WRC - Safety Upgrades

[WRCStan]

Occupants of much more severe crashes have walked away uninjured, but the effect of this 'unremarkable' side-impact was pretty bad (co-driver unconscious, bleeding with broken jaw and hip)...

Is there evidence to suggest more door material will prevent that? When the driver also broke a rib, perhaps it's something else can be improved related to lateral impacts? Seats, harnesses etc.

[Mirek]

Occupants of much more severe crashes have walked away uninjured, but the effect of this 'unremarkable' side-impact was pretty bad (co-driver unconscious, bleeding with broken jaw and hip)...

20 years ago this accident would likely end being fatal. A lot was done even though it is not that visible.

As denkimi said the only major thing you can do is to add width at the door area but that is not possible within Rally2 rules using stock bodyshell and door. You can therefore either go full Rally 1 (it's not only about the door depth but also the crew in the Rally 1 sits closer to each other) or you can somewhat help by using special prototype door on the Rally 2 bodyshells. It is most likely doable but It will be expensive and I don't think anyone wants to bring very expensive solutions to the customer-oriented Rally 2.

[becher]

The 17 cars had a pretty neat solution already, that could be doable for Rally2 with reasonable cost I would guess. But probably something for a future regulation change not as a add on for now.

[CeskyOndra]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C99o4...JyNHB3NWwzenk2

Imagine this would happen in 180km/h

[J4MIE]

Is it not easier & cheaper to just put bales in front of all trees on the outside of corners?

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Is it not easier & cheaper to just put bales in front of all trees on the outside of corners?

Indeed. That was the case in Rally di Roma on lots of trees and posts, but those against the wall here were forgotten. I hope that the organisers learn from this...

[Dimitris]

According to someone, there was a bale on that tree in recce, but it was later moved.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

How about rally car seats having built-in side airbags like road cars do ?

[Walach]

Youtube is full od videos of situations when airbags were deployed due to car jumping a little, hitting a curb while doing extremely slow speed drift at parking lot etc. Obviously it is very much down to a sensitivity settings of the whole system, but just imagine all the hits that rally car such as rally2 can take while being driven properly - where do you draw the line in this? Surely you dont want it to be deployed after perfectly okay landing at massive jump between the trees in the forest of finland or similar.

There is a reason why there are no airbags in rally cars, even though they are pretty common in road cars for couple of decades already.

[Mirek]

How about rally car seats having built-in side airbags like road cars do ?

Eddie, Sulland, airbag in a rally car is useless. Airbag is not an energy absorbing feature but an additional way to restrain the occupant's bodies. In a rallycar an airbag brings nothing for the safety because the crew is perfectly restrained in their seats by 5-point non-reeling seatbelts, HANS and monocoque seat with head and side restrains and they wear helmets. In a passenger car this is not possible purely because of comfort and the airbag is there to mitigate the imperfection of the restraining system.

An airbag is not meant to dissipate energy of an object penetrating into the cabin or deforming it. This energy is so huge that airbag can't dissipate any meaningful portion of it.

I give you a small very simplified example. You crash at 50 km/h, your head has about 5 kg. At the kmoment of crash in a passenger car the head continuous to move with a speed close to the speed of the car at the moment of the crash. That means the head has a kinetic energy of roughly 500 J. This is what the airbag is meant to stop. But for stopping the tree penetrating into the car you need to stop the energy of the entire car. In this case it is about 140000J which is nearly 300x more.