Ringside Seat: to cage or not to cage
Sensible precaution or a pretentious statement of (over) ambition? Dale ponders a cage for his latest toy
But actually, I have been thinking about this a lot recently.
My last 'ring tool lasted about a year and to be honest, I had no intentions of caging it at all. Hell, 90 per cent of the time I didn't even wear a helmet when driving it. It was far too nice inside to rip apart and cage up.
You see, on the one hand, you're driving the trickiest track in the world with average speeds faster than the UK's highest legal speed limit. There's no room for error and miles of steel barrier waiting for you. It's bloody dangerous. These are all sure-fire reasons to drive wearing body armour and nestling in a roll-cage that looks like a spider spinning 60mm chromoly-steel spent a week in your car.
But on the other hand, most of the time the Nordschleife is just a public road. You're out on track with buses, campervans and Harley Davidsons. Strapping yourself into a caged-up car and thinking you can go really fast on a Sunday afternoon is just an exercise in frustration. I honestly believe that squeezing into a six-point harness and full roll cage totally changes the driver's attitude - and it's this attitude that's just not compatible with driving in public traffic.
And that's before we consider that you look like a real plonker putting your fireproof underpants on in a car park full of tourists. The weight of the crowd's expectation settles on your shoulders heavier than any HANS device. At least 90 per cent of drivers on a public session will not be wearing a helmet. Probably fewer than one per cent have a roll cage in their car.
But this isn't just a question that I'm considering personally. Look at the rental car companies. Three major operations exist here with more than 20 rental cars each, and they all have different strategies. One company has full roll cages in nearly every car, one has mostly half cages and another has mostly none.
Then there's the industry testing. Where some of the most pedestrian cars (Mercedes B-Class, VW Polos, Range Rover Discoveries) are caged-up to the maximum, while supercars like Audi's R8 and Porsche's 911 are left standard.
There are so many variables that I honestly don't think there's a right or wrong answer. It's a personal choice. And this winter I've decided to cage up the Project 328i with a nice little six-point Wiechers item. Maybe it's because the interior is crying out to be stripped, or maybe it's because the carnage I've seen this year has left me feeling vulnerable. Rollover crashes are nothing new at the 'ring but sometimes it's easy to forget how quickly it all goes wrong. And what it looks like when it does.
The black lump of metal you can see here is actually my mate Karl's Golf 'ring tool after he hit oil at Wipperman on a public lap. And the doctor on the scene was pretty adamant that his survival chances in an old Golf without a cage wouldn't have been worth talking about.
When I'm out on track I'm dumb enough not to give this thing a second thought, as evidenced in the latest video below chasing race cars in my leather-seated and un-caged E36. But the second thoughts are here to stay now and I do too many laps a year to forget about them completely. The cage is ordered.
I'd argue that it's pretty unnecessary for more modern cars with good crash ratings but on something like a sierra cosworth or an original m5 I would say it is necessity as they are capable of serious speeds and don't crash all that well compared to modern metal
As for insurance I am with a main stream company and have all medications including the cage listed. It was no drama to do at all.
It'll still be safer in a roll over crash on the road, of course, but without a helmet it might be a lot more dangerous in a (far more common) minor shunt.
A good example in the article is the R8's and Porsche's not being caged for development - the designers are obviously comfortable that an accident at the ring would be dealt with well by the original spec chassis.
For a 20-year-old design 328i I would definitely be following Dale and having a good weld-in added.
Regarding modern cars without a cage - they definitely are better than older motors in a crash. However after the first impact, their structural integrity is compromised, so better hope no one else hits you or you spin/roll multiple times.
(My experience is in off-roaders, where speeds are slower, but we tend to rollover etc frequently.)
Newer stuff has side airbags for a reason ! My 14 week pregnant wife walked away from this...
to this:
For people who maybe do one or two track days a year in their road car then its a different story but a dedicated track car with no roll cage is just daft.
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