Danger lurks in IRLBy Mike Chambers
Denver Post Staff Writer

Sebastien Bourdais, at the Indy 500, says the seat is "way too lay-down." (Getty Images / Jeff Haynes)
Five Indy Racing League drivers have sustained serious back injuries this season, a statistic that doesn't surprise Champ Car series star Sebastien Bourdais.
Crash expert John Melvin and Bourdais, who won Sunday's Grand Prix of Denver, say the reclined angle drivers sit at in IRL cars leaves them vulnerable in high-speed oval racing accidents. But the league, which will race at Pikes Peak International Raceway this weekend, plans to sit tight with the current seating design for at least another season.
"The seat position is very bad," said Bourdais, the defending Champ Car champion who made his IRL debut at the May 29 Indianapolis 500. "Every time you crash on an oval in these cars a guy seems to break his back. That's a fact. It's way too lay-down in the car."
In this case, Bourdais said comfort comes at a cost. "It's very comfortable, actually, but when you have impact all the weight goes to the very, very lower back," he said, noting a Champ Car's more upright sitting position promotes better posture than the IRL cars. "It's just not right. There is something very wrong with those cars."
Bourdais' criticism might be viewed as darts being thrown by a competitor from a rival series, but IRL driver Jaques Lazier and Melvin agree there could be a better design for the Dallara and Panoz chassis offered to IRL teams.
Lazier, who grew up in Vail and has recovered from two back injuries from racing, said, "there's definitely some merit" to Bourdais' criticism.
Lazier is an example of at least 23 cases of back injuries in the IRL since 1997, when it began offering chassis through its select manufacturers. The IRL was formed in 1996 as an oval-only alternative to Championship Auto Racing Teams, now Champ Car. The IRL ran 16 oval races last year and has 14 scheduled this year, plus three road races.
CART/Champ Car, which primarily races on road and street courses, has had two reported cases of back injuries since the beginning of the 1997.
Lazier sustained thoracic compression fractures driving IRL cars in 2000 and 2002.
"There is something to what (Bourdais) discussed, and I know it's something that the IRL is looking at for the next chassis, and that's having the driver sit in a different position, not lying down so much," Lazier said. "I'm very confident in the technologies that have come out of all the unfortunate broken backs."
IRL vice president John Griffin said the current league chassis were introduced before the 2003 season and likely will remain the same through the end of 2006. He said the angle the drivers sit at has not been a concern, and that Bourdais, who competes in just two Champ Car ovals a season, is no expert in IRL oval racing.
"What we do every winter is work with the chassis manufacturer to update the chassis, but we're committed to this chassis through at least next year," Griffin said. "The league invests a lot of time and money into safety and we've got a lot consultants and stuff, and doctors on staff and doctors as consultants. That's what we came up with."
Melvin, who is one of the IRL's safety consultants, said the IRL could be ignoring safety to avoid the cost of changing chassis.
"To un-recline them would mean to entirely change the chassis, and they're probably looking at that, but that's a huge expense," said Melvin, who holds a PhD in engineering and runs an international crash-safety business in Ann Arbor, Mich. "You have to keep rules the same over a period of time because you can't ask teams to put a chassis in at the start of the cycle, and then tell them to buy another one in the middle of it."
Melvin discounted the notion of simply changing the seating to make the drivers sit more upright in the current chassis.
"If you made them sit up more you'd see more head and neck injuries," he said.