Bob Barnard Track Engineering

I often wonder if I am wasting my time banging on about the unsafe tracks in the US. Are we just forgetting how to do it or is it too much money and trouble? Until someone gets hurt. Watched the Indycar double header from Detroit this last weekend, an event resurrected by "The Captain" Roger Penske. I have the greatest respect for this man and all he has done, and continues to do to the highest standards when it comes to his race teams, but not race tracks it seems.

Last year the repairs came apart if you recall. That took the attention off the walls and fences. How in 2013 can we have walls less than 39 inches high, how long have those lower blocks been around? How can you have impact zones with single row tires, or none, and those that are there are in single stacks, connected in a few places with rope! George Couzens must be turning in his grave! How quickly we forget. Then there is un-cranked 2 inch water pipe for a fence, with several cables but only one of which is tied off to concrete, the rest just end at the last post. The draft from the cars made it move. let alone if one got up into it. And then there are the single stacks of tires, only four high so they do not cover the barrier, and the ones in front of the power poles alongside pit lane, just one stack, tied with rope. Seriously? Why even bother.

And then there are the bumps, I guess it has "character" like Sebring. Indycar's new Tech Chief, Derrick Walker, is proposing changes to make the cars faster, and he says safer. How about developing and enforcing standards for the tracks? Indycar is going nowhere while it continues to run at bad tracks that do not show off their series to its best.

And while I am about it, since when did highway sand barrels have any place on a racetrack? Dover Downs seems to think they do, as does Watkins Glen. Does NASCAR not require any standards?