John Force Racing...LATEST UPDATE....

[Nitrohelper]

I like Jerry N.'s post above..

I mag..smaller pump..run 95%..what's the matter with that.

The way it is now..you pretty much have to be lucky to NOT break something on a run. They are being pushed way to hard due to the last safety changes implemented. 85% made everything work harder.

I don't say this for safety reasons..more for the cost. Man, it'd be nice to hear a 95% cackle from these guys again! And it'd be good racing.

Thanks,David
You clearly get the greater tire life plus a cost reduction bonus .
You go from 1-2 runs per tire to 5-6 , and thats at $ 1400 a pair .

Many folks have to understand that we ran ONE mag with less blower and 100 % Nitro ( too much ), with data loggers for many years. This an existing proven tune-up. Richards or Beard could open an old three ring notebook to help NHRA fine tune 300 +/- speeds .

Burning " 95 % " maximum is like " taking the keys from a drunk " .
Nitro likes to compression fire itself above 95% based on lab test by Angus in the late '80s. ( Dr. Dean Hill ) I did field testing of additives for them with the " Telstar" F/C & T/F with Wayne Bailey. (rip)

New rules always seem to ADD costs, and new unknowns to tune , ONE mag & LESS down force is reducing something back to KNOWN parameters . The tire roll-out could be LESS ( 4-6 inches ) to help reduce the distortion in the lights somewhat too !

" Win a Few , , , Lose a Lot " Nitrohelper Worldwide

 

[Bobby]

It just seems obvious to me at an overall view kind of perspective - Nascar almost had a disaster in 1987 and completely changed their way of thinking. And the sport is better than ever.
NHRA needs to do the same. There is no need to run these cars on the edge of what the components can stand, in order to put on a good show - and please don't forget, that's what it is. A show.
It's not Bonneville, testing the limits of man and machine. There are 30K people in the stands, who aren't particularly interested in seeing people get hurt.

 

[hellfirejim]

Being an old fart I have a memory of an early warning of this but we just didn't see it. I am referring back when the dragsters had narrow cages and drivers were getting knocked out by tire shake and hitting theire head on the cages. That was when they developed the more open cages that they have today. I believe it was Amato and Chassis builder {Swindal??}from the NWest that died.

I think in the long run we are going to see some fundimental changes to the design the of the funny car. WE are all very lucky it was somebody like JFR that has the resources and the integrity to share all the information in a timely manner. I am also pleased that they are interested in correcting the problem and not running off to a knee jerk reaction that could create other problems.

The best memorial to Eric would be to make these cars safer.

jim

 

[Dougster]

Gotta disagree with you Joe. While a 4.70 looks slow when the car in the other lane is in the 4.40's, when they are both going that quick, or slow, as the case may be, the difference is negligible. There have been many times I've seen pairs of fuel cars run where the numbers didn't look as good as the run.

I agree - speed is all relative. After seeing the IHRA cars at our track (low budget, high altitude) and the NHRA cars at Seattle (high budget, low altitude) and the performance differences between them - 4.70s vs 4.50s, I'd be hard-pressed to say which ones were faster if not for the scoreboard.

 

[turbo ken]

Before you read this plese note that I am not a grim reaper (I don't like to see anyone get hurt or killed just as much as you do) I applaud the intense dedication of JFR, NHRA and the others involved in improving drivers safety since we lost Eric (when I was at the IHRA race in San Antonio and they announced Eric's passing it felt like I just had my heart ripped out), but here are some of my thoughts on the subject.

You can get hurt at any speed, take Kaylee's jr drgaster accident for example, a 12.90 jr dragster (which Kaylee was driving) depending on how it's geared has a top speed around 40-55 mph, she was slowing down to make the turnoff but wasn't going slow enough to make it and look at the injuries she recieved. With a jr dragster especially the ones that have the narrow backhalf doesn't have to going very fast to not be able to make a turn without flipping on it's side or pushing the front wheels keeping the car from turning. I got a bad case of whiplash a few years ago when the car I was driving got hit in the rear while I was stopped and the car that hit me was only going 5 mph, it took about 3 months for me to fully recover.

As Ralph Nader said about the corvair "unsafe at any speed".

So accidents are either survivable or unsurvivable. Eric could have had all the safety gear that John Force just tested and he still may have not survived, the tethers that restrain the side to side motion may not have helped if the freqincy [sp] of the shake could have been so "intense" as to not have the head move enough for the tethers to be effective, so Eric's accident could have been one of those one in a trillion accidents that a person can't survive no matter what, but all the new safety equipment that JFR tested I feel that they will definately help someone who has a "less intense" accident from getting hurt or worse.

 

[The Counterfeiter]

The HANS design is to prevent large forward displacement/rotation of the head via the two tethers on the rear. Those two anchors are not really placed to prevent side-to-side rotation.

From what it sounds like, Medlen's injury was not from excessive displacement of his head [i.e. Earnhardt basal skull fracture], but a lack of displacement due to contact with the roll cage, and the acceleration to the head resulting from that contact.

David - a couple of issues. First - it was clearly stated that Eric's injury was not caused by contact with the roll cage or padding.
Second - if the full HANS device does not offer lateral protection (and I would be very interested on your source for this), how has the R3 been modifed to provide this?
A lot of open wheel and NASCAR drivers have walked away from incredibly violent crashes involving huge side impact G forces. Champ Car, Formula 1, World Rally Championship and NASCAR all mandate the HANS device.
Do you think that all of these series that have a lot of experience with lateral forces might know something?

 

[Greg]

I recently got my hans device and it seems like it would offer some decent side-to-side protection, I mean it's anchored to your helmet on each side, and fastened to your body by your harness. Sure you can turn your head slightly side to side, but I doubt you are getting much movement beyond the limits of the tethers.

 

[DCM]

David - a couple of issues. First - it was clearly stated that Eric's injury was not caused by contact with the roll cage or padding.
Second - if the full HANS device does not offer lateral protection (and I would be very interested on your source for this), how has the R3 been modifed to provide this?
A lot of open wheel and NASCAR drivers have walked away from incredibly violent crashes involving huge side impact G forces. Champ Car, Formula 1, World Rally Championship and NASCAR all mandate the HANS device.
Do you think that all of these series that have a lot of experience with lateral forces might know something?

From SAE Research published by Robert Hubbard [developer of the HANS]

In 30 degree angle impact some of the injury measures with HANS were somewhat higher than in frontal impact.....


The first point to notice with the 30 degree angled impact is that the head values are worse with HANS compared to the baseline [i.e. w/o HANS] and are actually less favorable than in the case of a frontal impact. The reason is the friction between the helmet and the raised side panels, which acts additionally to the HANS forces and thus increases the head acceleration.....a rotational acceleration of between 9,000 and 13,000 rad/s^2 over a period of 4ms was estimated. There is a general consensus that 10,000 rad/s^2 or more will in all probability have injurious consequences.

Parts of this paper talk about in a side impact that HANS will "behave neutrally in this impact direction..."



Granted, this data is from a few years ago, and I'm sure that much more testing has been done to better understand things, but for the most part lateral impacts and head movement is addressed by padding and other restraints around the driver.


Also, from John Melvin at the JFR conference call:

our modeling shows that's the correct thing to do to try and control the motion of the head is with more padding close to the head.

....the occurrence of the roll cage activity that caused the brain damage....

Melvin is saying this knowing that people will be wearing the HANS.


I took from that, combined with the info. released that there was only side to side motion of the head, and that lateral impacts occurred between the cage and the helmet [laterally]. Maybe I'm wrong about that......


As for an R3----don't know, never seen any test data.

 

[TJ]

I'd like to see it:

100 % nitro
14-71 max
any gear ratio
2250 lb min wt. T/F and F/C

and let racers be racers.
It's fuel racing....king of the sport...
Live/same day TV coverage ruined the 'run what ya brung' approach...
Too many cooks in the kitchen...

 

[yoda]

David... Thanks for the research- that information from the source was excellent. Its what we need more of here, to balance out the emotional rambling.

 

[Nitrohelper]

I'd like to see it:

100 % nitro
14-71 max
any gear ratio
2250 lb min wt. T/F and F/C

U R Close Terry
95 % Nitro
10-71 max 33 % over
3.40 gear
2000 lbs. for T/F
2200 lbs. for F/C
NO Rev-limiter , never
The Sound would be Great and tire life better.

Listen how "clean" they sound on the 1996 Classic ESPN shows.
The good old days. Nitro - wise

 

[.]

Boy, watching that interview with Ashley was painful. She was doing all right until that last question. I wish I could have reached through the tv and gave her a hug.

 

[Kenny Bonnell]

U R Close Terry
95 % Nitro
10-71 max 33 % over
3.40 gear
2000 lbs. for T/F
2200 lbs. for F/C
NO Rev-limiter , never
The Sound would be Great and tire life better.

Listen how "clean" they sound on the 1996 Classic ESPN shows.
The good old days. Nitro - wise

That sounds good, it is about the same combination we run on our nostalgia funny car. Our car sounds much better then the pro cars today in my opinion. We were running a NPCA event at Indy last year and it was just as Whit Bazemore had left the Shoemacher camp and Jack Beckman was testing at Indy. I was on the starting line for a couple of his passes and the sound was not there.