Soft Walls

right direction

It's definitely something that needs to be looked into.

RE: Tires. While it may be too quick to speculate, if you look at the pictures of the car on DRO, it appears the tire just blew out, either from running over something or letting go. It doesn't look like it delaminated or sidewall failure as we've seen in the past. At least one informed source at the track said there was an audible 'boom' from the blowout of the tire.

Soft walls need to be looked into.

I'm not real informed on soft walls, but let me ask this: Are they soft enough to make a difference in such a case? Apparently this was a near head on shot at the wall right at the finish line. Will a soft wall be absorbent enough to make a susbstatial difference with a short wheelbase car like a funny car at 300 mph with a direct blow? The length and flexiblity of a dragster make wall impacts 'softer'. There's a very, very big difference in kinetic energy of a 2300 lb Funny Car at 300+ MPH vs a Nascar around 200. I'm no engineer or physisist, but in such an impact, with the below soft wall designs, the car would even notice a softer wall until it impacted the hard wall with a potentially lethal amount of energy.

Here's some info on soft wall technology I found on the web:

Types of Soft Walls
Soft walls are typically built of some kind of crushable material that can absorb the impact of a car at high speeds, dissipating the force of the crash throughout the material. Widespread implementation of soft walls on NASCAR tracks is probably still several years away. However, at least one track has already replaced small portions of concrete walls with soft walls. Here's a look at a few of the soft walls in use and in development:

Cellofoam - This is an encapsulated polystyrene barrier -- a block of plastic foam encased in polyethelene. Lowes Motor Speedway, a NASCAR race track, has already installed small segments of Cellofoam on the inside retaining wall of turns two and four.

Polyethylene Energy Dissipation System (PEDS) - The Indy Racing League (IRL) has been funding the PEDS system, which uses small polyethylene cylinders inserted inside larger ones. Designers of PEDS believe the system increases the wall's ability to withstand crashes of heavy race cars. Indianapolis Motor Speedway has already installed a PEDS on the fourth turn of its track.

Impact Protection System (IPS) - Eurointernational has developed a soft wall made out of layered PVC material placed on a honeycomb structure. This inner piece of the wall is then wrapped in a rubber casing. The barrier walls come in segments that are 5 feet 9 inches (1.8 meters) long and weigh 475 pounds (215 kg). Holes are drilled in the concrete wall and cables are used to tie the segments to it. Click here for more information about the IPS.

Compression barriers - Another soft-wall idea has been proposed by John Fitch, a Connecticut highway-safety expert. His idea is to place cushioning materials, such as tires, against the concrete wall, and then cover those cushions with a smooth surface that would give when impacted, and then pop back out to its previous shape once the impact is over.
According to NASCAR Chief Operating Officer Mike Helton, NASCAR has been researching soft-wall designs for three to four years, but hasn't found one suitable for its race tracks. Most of the designs they have tested have some prohibitive flaws. Some of the walls are made of material that breaks up, scattering across the track and delaying the race. Earnhardt, one of the biggest critics of new safety devices, once said that waiting for a splintered soft-wall to be cleaned up would be worth it if it saved someone's life.
Another criticism of soft walls is that a car can bounce off a soft wall and back into oncoming traffic, posing a danger to a greater number of drivers. Also, in NASCAR races, cars often scrape against the outside wall. Some believe that a soft-wall material would grab a car scraping the wall and cause it to suddenly stop. Another possibility is that a car crashing into a soft wall could get caught in the material, and that quick stop could concentrate the energy of the crash and cause even more damage.

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Nascar has different safety needs than we do. The ideal solution to this problem would be specific to our sport.

Just sitting here brainstorming, possibly some hard walls with some 'give' built into them. A rough idea would be interlinked wall sections, raised height, with some sort of below ground spring mechanism. The goal would be to deflect the car and get the energy going back down track. Such a wall would absorb energy while naturally progressing the car back down track.

Possibly a progressive wall angle? Steep enough angle to not be a ramp, but would absorb a significant amount of energy before hitting a final retaining wall....