What is it that makes Nascar cars so safe during crashes? I’ve seen cars wreck out at nearly 200mph and it looks like a bumper car crash.

Question

I’ve seen Nascar crashes where a car going 180 goes sideways into a wall, and then gets t-boned by other cars that were also going 180 mph and yet no rollover and the cars barely look damaged and everyone walks away unscathed. Meanwhile normal passenger cars go sideways doing 50mph and they roll over 6 times, gets demolished, and kills the driver. What is it about Nascar cars that make them so crash resistant/resilient?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

What makes that possible, more than anything, is the fact that most of what makes a car, a car, has been chucked in the bin in a racecar in order to reduce weight. This reduction in mass means that any crash is less forceful. A Nascar stock car is mostly a tubular steel frame, wrapped in a fiberglass shell. The heaviest things in that car when in operation are the motor and the driver.