JANUARY 17, 2002

Safety gurus meet in Florida

THE leading lights of the motorsport safety world are gathered in Florida this week for a meeting to discuss the latest developments in global safety technology and to exchange information. This is one of the few examples in the year of truly global relationships in racing with the safety engineers and doctors from Formula 1 and CART mixing with those of NASCAR. The meetings have helped to spread safety technology from one series to the next and will undoubtedly save lives in the long term.

One example of the collaboration has been the development of the Head And Neck Safety device (HANS) which is expected to be used by all F1 drivers in 2003 - if testing goes to plan. This was originally developed in US sportscar racing. NASCAR has also learned from the meetings with plans to introduce a new driving seat which has been designed by Cal Wells's PPI Motorsports and built by Reynard.