They want to keep driving."ĭuring Garlits' heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, some drag racers were knocked unconscious inside the cockpit by a horsepower-caused recoil dubbed "tire shake," Light acknowledged. "See, a lot of guys may not say anything about it. But we don't know if they got knocked out by the G-force or by the crash," he added. "We think some of the cars have crashed because of it. "You wouldn't get over it till you were 300 feet down the track. How often did that happen? "Every run that was good," Garlits said. The icon, who ranks fourth all-time among NHRA top-fuelers with 35 wins, said he sometimes felt woozy after the initial, explosive burst of a race. The race was postponed.īy contrast, space shuttle astronauts zoom into orbit at about 3 Gs. A CART doctor found the drivers were hitting 5.5 Gs during 18 seconds of each lap. During practice laps at the Texas Motor Speedway in 2001, almost two dozen open-wheel racers complained of dizziness. One American oval track has shown racers how quickly high G's can play tricks. Fighter pilots, who wear special pants that push the blood back to the upper body, call that a "gray out."Īfter a period of time at 4.7 Gs, a person's sight can go black, and at 5.4 Gs, they can eventually lose consciousness. But that exposure is brief, with sprints lasting less than five seconds on quarter-mile tracks.Īccording to the Federal Aviation Administration, prolonged exposure to 4.1 Gs can squeeze so much blood out of the brain and into the legs, all color can wash out of a person's field of vision. Top fuel racers say they typically hit 5 Gs, or a gravitational force of five times their body weight. "We are obviously concerned about the conditions of our drivers." "There is no other barrier to be broken other than 400 mph, and that's totally beyond anybody's imagination. "Do we need them going 340 or 350? The consensus among race teams is no," Light said at Bandimere Speedway in Morrison, Colo., host of the Mile-High Nationals last weekend. What's more, the league is not seeking to boost track speeds beyond the modern mark of 336 mph. Graham Light, the NHRA's senior vice president of racing operations, responded that drag cars already contain G-force meters so crews can watch any spikes in those gravitational numbers. "They need to know: What is the human tolerance?" I'm worried about the guys off the starting line. You don't want to accelerate them and knock them out. "There may be some point here where they just can't accelerate these men and women any faster. "We're at the edge of the envelope," Garlits, now retired, said recently. Garlits, one of at least three drag racers who also has suffered eye damage from years of blistering starts and rapid stops, says the National Hot Rod Association needs to formally study whether massive G-forces are jeopardizing drivers. Drag racing legend "Big Daddy" Don Garlits says he occasionally grew woozy at extreme speeds, and he believes high G-forces have left other drivers similarly disoriented, causing some to crash.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |