Safety barriers to be modified for use in Brickyard 400: NASCAR on Tuesday announced it would utilize the SAFER (Steel and Foam Energy Reduction) barrier system currently in place at Indianapolis Motor Speedway when its Winston Cup series visits the track for the Aug. 4 Brickyard 400. The “soft wall” technology, stacks of four rectangular steel tubes welded into modules 20 feet long and 38½ inches high and then backed by several inches of polystyrene foam, covers 4,240 feet of the track’s outside wall, 1,060 feet in each turn. It was in place during all practice and qualifying in preparation for the Indianapolis 500 and was tested several times when drivers hit the walls, both in practice and the race. However, Dr. Dean Sicking, who researched and developed the barriers for the Indy Racing League, said the current system is not ready for other NASCAR tracks. Sicking will continue to work on the application of the SAFER barrier to other race tracks and said he hoped to conduct at minimum four more crash tests on the barrier in the coming months. Sicking said the current SAFER system in place at Indy will undergo some slight modifications before the NASCAR event. The change – the insertion of one additional energy absorbing unit every 10 feet – is primarily made because stock cars and far heavier (3,400 pounds to 1,500 pounds) than IRL open-wheel cars.(ThatsRacin.com)(6-11-2002)
