23 replies to this topic

[Joe Bosworth]

There seems to be a lot of idle chatter on the Racing Form resulting from Hekki Kovalainen's attack on Spain's tyre barriers.

This leads me to raise the question for posterities sake as to where and when did tyre barriers come into use. I am not questioning somebody throwing a couple of tyres around the errant post at the side of a track but the real use of tyres as a deacceleration barrier.

My first memory was circa 1970 as applied at Nelson Ledges Track in NE Ohio. This may have been the beginning but I open the question to those whose memories are better.

Regards

[Andrew Ford &F1]

Even though I cannot answer your question, I can tell you that back in the 60's and even in the seventies straw was as a deacceleration barrier.

So, the tyres were used for the first time soimewhere in the seventies, too. I'm too young to know that. Hope that someone will provide us with a more precise info.

[Jerome]

Wow... I never imagined that I would be the one who could shed any light on this.

Before the tyrebarrier there were strawballs, yes. But in between there were low fences, stacked behind eachother. According to Hans Hugenholtz (designer of the Zandvoort-track) that was the safest way to de-acclerate cars. However, after the 80's and several accidents where drivers got stuck in the stuff (just like Kovalinen in the tyres!), fences got impopular. Even more so when Goodyear lost a lawsuit pressed by the Donahue estate, claiming faulty tyres killed Mark Donahue, F1 driver, in Austria. Most of the F1 circus thought was unfair because Donahue was allegedly killed primarily because of a pole of the fences hitting his head.

So tyres replaced fences, and I'd have to say that tyres do a pretty good job most of the time. Hugenholtz jr., the son of Hans Hugenholtz, vehemently disagrees by the way. He is sure, for example, that fences would have saved Aerton Senna's life.

[HDonaldCapps]

At some point in the mid/late Sixties, tire barriers began to migrate from oval tracks to road courses in America. I think that Long Beach popularized their use, it being one of the first venues to catch everyone's eye even though they were already in use elsewhere.

I am not sure that we have previously discussed the origins of the tire/tyre barrier. It should be interesting to see what develops.

[fines]

Originally posted by Jerome
Before the tyrebarrier there were strawballs, yes. But in between there were low fences, stacked behind eachother. According to Hans Hugenholtz (designer of the Zandvoort-track) that was the safest way to de-acclerate cars. However, after the 80's and several accidents where drivers got stuck in the stuff (just like Kovalinen in the tyres!), fences got impopular. Even more so when Goodyear lost a lawsuit pressed by the Donahue estate, claiming faulty tyres killed Mark Donahue, F1 driver, in Austria. Most of the F1 circus thought was unfair because Donahue was allegedly killed primarily because of a pole of the fences hitting his head.

I don't see how the fence pole killing Donohue (or was it a hoarding?) can have absolved Goodyear, since it was the faulty tyre that made Donohue leave the track in the first place! Also, that lawsuit took place many, many years afterwards, mid-to-late eighties I'd guess, and by that time fences had long since been on the way out.

And as for fences having the potential to have saved Ayrton Senna, that is quite a bit hypothetical, they certainly killed Hans-Georg Bürger for one...

Anyway, I agree with Don: tyre barriers were there for everyone to see at Long Beach in '75, they were certainly in use before that.

[Rob Semmeling]

Originally posted by Joe Bosworth
My first memory was circa 1970 as applied at Nelson Ledges Track in NE Ohio. This may have been the beginning but I open the question to those whose memories are better.

You may well be right Joe. The oldest photo I have of Nelson Ledges where the tyres can be seen dates from 1975, but given the fact the 24-hours races for motorcycles started in 1969 it seems entirely plausible the tyres were there several years earlier.

The tyres, incidentally, were not stacked neatly on top of one another, but rather thrown seemingly at random on a big pile!

And that's exactly how it still is today. In fact, comparing photo's it seems the tyres have never moved at all. There must be thousands of them around the course in long black ribbons around the perimeter.

Funny how Nelson Ledges of all circuits turns out to be rather avant-garde with their safety precautions.

[jm70]

For some reason, I thought they started at Laguna Seca. Who was the individual who was part of, or started the Snell Foundation. Thought he had a hand in using tires as a barrier. I do know that tires were used to replace the water "bottles" in between the layers of plywood at Turn 6 at Riverside.

[Dave Ware]

Here are some details from an article in the May 29, 30, 31, 1976 Nelson Ledges Trans Am program. The stuff in quotes is from the article.

“The idea of using old tires as a buffer for “wandering” race cars was first brought to the attention of the Nelson Ledges officials by Grover Griggs of Berlin Center, Ohio.”

“The idea was first put into use in the last part of the 1973 season.”

The article also mentions that the track received a Lester Seasongood award at the 1975 SCCA national convention. This award was given to a group or company that “promotes safety on the street, highway, or race course.”

Perhaps I will retype or scan the entire article, but not tonight.

Dave

[fester82]

I have no clue when they were used as a safety barrier, but my first memories of tires around tracks were as a deterent, especially around the inside of corners at the Mexican GP. From experience in the Grand Prix Legends simulation and numerous airborne launches, they were very effective in that role.

[Joe Bosworth]

Following up on a couple of leads from responses above:

1. Long Beach's first race was September 1975. Even if tire barriers were used for that race Nelson Ledges is documented as having them before then.

2. Riverside as a road race track certainly pre-dates the Ledges. Looking at U-tube films of early Cal Club events from Riverside in the "early 1970s" do not show any use of tire barriers as a de-accelerant. They may have been at Riverside, it just is that contemporary films don't show them.

It may be helpful to this thread if uses of tire barriers being quoted could specify dates.

Also to keep to the thread it would be helpful to differenciate the uses of tires as markers as for the inside of corners and the use of tires as barriers. There are very early documented uses of vertically half buried tires used as markers certainly back in the Fifties, particularly at speedways.

The raising of straw bales for barriers is not too far afield. I can confirm with photos the use of straw bales as early as Watkins Glen 1950. No doubt earlier uses will pop up but at least that is a specific marker.

Incidentally, straw bales were a pretty poor application because at least in the early applications they were never stacked in enough depth to provide retarding mass nor high enough to do other than trip any car that came into serious contact.

The first applications of tires as barriers at Nelson Ledges had them un-bound but at least in sufficient depth and height to be useful as retardents. It was within the first two years of their first loose application that they started to be bound together into bundles but I can't confirm where I first came across strapped bundles. It was the geometric bundling that brought the first break through for tire barriers. The second break through was the use of used conveyor belting to smooth the front face so that cars hitting at an angle did not dig in. My memory thinks it is telling me that belted tires came to being within the first four years.

Keep the leads coming in!

Regards

[David McKinney]

Long Beach didn't call them tyres, or even tires.
They were "spherical elastic attenuators"
I always loved that

[Doug Nye]

There were some tyres at the end of the Brands Hatch pit wall barrier as early as 1963-64 and I am sure I saw some much earlier. Of course Wigram in New Zealand was marked out with half-tyres in the mid-'60s when Jim Clark flicked one up into the path of his pursuer, Jackie Stewart, which proved very effective.

DCN

[Paolo]

My first memories of racing are from 1982.
In that year both tyres and fences were in use.

[Jerome]

Originally posted by fines

I don't see how the fence pole killing Donohue (or was it a hoarding?) can have absolved Goodyear, since it was the faulty tyre that made Donohue leave the track in the first place! Also, that lawsuit took place many, many years afterwards, mid-to-late eighties I'd guess, and by that time fences had long since been on the way out.

And as for fences having the potential to have saved Ayrton Senna, that is quite a bit hypothetical, they certainly killed Hans-Georg Bürger for one...

Anyway, I agree with Don: tyre barriers were there for everyone to see at Long Beach in '75, they were certainly in use before that.

The lawsuit against Donohue took very long. Remember, Mark was killed in 1975, and I think the lawsuit was filed about half a year later. Then, as usual, it dragged itself on untill, I believe, 1989, with lower and higher courts placing a verdict. So the courtcase itself was and could be very much a drive to replace fences during and after the replacing of fences by tyres.

As I remember it, most experts in F1 thought the lawsuit pressed against Goodyear was a big no-no, although it was indeed a tyre that burst that hurled Mark into his accident. The saddest thing is, that Mark could have been saved. If I remember it correctly, he went to the pits by himself, and only there fell unconscious.

The discussion as I remember it, was not that the pole that killed Donohue could have absolved Goodyear. It started the idea that fences could be endangering drivers lives instead of saving them. And about Senna's accident, that is not MY idea, but that of Hugenholtz junior...

But enough off topic. Just like mr. Nye, I can remember many films from the sixties where half tyres were used as trackmarkers.

[David McKinney]

Originally posted by Dave Ware
“The idea was first put into use in the last part of the 1973 season”

...for Nelson Ledges

Here's an earlier application:

Pukekohe, New Zealand, January 1973

[simonlewisbooks]

Bales, as with half buried tyres, were often used just as corner markers (as in Mexico) rather than a form of safty barrier. In both cases, they tended to cause problems with tropping up errant cars, but did put people off cutting corners...
One driver I recall being killed by catch fencing poles was the promising Maurer F2 driver Marcus Hottengatter, who I think died at Hockenhiem in 1980 within months of Hans-George Berger's fatal crash in the Tiga F2 at Zandvoort. These two accodents probabaly started the trend for gravel rather than fencing in run-off areas.

Wasn't it Reutermann who was very nearly suffocated having been entwined in catch fencing (circa 1975)?
As with so many enthusiastically installed safety features there are often down sides as well as benefits.

I think Donohue was killed by the scaffolding poles of an advertising hoarding that the car crashed through, rather than catch fencing .

[JacnGille]

Originally posted by simonlewisbooks
I think Donohue was killed by the scaffolding poles of an advertising hoarding that the car crashed through, rather than catch fencing .

That's my memory of it.

[fines]

That's also what I was trying to reinforce: it wasn't catchfencing that killed Mark Donohue...

As for Markus Höttinger, he was killed by an errant wheel of Derek Warwick's Toleman, not catch fencing, in March or April of 1980, four months before Hans-Georg Bürger. But you are correct, there were several very scary incidents with catch fencing, the Reutemann one I believe happening at Jarama in 1978.

[simonlewisbooks]

Originally posted by fines

As for Markus Höttinger, he was killed by an errant wheel of Derek Warwick's Toleman, not catch fencing, in March or April of 1980, four months before Hans-Georg Bürger. But you are correct, there were several very scary incidents with catch fencing, the Reutemann one I believe happening at Jarama in 1978.

Come to think of it - You're right Fines ! That jogged the old memory bank. I think Autosport showed a photo of the badly distorted roll hoop from what was a tragic freak accident.

[Ray Bell]

Catch fencing at Zandvoort once had Jack Brabham trapped in his car...

Upside down with petrol running everywhere!

[RStock]

I don't know when they were first used , but I know this is the best photo ever of their use , as Andrea de Cesaris tests them out .





Thanks Brandspro , where ever you are .

[fines]

The best about this picture is the look of horror on Monsieur Bibendum's face as he runs for cover... Priceless!

[simonlewisbooks]

Originally posted by fines
The best about this picture is the look of horror on Monsieur Bibendum's face as he runs for cover... Priceless!

Brilliant!

[vashlin]

It would be impossible to top the above picture with Bib running for cover.

However....
I posted this picture (taken by me in 1980) on Personal Photos from the track awhile back and I recall being surprised when I came across it (after all these years) as I don't even remember the famous blue barrier being covered by tires at the Glen like this. It was only used in certain sections, apparantly. For some reason it just looks startling to me now.


[URL=http://g.imageshack.us/g.php?


LinC