Funny Car Cage...Safe or not?

[SSDiv6]

Originally Posted by Wade Mahaffey

I have been preaching to folks for years. The Dragster/Funny Car cage is probably responsible for more head injuries and/or deaths than any other part of the race car. The reason is that it's proximity to the drivers head is just a few inches, and being strapped into that tight location keeps your head in between 6 bars to bounce off of! In NASCAR, there are no bars anywhere close to the drivers head. They contain the drivers head as part of the seat construction (which is heavily padded and will give or flex if impacted by the driver. Look at it like this...your head hitting that bar, is like someone with that bar hitting you in the head...NOT GOOD either way.

In my opinion, a horizontal 3-4 inch wide padded band should go from the front bar around behind the drivers head and back out to the front bar on the other side. Kinda like what you see in a NASCAR seat. It could be mounted as such to allow the drivers line of vision just over the top of the pad

Wade Mahaffey

Wade, perhaps a rule change should be required to add the additional padding as current the current Pro's do.