MALE NARRATOR: April fourth, 2008. Qualifying at Texas Motor Speedway. Michael McDowell, driver of the
double-zero car, probably wasn't thinking much about kinetic energy.
TV ANNOUNCERS: Whoa, whoa guys, whoa whoa oh no! Oh my gosh! I have never seen anything like that in my life!
He hit that wall a ton. Oh my gosh.
The roar of the engines, the squeal of the tires, then the race to victory lane. It all says, NASCAR.
A race car is much more than steel, gas, rubber and speed. A race car is a science experiment on wheels.
DIANDRA LESLIE-PELECKY: Michael McDowell may not have been thinking about kinetic energy, but luckily for him,
the people who designed and built his race car were. Otherwise, how could a car come out of a horrendous crash
looking like this, and the driver walk away uninjured? Here's why kinetic energy is important.
The faster a race car moves, the more kinetic energy it has. Since energy can't be made or destroyed, when a speeding race car
comes to a stop, all of its kinetic energy has to be converted into other forms of energy. A race car going 180 miles an hour
has about the same kinetic energy as stored in 2.2 pounds of TNT.
JOSH BROWNE: That was about as hard as you're ever gonna hit a wall. The car was destroyed. But I think you saw,
when they looked at it in slow motion, you saw all the energy dissipation that had been designed into the race track
and the race cars.
DIANDRA LESLIE-PELECKY: When you think of something dissipating, you think about it going away. But energy
can't just go away. It has to go somewhere. In a crash, a lot of kinetic energy goes to crushing fenders,
bending the chassis, or ripping sheet metal off the body. In a solid, you can think of the chemical bonds
holding the atoms together as if they were springs. When a car hits another car, some of its kinetic energy
goes to bending or breaking the springs between the atoms. That's another way of transforming kinetic energy.
RONNIE HOOVER: It's a little lighter but it's a little brittle. And there needs to be a little bit of forgiveness in what we do.
You know, in other words, some of the energy needs to be dissipated when we do hit the wall
or we do hit another car.
DIANDRA LESLIE-PELECKY: You can't change how much energy has to be transformed. But you can build a race car
so that you control where the energy is transformed. Look at what's left of the double-zero. The front and the rear
are pretty well crushed, and the sheet metal took a real beating. But the part of the chassis surrounding the driver is still intact.
RONNIE HOOVER: In essence, they are designed to have crumple zones just like we do on our manufactured street cars.
DIANDRA LESLIE-PELECKY: The chassis is made in three main sections. The front clip, the rear clip, and the center section
which has the roll cage. The entire chassis is made from steel tubing, but the front and rear clip are designed to crush
before the center section. As the car is breaking up around him, the driver's seat becomes even more important.
RANDY LAJOIE: Years ago when I was my own crash test dummy and I would crash, and I would open the seat up
and bend it, you know, I would pull it back and I would make it a little stronger. And the next one I built I would
make it a little stronger.
DIANDRA LESLIE-PELECKY: Most NASCAR drivers have seats custom-fit so that the driver and his seat act as a
single unit in a crash. Knowing the science means you'll never look at a crash the same way again.
BRANDON THOMAS: When you get to the corner, and you make the commitment to go to the corner, you're at the
maximum speed the car's gonna go. To basically lose the control at that point in time, that is the worst
possible scenario from an energy standpoint.
DIANDRA LESLIE-PELECKY: McDowell put on the brakes when he realized the car was loose. That slowed down the car
as kinetic energy was converted into heat energy in the brakes. As the car skidded, more kinetic energy was transformed to
heat energy by friction between the tires and the track. And some sound energy, too. When the car hit the safer barrier,
some of its kinetic energy helped deform the steel wall, and to compress, then destroy the foam between the two walls.
Each piece of the car that comes off is taking kinetic energy away from the car.
JOSH BROWNE: The first few minutes was kinda, just holding our breath. But I think it was a clear indication
of the safety improvements that have been made. (Crowd cheering)
MICHAEL MCDOWELL: For me to walk away from that wreck right there is unbelievable. And the car tomorrow's got a lot of room
in it, and it allows for some impact like we saw today. That was a violent wreck and I lived through all of it,
like I said, you know, I felt every roll. I'm standing here right now no problems. You know, maybe a few little bumps
and bruises, but other than that it's fine. So that's amazing to me.
RANDY LAJOIE: When I was driving, that was my goal, was to get to victory lane. But on a Monday morning when
I receive a phone call from somebody that had a violent wreck and they say, hey, I'm okay, you know, I wrecked my butt off,
you know, I flipped over, hit the wall, caught fire, jumped out and I was okay. You know, those are my victory lanes.
DIANDRA LESLIE-PELECKY: It may have seemed like everything went wrong that day. But actually everything went just right.
The very next day Michael McDowell was back out on the track in a backup car. As hard as it is to believe,
looking at what's left of the 00 car, once again, science saved the day.