• Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Editor's Note: The following is the fourth of a five-part series featuring the NASCAR Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C. Part 4 focuses on seat construction and testing.

In its quest for increased safety, NASCAR's research and development team has examined all aspects of the issue and found multiple enhancements that could be made. SAFER barriers have gone a long way in mitigating crash severity. And the new car's driver compartment was designed specifically to incorporate a number of safety improvements, including the driver's seat.

And that's the focus of a project that's under way at the R&D Center. Tech director Steve Peterson is heading up a team currently constructing a seat-testing device that will provide quantitative analysis at a reduced cost.

“

I thank the guys back in the shop. They make these cars extremely safe. They spend the extra time padding everything. For me to walk away from that wreck, right there, is unbelievable.

”

MICHAEL MCDOWELL

“

That makes you look at what NASCAR's done and say that they're doing a good job ... We've got a lot of people to thank today because of the hard work and the hours that we all don't know about.

”

TONY STEWART

• McDowell wrecks, walks away
• Car examined at R&D Center
• Video: Watch McDowell's crash

"We've gone along the path of trying to improve safety in every area," Peterson said. "Obviously, the SAFER barrier, the development of the [new car], all of those were planned and procedures to increase safety for the driver. What surrounds him -- the seat -- isn't the last thing, but it's been part of an ongoing project."

Peterson said the goal is to come up with a performance standard for seat construction, based on testing results. And the best way to do that is to give manufacturers the ability to set the bar.

"It's an attempt to try to provide the seat builders and NASCAR and the organization that approves seats, to give everybody a piece of equipment that they can do some testing on," Peterson said. "Up to this point, you've had to observe what went on on the racetrack after an accident, or you had to go to a test lab like Delphi up in Ohio -- and they have a slab and instrumented dummies and so on. That's very expensive to do, and for a small company building seats, it may be more research and development than they can afford.

"Building this piece of test equipment here gives the seat builders the ability to do a lot of R&D work at a much lower cost. And it gives the sanctioning body and the organization that certifies the ability to watch development and set some standards that are realistic, rather than picking a number and saying, 'Well, that's what we think it should be.' We'll be able to relate that number back to some actual performance."

Looking at what happened to a seat after an incident on the track is one way to find safety improvements, but Peterson said NASCAR's goal is to be proactive in this issue instead of reactive. The idea is to find solutions to potential problems before they are revealed in competition.

In addition, Peterson said the test equipment may provide data that helps balance two factors: how much additional safety is needed, and at what cost? Carbon fiber is considered to be stronger than aluminum but can be more costly. And weight is another factor to be considered.

"You don't want to do failure analysis if you can do subjective analysis, and that's what we're attempting to do with this machine," Peterson said. "At one time, everybody thought, 'Well, we'll just go to carbon [fiber] seats and that will solve our problem. But it won't because you don't have enough volume to build seats for everybody and then the expense is always an issue. Aluminum will be cheaper than carbon, typically.

"There are some people who are building some lightweight and inexpensive carbon-type seats for other series that are questioning whether they need to be as strong as the other seats that are out there currently, and this machine gives us the opportunity to evaluate those in comparison to what we know are good, known factors out there."

Peterson said the idea is to provide a testing platform for seat manufacturers, then setting guidelines that allow the market to determine the next step in the process. Again, the bottom line is safety, competition and cost containment.

One of the other goals, according to Peterson, is to be able to recreate accident scenarios with more precision.

"At the dynamic test lab at Delphi, you can test for basically one condition and one impact scenario," he said. "But there may have been multiple factors, as in the case of Michael McDowell's wreck [at Texas in April]. So if you'd like to be able to recreate an impact that had multiple factors to it, you could do that with this piece of test equipment and learn from that."

Peterson said he hopes the test rig will not only improve performance of the seat, but things like mounting brackets and belt placement can be tested and improvements can be found.

"And as we go a little farther along, once seat builders are happy with their products and delivering them to the teams, the teams can come in here with the product as bought, and they may want to make some modifications or they may want to mount the seat in a little bit different way than the manufacturer recommended," Peterson said. "And they can evaluate those changes and make sure they're all positive."