NASCAR foam mandate aims to protect drivers’ spines

Denny Hamlin after hitting the wall at Fontana last March

After Denny Hamlin crashed at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., last March, NASCAR decided change was needed.

To better protect drivers from potential injuries to their spines, NASCAR has mandated teams in the Camping World Truck, Nationwide and Sprint Cup Series to adjust the amount of foam underneath the drivers’ seats.

"The rule requires we had to have three-quarters-of-an-inch of foam right under the drivers’ butt, basically, to protect their spinal column, I guess, in the instance of a [crash like Hamlin’s]," Jeff Hensley, crew chief for the No. 20 Truck Series team, recently said during testing at Martinsville Speedway. "It was kind of a freak crash the way Denny hit the wall. He hit the wall going up and down at the same time … And we’re always privy to those accident reports, which allows us to make our vehicles safer."

Michael Annett, a first-year Sprint Cup driver who also had a scary crash in 2013 while driving in the Nationwide Series, hasn’t had to make too many changes to his vehicles.

"I’m 5-10, I know there are some guys, the taller guys in the sport actually had to switch [seats]," Annett, who had surgery on a broken sternum after crashing in the Drive4COPD 300 last February, said. "Most of us were running the carbon-fiber seats, but they had just [an] a lot taller seat in the base of it, and I think it was an inch or inch-and-a-half of foam."

NASCAR Sprint Cup driver Ryan Truex hasn’t had to really adjust to the change.

"I’ve always done a lot of foam, under me, around me, and that’s [come] with a lot of testing," Truex said. "We have a meeting every year, and they talk about the newest safety innovations … The last thing you want to do is go out and get hurt in the race car and not be able to drive it."

Annett said that NASCAR reacts quickly to make changes following accidents that seriously injure drivers.

"We spent a lot of time at the NASCAR R&D Center trying to figure out what actually happened. Doing models of the crash and then went up to Michigan and did a lot of slow testing … Unfortunately, we can’t ever really see the future, what’s going to happen, but as soon as something does happen, they react right away."

Daniel Lynch, interior mechanic for the No. 22 Sprint Cup team, said the goal is to keep the drivers as low in the seat as possible, even on impact.

"We try to keep the drivers as low as possible, in case of a rollover, so the head doesn’t touch the roof or anything like that," he said. "So, we had to raise them up, probably about a quarter-of-an-inch, during the offseason, add foam to the seats to get that legal."

According to Lynch, the foam acts as a cushion for drivers.

"The foam actually moves quite a bit on impact from the G-forces. So, obviously, the more foam you have around the driver, the safer he’s going to be."

Marcus Richmond, crew chief for the No. 17 Toyota Tundra, said his team had some adjustments to make with Timothy Peters’ truck. Richmond said Peters uses an aluminum seat.

"When the headrest is connected to it, three-quarters [of an inch of] foam, it raises him up three-quarters of an inch," Richmond said. "So then it puts his shoulders and his head a little higher than he wants it, compared to the headrest."

Richmond said the team had to move Peters’ headrests up. The biggest issue came from Peters’ head and shoulders sitting higher than he wanted them at due to the increased height from the foam.

"It kind of moves him out of his normal view," Richmond said. "And, once you move a driver out of something they’re used to, it takes a little adjustment to get back to where they’re at … We’ve redone all our seat rails to move him back down as much as we can. I don’t think we’ve got a full three-quarters-of-an-inch, but we’ve got the whole seat down as low as we can get it."