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
Short answer A LOT of R&D. NASCAR has done thousands of crash tests and simulations to design to be as safe as possible. In terms of collisions there are multiple crumple zones built into the body to compress to absorb impacts. Regards to roll overs, there are multiple flaps over the car that get deployed during times of negative air pressure and they are angled in such a way that they act like a sail to catch air and keep the car on the ground.
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