In open-wheel, those drivers don't need a large range of motion. But our drivers have to do a lot more work. And this restricts them. The walls, made of cushiony material such as high-density foam, have proved to reduce the impact of a crash on a driver's body during testing. But, like the HANS device, there are concerns, mainly that a soft wall could bounce a crashed car back into traffic.
Concrete walls tend to disseminate a crash in one confined area.
They need to do more research to figure out exactly where the force of a crash is going to go with a soft wall. Bodine, who considers himself one of the safest drivers on the track, said he would like to see all the drivers in Winston Cup get together and discuss what can be done. Preliminary plans for such a meeting were already being put together Friday. And there's a sense of immediacy with this. We need to get this figured out before another tragedy happens.