G Force Helmet

Volume XIII, Issue 6

The ADRL announced that their Aug. 12-13 event at Virginia Motorsports Park near Richmond, Va., will include an eight-car exhibition by NHRA-legal Pro Mods. The possibility now exists that an NHRA-legal Pro Mod class will soon join the recent addition of Top Sportsman to the ADRL’s menu of fast doorslammers.

The Agent has been hearing rumors that Pro Mod major domo Roger Burgess and the suits at the NHRA aren’t currently on the best of terms. That rumor has to carry some validity after the strange NHRA press release of last week regarding the Pro Mod TV show and NHRA’s requirement that a new sponsorship contract be signed before the end of 2012.

The Agent would be willing to take some bets regarding the possibility that R2B2 cars and drivers will be among the eight-car exhibition NHRA-legal Pro Mod show at the ADRL’s Virginia race.

The Indianapolis Star has quoted Forrest Lucas saying that in view of the track’s loss of its NASCAR dates he is going to “renegotiate” his contract with the NHRA, which owns the Indianapolis track.

Lucas told the newspaper he does not expect Lucas Oil to remove its sponsorship entirely from the track, but there a clause in the company’s contract with the raceway allows Lucas Oil to renegotiate its sponsorship arrangement should NASCAR pull out.

The O’Reilly people must be getting a pretty big chuckle over this turn of events.

The Agent must make note of the July 10th birthday of Ed Iskenderian, founder of Isky Racing Cams. This legend of both circle track and drag racing started grinding cams for Don Garlits at the beginning of the hot rod craze right after World War II. It was a new-design Isky cam in Chris Karamesines’s dragster when The Greek made his controversial 204-mph run at Alton, Ill, back in 1960.

We will have an interview with Isky coming next week in the new issue of DRO. G-Force makes repairs to Farber’s Daytona

Evidently Pete Farber’s Dodge Daytona was damaged a lot worse than was originally reported in its crash with Rickie Smith at Bristol. G-Force Race Car’s Jim Salemi called the Agent to say that Farber brought his wrecked racecar to his Tonawanda, NY, shop for a quick repair the Monday after Fathers Day and the G-Force guys worked around the clock for three days to get the Daytona ready to race the next weekend.

Study of football helmet G-forces shows surprising results, p. 2 ...

This is a continuation of our last post. We were talking about a study of high school football players that was originally designed to investigate G-forces, concussions and brain function. The focus was to have been on the players who sustained concussions, but the researchers discovered a group of players who had never had any concussion symptoms but whose brain function nonetheless declined during the season.

The implications are unsettling. There could very well be a large group of South Carolina teen athletes out there with undiagnosed and unseen brain injuries .

The good news was that the teens' brain function returned to the "normal" range after the season was over. The problem, though, is that concussion symptoms may pass, but the long-term effects can be devastating. And, the long-term effects, particularly Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, can only be diagnosed after death.

The G-force data was particularly enlightening. The study found that players were regularly sustaining hits at 20 to 30 Gs. That's the equivalent of being in a pretty bad car accident. Except that football players, particularly linemen, are sustaining that force with every hit .