Seat Belt found partially torn in Mayfield's crash

[Joe Fan]

http://espn.go.com/rpm/wc/2001/0924/1254887.html

[marcus]

oh dear...thankfully jeremy was Ok ..but a nasty situation indeed..if the belts were installed correctly then why did they tear???

how old were the belts I wonder..have they been involved in a shunt before.

this is gonna continue for some time i believe and the answer will not be an easy one to find.

I really do feel for Bill Simpson in all of this but at the same time am glad Jeremy was not not hurt in this crash.

[Joe Fan]

This should weaken Bill Simpson's case. This happened in a Penske car so nobody can try say that NASCAR is trying to do this to ruin Simpson. Roger Penske isn't one of the good ole boys who would go along with a BS story to make Simpson look bad.

As much attention as seat belt mountings got during the Earnhardt report from Simpson himself, I would tend to believe that Mayfields belts were mounted correctly.

One other thing, it said in the article that Mayfield chipped a tooth in the accident. He wears a closed-face helmet so they only way he could get a chipped tooth is from hitting something in the car. Was he wearing a HANS-type device? I thought everybody was wearing one of these devices now, even Dale Jr.

[KC]

Obviously something is going on differently in a Winston Cup car than is going on in other forms of race cars where Simpson safety equipment is being used. It could be that the methods used in mounting are contributing to failures, the design of the racing seat may be damaging the belt or maybe just the belts need to be made stronger for WC cars than needed in open wheelers or sportscars. I know that the failure was similar and consistent with severe side loading that was described in DE's death.

Obviously the design of an open wheel car precludes side to side shifting because the car's monocoque won't allow it. Most sportscars these days are also using a narrow cockpit designed, Panoz and Audi come to mind, like an Indy car.

I very much doubt that the seat belt failures are completely and solely due to some manufacturing defect or any deliberate attempt to sell a product that will not function as advertised. Every single belt being produced by Simpson is stretched too assure it exceeds the tonnage required by the rulesmakers. It is not in the best interest of Simson Safety to sell a product that would knowingly fail. For some reason the belts are not working the same way in a WC car as they do in Indy Cars, F1 cars, Sportscars, BGN cars and even Craftsman Trucks. None of these other series have had complaints and the WC drivers continue to use Simpson Safety products. I cannot imagine that any of the drivers would use the products if they even thought one might possibly give them any problem. These guysa ren't stupid.

I would hazard to guess that a series of circumstances are contributing to belt failures in WC.

[43Fan]

The belt was only torn a 1/4 of a inch...!!