Improving safety is an on-going process and Mike Green, the crew chief for Tony Schumacher’s Top Fuel dragster, is spearheading a project to try and make the cockpits in the dragsters safer.

Hondo Boats Inc., home of James Brendel Safety Capsules, a Riverside, California-based manufacturer of hardcore drag racing boats to leisure boats, driver capsules, and props, has developed a fully enclosed driver cockpit system for Top Fuel dragsters.

The fully enclosed cockpit system has been delivered to Don Schumacher Racing, and since April of 2010, Green and the Research & Development department at DSR have been trying to perfect it so it can be used in competition. The purpose of canopy is to make the driver safer from fire and flying debris.

Back in December of 2010, Tony Schumacher did some test laps with a fully-enclosed canopy on his U.S. Army dragster at Palm Beach (Fla.) International Raceway. Green said those are the only test runs that have been done with the canopy.

RELATED STORY - DSR'S PURSUIT OF A SAFER COCKPIT

Improving safety is an on-going process and Mike Green, the crew chief for Tony Schumacher’s Top Fuel dragster, is spearheading a project to try and make the cockpits in the dragsters safer.

Hondo Boats Inc., home of James Brendel Safety Capsules, a Riverside, California-based manufacturer of hardcore drag racing boats to leisure boats, driver capsules, and props, has developed a fully enclosed driver cockpit system for Top Fuel dragsters.

The fully enclosed cockpit system has been delivered to Don Schumacher Racing, and since April of 2010, Green and the Research & Development department at DSR have been trying to perfect it so it can be used in competition. The purpose of canopy is to make the driver safer from fire and flying debris.

Back in December of 2010, Tony Schumacher did some test laps with a fully-enclosed canopy on his U.S. Army dragster at Palm Beach (Fla.) International Raceway. Green said those are the only test runs that have been done with the canopy.

“It is a good deal and I think everyone should be trying to make this thing safer,” Tony Schumacher said. “We have to work out the details. We were just doing little spurts on it. When we get it figured out, we will try it again. We would love to have it on the car for safety.”

Green acknowledged the canopy is far from a finished product.

“It’s in the R&D phase and we are still working on it,” said Green in an interview with CompetitionPlus.com presented by Attitude Apparel Wednesday. “They are not in production. They are not on any of our cars right now. We do not know how much it (the fully-enclosed canopy) is going to weigh, how much it is going to cost or when it is going to be back on the car to test.”

Green is hopeful the full-enclosed canopy will become a reality sooner than later for the safety of the sport.

“That’s why I started the project and we have spent a lot of time tuning it and Schumacher has spent a good bit of money doing it,” Green said. “So yeah, it is a project that we think is important.”

And, Tony Schumacher welcomes the added protection of a fully-enclosed canopy.

“This is a great idea and it keeps everything away from you,” Schumacher said. “God forbid we hit a bird and you have all kinds of stuff happening. In formula cars or Indy cars you may hit a spring and stuff bounces up and those open cockpits are not the best thing. When we smoke the tires, we are still going way fast. Parts and pieces bounce on the track and we are just trying to make it where it will deflect things and keep the fire away. I have hit two birds over the years. You see them fly across and you are like ‘what the hell kind of game of chicken is this?’ I caught both of them with the front wing, but I do not know how. One happened at Indy at a test deal. At half track I saw it fly one way and I was like ‘what the hell.’ It came back and caught my front wing and if it hits you in the helmet it is going to kill you.”

Tony Schumacher knows one issue with using the fully-enclosed canopy cockpits is the added weight.

“I think that is the problem, you get one crew chief and he doesn’t want a heavier car,” Schumacher said. “Then, you get one crew chief who wants this and one crew chief who wants that. It is really hard to force everyone to race (with one) as much as those pods are going to weigh. But, if you are making it safer and NHRA decides, and it is really their call to say ‘You know we like this and we can’t afford to have our stars of the sport getting hurt.’ Then, yeah, they will have to do it. But, nobody is going to put 60 pounds on a car that no one else has to do. You will have the one guy who says ‘I do not care about my guy.’ I am going to send this guy down the track just the way he is and we are going to win the championship because we are 60 pounds lighter, and that just isn’t right. Most of the guys will conform to the safety and everything, and they have great intentions but I do not know if everybody does. I do not know if everyone will spend the money to do it, and it is a real easy out to say ‘we just can’t spend the money on it.’ And by the way we are 60 pounds lighter because of it. So, unless there is a rule everyone is not going to follow it.”

Schumacher, however, does thinks the fully-enclosed canopy will become common on dragsters in the next couple of years.

“I believe if we are allowed to run them, you will see them (out there),” Schumacher said. “I want to be in that car safe and I know my dad (Don Schumacher) wants that and his intentions are to protect us. That is a fact. We have the Army behind us and we have the technology that comes with that. If we can get those things to go down the track and keep guys from getting hurt and injured, hell yeah (we should do it). Maybe we will have to sweat a little more because we are in a canopy, but so be it. Sweating is not nearly as hot as fire.”

The fully-enclosed canopy over the cockpit is the next logical step in safety for dragsters.

In February during testing at PBIR, the three DSR Top Fuel dragsters driven by Tony Schumacher, Antron Brown and Spencer Massey were all sporting the sleek cone-shaped cockpits.

The higher windshields are being used all season by the DSR dragsters.

The higher windshields for the cockpits and the higher shroud surrounding the drivers were developed as part of a relationship formed between Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis motorsports engineering students and DSR’s championship-winning NHRA organization.

The relationship between DSR and IUPUI was the brainchild of Lee Beard, who returned to DSR in January of 2009 as the organization’s team manager. Beard remains DSR’s team manager and he also is the crew chief for the DSR Funny Car driven by Johnny Gray.

According to Beard, the purpose of the revolutionary-designed windshield, or shroud, is to protect the driver by "trying to prevent fire from moving forward into the driver's compartment in the event of an engine explosion to make it a safe environment for the driver."

 

 

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