What Keeps a NASCAR Driver Safe in the Next Gen Car?

Working against complaints about driver safety in the 2022 Cup Series season, NASCAR delivered a superior Next Gen car last year and protected the grid from major mishaps. The nerve-racking crash that Ryan Preece suffered in Daytona and eventually walked out unharmed served as a reminder of its efforts. With the same in hindsight, what are the parts in the car that protect drivers?

Joe Gibbs Racing detailed through a video on YouTube that the three essential car parts that kept drivers safe were the front clip, the rear clip, and the center section. The team says that the front clips are designed to have a large crumple zone and to be soft to absorb strong impacts. Continuing about the rear, it said, “The rear clip is designed in a similar way. This is where the fuel cell can be found and the rear bumper is installed.”

The center section of the car is reinforced with a large number of brackets, tubes, and metal plates that aid in making it as strong as possible. After every collision or crash, NASCAR reviews the cars before they are sent to the team shops to be fixed.

Eyes always out looking for areas of safety improvement, stock car racing is in its safest form yet.

What Ryan Preece’s crash at Daytona proved about the NASCAR Next Gen car

Odds are that no dedicated motorsport fan missed watching the horrifying wreck of Ryan Preece at Daytona last year. On the 157th lap of the Coke Zero Sugar 400, Preece’s Mustang was pushed from behind, which resulted in it gliding down the backstretch and flipping into the grass. Multiple airborne barrel rolls later, the car came to a halt on its wheels in a mangled state.

Despite the visuals that the scene provided, the driver had escaped relatively unscathed. NASCAR president Steve Phelps said in the aftermath, “We’ve worked very hard to make sure this car would do its job with respect to catastrophic injuries. The car did its job for Ryan Blaney, and I think it did its job for Ryan Preece. But it’s not done.”

NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Jarrett was one of the many left shaken by the incident. He, however, praised the promotion’s work on improving the Next Gen car’s safety. He said on NBC, “I think this shows NASCAR, the manufacturers, and everyone involved have done a really good job with the safety side of this sport.””

Though the Daytona crash is a lot more encouraging than what the sport has seen in recent times, there remains space to move forward. Hopefully, such accidents can be avoided altogether in the future.