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The man that got hit in that second clip with Ricky Rudd was actually killed from the impact. Actually the reason that they put a speed limit on pit road. Before that guys were just driving in as fast as they could to try and get back out to the race. Things have become a lot safer.
i was there at that race and saw it as it happened .. elliot had a great chance to win that race , he wasnt told about the crew member and how bad he was but somehow elliot knew ... soon afterwards the rules were changed for pit road as well as racing back to the stripe after an accident
@DustyWarden that one was the only one who died in that impact, but it wasn't directly from the impact. The impact from Rudd's car caused trauma that required surgery to repair, but sadly during said surgery the man had a heart attack (likely due to just too much trauma to his body)
When the cars crash sometimes the fuel lines break and the engine is so hot it ignites the fuel. It can sometimes go out on its own because the fuel burns off quickly if there is nothing flammable near by. If the car itself continues to burn the driver has a fire suppression system built into the car. He activates with a set of switches on the console. All drivers wear fire suits to protect them but it still gets hot.
Having put on a fireman's suit (gloves, jacket, pants, boots, helmet, everything but the undies) on a sweltering 100-degree (F) summer day, I can believe it. Fire protection doesn't mean you don't feel the heat.
10:08 It's the proper application of the BFH method on an area of the car where there's really nothing behind the sheetmetal. BFH technique? Big f*cking hammer.
I know you watched the Super Bowl when it was on. This Sunday you NEED to watch the Daytona 500. It is the biggest race of the year. It is the Super Bowl of NASCAR
@Trumps America yeah we do. Cause theres so much more to it than "niggas driving in circles for hours💀". I dont care for baseball but I know theres so much more than hitting a ball and run 4 bases
If you want to see a race where there is big focus on the garage people, I recommend the 2002 Aaron's 312 at Talladega. All but about 10 cars crashed about 10 laps into the race, and with so many cars destroyed even getting a car to run an extra lap would result in gaining about 20 positions, resulting in some rather odd situations to say the least. Also, as others have said, please don't forget to watch the Daytona 500 on Sunday night, you won't regret it!
NASCAR is 7 (instead of a dozen) guys going 4 tires with 5 lug nuts each (instead of just 1), and only one side can get jacked at a time (instead of the whole car), and they do that in under 16 seconds.
having watched a few other of your videos, i thought to clear up some things! number one, the tracks are all different shapes and sizes. nascar gets a lot of flack for typically being "left turns" but they actually have a fair amount of road courses. even the ovals have wildly different structures to them, some (like daytona and talledega) are absolutely massive, where the cars run full throttle the whole way around and are often running 200-210 miles per hour (321.869 - 337.962 kph). and on the other end are tracks like bristol and martinsville which are very small. handling, braking, and acceleration matter the most here, and the cars top out in the 150's, and slow down a lot in the corners because they are so tight. the track at 10 minutes is bristol, you can easily see the whole track from most camera angles because its so small. second, the cars are VERY heavy. at least, compared to most motorsport they are. the reason they can get airborne occasionally is because of how fast they run on the big tracks. a 747's typical take off speed is 184 mph, and as i mentioned earlier these cars are going 200+. its thanks to a LOT of technology that the cars dont flip over more often than they do. the flaps that open on the hood and the roof when the cars get spun out are actually a big contributor to keeping them on the ground, keep a look out for them! third; the bodies of these cars are made of very thin aluminium. its EASILY bent. that said, its also easily hammered back into position. so a "light" tap (from a 2000+ pound car) can cause what looks to be a lot of damage, but at the same time it can be beaten back into shape with what seems like little effort. the major damage that happens to these cars is when the frame under that thin metal skin gets bent. that said on the super fast tracks any damage will slow you down, since the air will cause more friction on a wrinkled, crumpled up surface than a pristine one. which brings me to number four: the walls arent "out of bounds", as you had speculated on previous videos. the teams are only allowed on primary and (if they are big enough to afford it money wise) one secondary "back up" car. the back up is usually slower than the primary car, since they dont spend nearly as much time testing it and working out the kinks with it. the reason you dont want to touch a wall, is because once the main race starts you arent alowed to switch to the backup car. so any damage that would slow down your primary car, is something you have to deal with for the entire race. sure you can repair it, but even the best repair will still make the car slower than if it hadn't been damaged at all. if you wreck in practice or qualifying, the back up car can be used. but this also carries negatives with it. if you switch to a back up car after qualifying, your qualifying lap is negated and you will start at the very back of field. if you wreck in EITHER practice or qualifying, the back up car is still the slower car of the two, and you are going to have to work that much harder to make it competitive. so if at all possible you want to avoid touching the wall and damaging the race car, not because it will disqualify you but because it will make you slower at best, and potentially take you out of the race at worst.
The quick fires can be caused by broken fuel or oil lines after a crash, but there are active fire repression systems in each car. Thanks for having an open mind about our crazy sport!
top flight pit crews are some of the most athletic ppl on the race track. it takes high speed precision coordination for the entire crew to work in unison, get the driver back out on the track in 5-8 seconds. race tires alone weight 50lbs each and they just roll and fling them around like nothing.
I've heard that a lot of pit crew guys were college athletes that never made it professionally. I think in the championship race last year, the broadcast said one of Denny Hamlin's crew members was an offensive lineman in college
Yes, the days of getting some friends together for weekend to serve as a pit crew are long gone. Ironically, one of moments you get to see that they are good athletes is those moments where the driver doesn't get it stopped quite where they want it and they have to take a nimble step to avoid it or jump up to lessen the impact. Recall at least one just rolling across the hood after a "light" impact to get to his assigned position.
There's one video that was on the side you may want to look at called NASCAR's Strangest Cautions. There's been some rather strange events that have brought out the caution flag at NASCAR races, such as a spectator climbing the safety fence (aka catchfence) during the middle of a race.
Dude I watch your channel just to see how a young mind that doesn't know much ,works it out! You have the best thinking out loud reactions! Lol Don't change, your a great source of laughs for me! Keep it going! PS love the channel, great work!
10:00 Percussive and improvised maintenance is always fun to watch. So many cars have been repaired with a sledgehammer and a ton of duck tape and bear bond. My absolute favorite, but I forget which team it was, was a crew member used HIMSELF to fix a bent hood (bonnet) by aggressively sitting on it!
Something I learned fairly recently is that NASCAR teams actually recruit college athletes for their pit crew, because it's much more of an athletic task than a technical one. They're never doing anything more complicated than changing tires or fueling, but they need to be quite athletic to be able to dash out with a big heavy tire and impact wrench and change it so quickly.
The Danica Patrick clip occurred at Bristol Motor Speedway which is about 1 hour away from my hometown. Back in 2016, I got to go to the Battle at Bristol which was a Football game between Virginia Tech and Tennessee. Over 165,000 people were present for that game.
Gas man normally drops a lot of fuel and a single spark can ignite a big area, even a lug nut sparking the floor after coming off at such high velocity can start a major fire if close enough to the fuel
Cars take pit stops for fuel, new tires, repairs, basically anything you can fix in less than a few minutes. When you only see one or two people in the pits, it usually means they're having car issues, but when there's a bunch like in the 2nd clip, it usually means they're halfway through the race and most of the cars need fuel. The longer you're in the pit, the more you become behind. Sometimes they can make up spots late in the race by not pitting if they pitted earlier than everybody else. There's a strategy to it all. when a fire happens on pit lane, the cars go into caution (move at a slow pace around the track) until its clear
The clip where the fire flashed up and then went out right away - the cars have on-board fire extinguishers for the engine compartment and fuel tank areas.
I'm glad you keep reacting to American racing sports. I would maybe recommend watching an IndyCar video? It's almost like the American version of F1. Maybe like best crashes or something similar.
Regarding the pit stop at 9:47 where they guy is banging on the right rear fender with a hammer, the bodies of the cars are basically just sheet metal (or composite material) so when they get crunched up, they might have to bang the fenders back out for aerodynamic purposes so the bent metal doesn't act like a sail, or even just to get the crinkled up metal away from the tires so they don't get cut down and go flat. Where that guy was hammering at about the 9:47 mark, is mostly empty space inside, in fact, you would be surprised at how much space there is. The guy laying on the ground is basically just whacking the inside of that fender with a big hammer. They also use great big "band-aids", basically large patches of sticky tape to cover holes, secure damaged body panels, or to smooth out severe dents that might cause aerodynamic drag. Occasionally, you'll even see them take a saw to the car and simply cut off the offending bodywork if it's not able to be repaired. You'll see that mostly at shorter tracks where aerodynamics is not as big of a deal. Nice video! Really enjoying your NASCAR reactions. :)
And to think that just about 30 years ago or so that pit road used to not have a speed limit. Pit road was and still is the most dangerous part of a race track. Side note, to go back on your comment on how they pop back up to service the car at the beginning of the video, quite a few of over the wall pit crew members were former college/pro athletes. The way cars are serviced now is so orchestrated and a physically demanding 13 seconds that it requires a high level of mental acuity and athleticism. Thank you Wood Bros. Racing and Junior Johnson for changing the pit stop game.
The pit crew are some of the most precise and highly trained athletes in the world. They train very hard and have to stay in tip top shape. Not only are they very physically strong, able to lift and throw around those tires with ease which isn’t easy, but they are also very very precise, like within milliseconds and millimeters, they are able to hit a lug nut at the exact right place and hold the lug wrench there for the exact right time so that when they move to the next nut the last one they did will spin off on its own. If they don’t do it long enough it doesn’t come off all they way which causes extra seconds or if they do it too long then they waste time. Like if they are off by a millisecond then they will end up costing themselves a couple seconds which can spell disaster for their race. Being off by a tiny tiny fraction can end up costing them actual seconds so they have to be extremely skilled and precise on top of being physically fit on top of being mentally prepared to perform in such a high stress situation where one tiny mistake or being off by one tiny millisecond can cost you and your whole entire team to lose the race and they have to do all of that ON TOP of also having to be prepared to work in extreme heat in a very hot flame retardant uniforms while also having to work in a very stressful and super hazardous workspace where one wrong move or being off by a millimeter could not only lose you the race but could also cost you your life or at least cause you to get injured. All of that combined makes a nascar pit crew member one of the hardest athletic careers in the world. They have to train harder and longer, have to deal with way more stress, have very heat intensive work conditions, and also have to work in a very hazardous environment. There have been pro athletes from other sports that have tried to join a pit crew and have just buckled under the pressure saying that they could never do it and saying that it is so much different and harder than their sport that it wasn’t even believable that people can do it. It takes extremely talented people to makeup a pit crew.
They have built-in automatic fire extinguishers in the engine bay. That's why the fire got put out so quickly. Also, the cars are basically just a frame made out of steel tubes and some steel sheets to give it its car-like shape. With a good ammount of brute strength and a hammer, it's easy to give its shape back to the car.
Pit Stops are mainly focused on body work repair, tire swaps, and refueling. Any other repairs require the car the be pulled into the garage, sometimes with the car being put back on if they fix it in a few laps, but most of the time if a car requires a garage visit, the driver's out of the race.
You reacted to the clip where the fire went off and then instantly died down, most of these cars today have internal fire extinguishing systems and I believe that is what we just witnessed.
Its sad to see a young British man have no idea about pitstops. F1 was amazing back in the day when real pitstops existed. Fueling, tire changes,wing adjustments. F1 is a shadow of the spectacle it use to be. I enjoy your channel!
#9 was Atlanta 1990 where Ricky Rudd spun into i believe Bill Elliot's pit stall, running over the rear tire changer and killing him. After that, NASCAR started making safety requirements, including making pit crew members wear helmets.
If you want to watch some fast pit stops, look up "NASCAR Pit Crew Challenge." It was an event NASCAR used to put on where each pit crew would compete to see who could make the faster pit stop and the winner moved on to the next round until a winner is determined. This is the video title of one from 2011: 2011 NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES PIT CREW CHALLENGE
The cars are now fitted with fire extinguishers in the engine area, they'll go off if they detect a fire. It stops catastophes. It's a fairly recent thing. They've also reduced the number of people each team can have servicing the car in the pit lane - partly for safety, partly for cost saving
In that Ricky Rudd clip. I remember you saying if all the cars come in like they used to or if it’s one at a time now. A lot of the cars still come in during a crash or whatever if they need anything but the reason Brad Keselowski was in there alone is because there was no caution, he just went in in the middle of racing because he needed something
Cars have a fire suppression system now to pit out fires under the hood. There's links that melt above a certain temp. When they melt the links complete a circut, kinda like when you switch on a light, and it activates the suppression system to extinguish the fire. Also, they fix damage with sledgehammers, crowbars, and a bondo like tape. These things aren't fragile like F1 cars
Usually pit fires are caused when a bit of fuel makes contact with a hot metal component with the car. Sometimes it's a wheel lugnut, sometimes it's the brake rotors. But the gas can doesn't have a perfect seal on the car, so it's fairly common that fuel will spill during a refuel. Fires are not common, but they happen from time to time.
Here’s some background on pit stops in NASCAR, over the year it has become one of the most important parts of a race team. Teams directly get their pit crew from college sports teams like football, basketball so on, or directly from the nfl sometimes as well. The guys are pure athletic monsters. Within the last 5 or 6 years pit stops have ranged from upper 11 second to around 13 or 14 seconds for 4 tires and fuel. NASCAR over the recent years have really tried to minimize the importance of pit stops just because the bigger teams with bigger budgets can afford better athletes and guys who their only job is to pit the car. As well as one team in particular spent millions of dollars on research and development on the impact guns that change the tires, to make them spin faster and shave off time from their stops. NASCAR is making big changes to level the playing field. Also you saw one car on pit row and multiple and that purely depends on pit strategy. Many times a caution will come out and the majority of the field will come down at the same time whereas if the race is continuing for a while they will have to take “green flag stops” and those are more likely to be individual as many teams strategize to push their fuel limit or “short pit” to advance their position on track. Pit stops are very strategic and way more in depth than I could ever go here in the comments.
The pit guys are very athletic as you see. They are overshadowed by drivers but they deserve praise. There are also lots of college sports players who later joined the pit crew of drivers. There are male and female crew too. Injuries do happen but that's not shocking
The one where the 19 car crashed on pit road and started to catch on fire and then extinguished its self, their are like mini fire suppressors around the race car that driver can pull a pin inside the race car when it catches on fire and it will extinguish the fire
The "Several Cars" incident with the 19 on fire...it was an oil fire. The hit to the front of the car probably knocked an oil line loose. So long as the car was running, the oil was flowing. Elliot Sadler, the driver, shut the car off...the oil flow stopped...the fire stopped.
Some of your questions for this one > When all the cars come in at once usually happens during a caution so everyone can get fresh tires, fuel, and make adjustments to the car. > Even when there's a fire the crew are well protected. Their nomex suits can take 2000 (1000c) degrees for 7 seconds. > Pit Crews train constantly so they can get the fastest pit time possible. Milliseconds count for a lot in this sport. > During Danica's clip, sometimes the best way to fix the bodywork on the car is to just hit it with a hammer. > WATCH THE DAYTONA 500 THIS SUNDAY!
One of the fuel fires (maybe both) was caused by a brake fire. On short tracks they gear the engine down to increase its acceleration to get more speed as a result the drivers have to use the brakes heavily to make the turns. If they gear the engine down too much or have the brake bias somewhat off you can over heat a brake and cause a fire of the brake itself.
The reason the fire went out on that engine so quickly is because inside the racecar we have a fire suppression system. If a fire occurs, from inside the cockpit we can pull a lever that sets off a fire extinguisher over the engine, cockpit and fuel cell in the back all at once to extinguish the flames.
12:15 The cars have an automatic fire suppression system built in to try and keep fires from getting out of hand. It doesn't always have enough capacity to put out all fires, or to keep them out, but sometimes it works. Fire has historically been one of the major killers of drivers and crew.
That's not usually what's at play here though, a lot of the time it's a small pressurized leak out of the oil cooling system or the fuel line. If caught quickly enough the driver can shut off the motor or fuel pump and there isn't enough fluid remaining around to sustain a large fire. The blessing and curse of fuel injection; there's no longer a pint of gasoline sitting in the fuel bowl of a carburetor on top of the engine, but most FI system live at 50-100PSI line pressure so fires are sudden and large, but can be shut off. Knock the carb apart in an accident and you'd best have a way out of the car if the fire bottles don't stop it.
12:20 car radiator is damaged, (white smoke, vapor from coolant) causes the engine to overhead and explode. (Normally the heads blow out and hot oil goes everywhere) because the coolant was already discharged from the damaged radiator loop, very little was probably running through the engine, so the pure oil mixing with what little fuel is in the lines and finding an ignition souce causes the fire. However such a blowout doesn't last long as oil itself, as in engine oil, doesnt burn willingly.
After Ricky Rudd’s crash, NASCAR mandated helmets for pit crews and officials. When they first started, the guys were in blue jeans and tee shirts, with ball caps.
The one with Ricky Rudd was from 1990, and as many pointed out resulted in a fatality. The level of safety equipment that NASCAR requires has changed a lot since then. Any crew member that goes over the wall must be wearing a fireproof suit and a helmet. Back in 1990 you could wear the same thing you would wear if you were working on the car at the shop. The crews practice pit stops a lot between races. They are always looking to shave any little bit of time they can off their pit stops.
I found your channel after looking at what happened to NASCAR driver Ryan Newman. I haven't followed the sport since I was a kid. Glad someone else is watching now. Nice how the RU-vid algorithm brought us together huh? (Literally as I was writing this I got an ESPN alert that Newman is okay. ^_^
The Danica Patrick bit...ALL that matters is keeping the fender away from the tire. That's what the guy was doing, using a hammer to beat the fender away from the tire so the metal didn't cut the tire on the track. What came later was kinda "classic" Danica Patrick. She's is a talented driver, don't misunderstand, but if she could screw up something she always seemed to figure out how to screw it up in NASCAR.
btw for the wheel changers they cheat a little bit, but its allowed by nascar, the lugnuts are glued to the wheels before they go over the wall so that the tire changer only has to put the wheel in place and hit it with the impact wrench to tighten the lugnuts. thats one of the many reasons they are so fast at changing wheels also for the cars that got sandwiched the car that caught fire all nascar cars have an on board fire extinguisher for exactly that reason
That Ricky Rudd accident I've watched live when I was in Georgia. That crew member, on the right rear of Elliot's car was killed. I believe that was the second or third member of Elliot's crew that's been seriously injured or killed inside of a year. NASCAR started putting mandatory speed limits inside of the pit area because crew members are being hurt or killed.
The ricky rudd accident caused NASCAR to be banned from tv for a small time as the tire carrier was killed in that accident. As well for the reason they created pit road speed limits.
2nd stop- looks like it was a pit stop under caution (the safety car gathers the field while track is cleaned up, cars on the lead lap can pit for service when pit road opens, cars a lap or more down pit the next lap) vs the first stop being a pit stop under green flag conditions (car needed fuel/ tires). That's the reason there was 1 car stopping in the first, and everyone stopping in the second.
Hopefully you see this in the morning! The Daytona 500 Is Monday, Feb 17, at 4:00PM Daytona time(Florida). It's the first and biggest race of the year for Nascar. On RU-vid there will be a live stream of Jimmy Johnson's in car cameras. That will give you an idea what it's like in the drivers seat. It will be streamed from Nascar's RU-vid channel. Watching on TV will give you a good idea on what's going on. The announcers are good at explaining what's happening during the race.
When you were reacting to them being able to quickly bang out a HUGE dent in the right rear corner, you have to understand that a NASCAR car is built differently than your run in the mill car you get of the lot with all the plastic flags waving. It’s a lightweight shell that put on top of a a pipe frame, which means it’s a hell of a lot easier to get a hammer on the inside and it doesn’t take as much to beat a dent out. Also the goals isn’t to be pretty, just pretty close
When you see fire like that in races it's most likely the brakes that sparks the fire. While filling the car with gas/petrol, if a little bit leaks and the fumes contact the hot brakes, sometimes they catch fire like that.
Pit stops can occur in two conditions. Caution OR Green Flag, while the race is running. Caution means that there was an incident that occured (such as a wreck) that requires the cars to be slowed down for it to clean up. Green Flag means that the cars are still running full speed around the track. Brad Keselowski's pit stop was under Green Flag conditions, meaning he was more likely to pit by himself with no one around him. Ricky Rudd pit under Caution, which is usually when A LOT of cars will come down Pit Road at once.
Pit road used to be absolutely bonkers! Drivers could come in and leave as quickly as they wanted. You would have drivers drag racing out doing 100 mph or faster. It’s amazing more people weren’t hurt. Now, there is a speed limit and if you go over that limit, you get penalized
3:40 - This was under caution, so all cars come typically. 5:20 - they would close pit road, not stop the race 8:00 - the gas spills when they disconnect the gas can. the lug nuts on the ground from the tire change are hot and ignite it. Most of the time. 10:00 - they hit it with a hammer. a lot. 12:14 - They have a fire suppression system in these cars to help put it out. Sometimes just killing the engine will put it out also Hope this helps!
-The 'petrol' as the Europeans call it is a high octane special racing fuel with 15% ethanol mixed in. Sunoco supplies the series with the fuel. - All crew members wear the same fire protection as the drivers do. Those nomex suits are designed with 5 layers of fire retardant fibers that will protect a man from intense flames up to around 90 seconds. Which is a lot of time in comparison to nothing at all... - You asked why the one car caught fire on pit lane for just a couple of seconds. Usually some oil or a bit of fuel from the carburetors they formerly used to run would hit the hot exhaust pipes and ignite for a moment until it burned away... The engine compartment of modern NASCAR vehicles is equipped with a fire suppression system the driver can activate from the cockpit. Luka: "Keselowski"... "That's a Polish name..." ME: It's a Polish pit stop too LOL.
Not sure about other motor racing, F1 doesn't allow refueling anymore for example after some scary incidents, but I believe with Nascar if a fire starts during refueling standard procedure is to get the car out of there as quickly as possible so the car itself doesn't have time to catch.
The Carl Edwards incident LOOKED horrible but the tire carrier continued the race. He had some road rash on his leg and was pretty sore but the front tire rolling over his leg was the LEAST of the threat. The front tire rolled over the leg so quickly that no damage was done. Had the rear tires caught him as they left the pit box, that could've stripped the flesh from his leg as they spun up.
Pit Crew members are recruited from a variety of places. Most are accomplished athletes already who, for whatever reason, didn't move on to professional levels in their respective sports. Why did Keselowski's jackman jump right back up? Because, if memory serves, he was a former Offensive Lineman for the Nebraska college football team. Dude knows how to take a hit!
The Ricky Rudd one caused NASCAR to introduce pit road speed limits. At the time divers were allowed to go as fat as possible down pit road and the crew member he hit, Mike Rich, died from his injuries
It takes a while to get to the cup series for a pit crewmen, normally 3-4 years but they average pay is $80,000-$120,000 and if you’re really good at it you can make up to nearly $200,000..
a fun video you could do since the Daytona 500 just happened the biggest race of the year best or most shocking moments at Daytona would be fun to see there is a top 10 series I've watched and its interesting because its the brains and the drivers behind that are reacting to it.
