Pick The Podium: IndyCar - ABC Supply 500 - Long Pond, PA

[Retroram52]

It is not necessarily the weight of the object but the energy imposed when a car traveling, what, 100 mph hits the object with the driver absorbing that energy that the car is providing with its weight, speed, and momentum. Our heads were not constructed to absorb that kind of kinetic energy and survive. KE equals one-half the mass times the velocity and that is why Wilson is in the hospital in a coma. His helmet tried to dissipate that energy but it was not designed to fully do that and protect Wilson's knaggen.

 

[forty_three]

I'm no physics guy, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around how that wing could weigh enough to knock someone out through their helmet. We deal with some of the same types of carbon fiber where I work (our goes in airplanes) & I've toured the Dallara factory in Indy, & that stuff is just insanely light-weight. I'd be surprised if the wing assembly weighs more than fifteen pounds.

The nose cone only has a Carbon Fibre shell, it has energy absorbing material inside as part of the crumple zone/crash structure. That's what adds the weight. The aero pieces are light as heck. It's that part that slips to the chassis that is heavy.

It is not necessarily the weight of the object but the energy imposed when a car traveling, what, 100 mph hits the object with the driver absorbing that energy that the car is providing with its weight, speed, and momentum. Our heads were not constructed to absorb that kind of kinetic energy and survive. KE equals one-half the mass times the velocity and that is why Wilson is in the hospital in a coma. His helmet tried to dissipate that energy but it was not designed to fully do that and protect Wilson's knaggen.

Has it been announced how fast his car was traveling? Even though the yellow was out, I'd be surprised if he was under 200 by that point.

Not that it matters in the grand scheme at this point.