the length of support on the longest portion of the cage, thus making it stronger.
There have been several people working on ideas to strengthen the roll cage of the sprint cars in an effort to make it safer for the drivers without risking a delay in the drivers getting out under their own power in the case of a crash. Jackson invited the WoO officials over to look at the #5 car in the hopes of coming up with an idea to help protect the drivers. We will keep an eye out to see how/if driver safety improves after these two cage impacts.
Article Credit: Brad "IBRACN" Brown
Submitted By: Brad Brown
