Safety as a System (SAAS)

Mark Francis - OGRacing

OG-Racing was founded in 1990 with the intent of "Making Racers Safer." Started from the back of the Bill Love's pick-up truck, OG-Racing has grown to become one of the largest distributors of Motorsports Gear in the country. From our full line of racing suits, to the latest helmets and neck protection, we're constantly striving to make sure the latest technology is keeping you safe. Our personalized customer service by an enthusiastic and friendly sales staff will ensure that everyone from the casual autocrosser to the Speed World Challenge racer receives only the best in customer service and support.

Contact: Mark Francis at mark@ogracing.com | 571-449-1243 | Visit Online!

     

• Steering Wheels. Wheel Sizes, Leather vs Suede

• Belts, Harnesses and Seats. 4pt… 5pt vs 6pt. 

• Fixed vs Adjustable Seats

• Proper Head and Neck restraints. Hans & Simpson Hybrid 

• What is “equal restraint”?

• How to shop for racing gear? – Picking the appropriate helmet for you.

• Looking stylish: Racing Suits, Gloves and Shoes

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motorsports podcast, break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motorsports related.

What’s going on everybody? Tonight? It’s your host, Brad, and with me as always is Eric. Hello. If you’ve been following along with our previous episodes, you’ll note that we’ve been focusing on what it takes to get involved in motorsports. We’ve covered everything from picking the right starter car to getting ready for your first event and different programs and organizations that exist in this community.

And on tonight’s episode, we continue this talk track as we dig in deeper talking about the questions that’s always on everyone’s mind safety. And with us tonight, we have returning guests crutch on behalf of the GTM coaches, along with our special guest, Mark Francis from OG Racing, one of the largest Motorsport safety distributors in the US to discuss a concept we call safety as a system.

Welcome to the show, mark. Hey, Eric. Thanks for having me. I don’t think we can deny the fact that we all get excited over buying yet [00:01:00] another mod for our cars. And lots of people buy items like seats and belts and steering wheels without really knowing what the impact to them or their vehicle might be.

So our plan tonight is to address some of the more popular safety items with Mark and explain the do’s and don’ts as well as talking about how they’re designed to work together. So how about we get into it? So Mark, first up, let’s talk about steering wheels. Should drivers be changing them? Should they be going to a smaller size, a larger size?

Is there a debate about leather versus suede? I found that leather versus suede, really for drivers picking aftermarket wheel for their car comes down to preference. I generally tell, uh, guys, when they’re looking at wheels, if it’s a dual-purpose car, you know, it’s a car they drive to work at, or at least some time on the street, a suede wheel with the oils and things from our, our skin will eventually wear on them over time.

Where, you know, in a race car you got gloves on, so you don’t have that issue. On my track car, I prefer [00:02:00] suede. I just like the feel. For some reason, the the two really comes down to preference. I do discourage guys sometimes think they want to go down to like a smaller wheel. Which, you know, if you drive a car without power steering, that smaller wheel requires more effort to turn the car as you’re turning in and exiting the corner, especially under like air cooled nine 11, no power steering.

It’s better to have a 350 millimeter wheel cuz it gives you a little more leverage. I, I’ve no guys who like bigger three 80, of course you joke around and call ’em the school bus wheel, but Sparko makes, yeah, we have the, we have the opposite problem on the front wheel drives. We always go with smaller wheels, so they’ll turn in quicker.

Yeah. It just makes, makes life a little easier. So I guess it comes down to the type of car, but you know, what you’ve said so far makes a heck of a lot of sense. Should people swapping wheels be concerned that they’re losing their airbag? That’s a good question. Yeah. I’ll take the official line that if, if the car is a street car registered in a state that has a safety inspection, you are not supposed to remove the airbag steering wheel.

Now they’re saying with the new cars, [00:03:00] with the smart airbags being part of the system and built into the seats, that debate has raged on the forums. I don’t own the car new enough to have that problem. You know, the cars on track don’t have airbags in them. I have seen car have a single car off at Summit Point years ago, you know, eighties car had, you know, early first generation airbags in it and he didn’t even hit anything.

He hit a bump, you know, going through the gravel trap and turned three at Summit and the airbag deployed, burned his wrists. It was a summer event where they were allowing short sleeve shirts and he drove into the pits and tossed it out onto the. The pit lane and went back on the track. I have seen there was some car, one of the recent generations, it was, it was some performance car.

It was like a Corvette or Mustang or something. That was actually, I think it was one of the Corvettes was actually having a problem with accidental airbag deployment during spirited driving where people were driving around racetracks and the airbags would just happen to trigger in some situations.

And this wasn’t just the, the wheel airbag, I think it was one of the side curtains too. So [00:04:00] there’s always the risk of that. But then that gets back to the whole safety as a system thing. Whereas if you are taking out that steering wheel airbag, you know, that’s part of your defense against the type of neck injuries that the full harness Hans and helmet and all would take care of.

So, Exactly, you are taking a risk by swapping out just that steering wheel when not going with the rest of the system, as we’re gonna talk about. I mean, I think you’re taking a risk if you have a car equipped with Takata airbags to begin with. So I have removed all of mine and, and we’ll move on from that statement.

You mean Claymores? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So with that being, actually, actually, I got the recall from my M three. I need to make the appointment at the dealer parts in stock now to replace mine. Yeah. My, my recall was right in the waistband. But uh, with that being said, so people, the next thing people really get excited about for their car, you know, I’m going to the track, I gotta buy seats, and they don’t realize what they’re getting in themselves into.

And it blends itself to a conversation, not just about seats and proper seats, [00:05:00] but belts, yes. And harnesses and all sorts of other things. So let’s begin to slowly unpack that. Let’s talk about seats. Okay. There’s all sorts of different kinds of seats out there. Be them fixed back, metal, fiberglass, cury, aluminum, and then you have your adjustable seats, et cetera.

Let’s talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to these different seats, especially in the context of motorsport. Uh, share a conversation I usually have when I get a say like an HBD two, you know, PCA blue group. I’m not sure how you guys break your run groups down. You know, the, the driver that’s maybe had his first solo, you know, he’s talking about putting, uh, our compound tires on the car.

And then when we get into the discussion about seats, you know, they’ll ask me, but, you know, should I get, like, what about like when a reclining sports seat? And I tend to. Steer them if they’re gonna do it. You know, if this is a car that’s primarily tracked, then a fixed back seat is a [00:06:00] better option. The, the sports seats I’ve found don’t provide as much lateral support.

And it’s, it’s amazing with these guys when they, you know, you have a guy that’s been driving with, with the street seat or even even like a recliner seat that has at least shoulder pass throughs to run like a four point belt. And I guess we’ll discuss the belts in a little while, but when they get into the fixed back seat, that’s when they realize how much they were holding on, you know, whether pushing their knee against the door, holding onto the steering wheel to keep themselves centered in the seat.

And they’re like, you know, I should have done this two years ago because it, a proper race seat keeps you centered, relaxed. So you’re, you’re not using your, the muscles in your body to try to stay put and keep from sliding. You know, I, I did it when I was a beginner knee pushing on the door panel to try to keep me in the seat.

You know, my feeling is always been, if, if you’re gonna put seats in track card, especially if you have. Aspirations for moving on to time trials. Or club racing at some level, skip the sports seat cuz you’re gonna get to the [00:07:00] wanting a, a fixed back seat anyways. So how does one choose the right seat? I know that’s always a big thing, right?

It’s like, almost like buying shoes. So in your opinion Yes. How do you, how do you choose the right seat for you or for your car for that matter? I tell people that I talk to that, you know, don’t live near an OG racing where we have a showroom, you know, seats out on display. You can walk in there and spend three hours trying on seats just like you can try on shoes.

But I’ll encourage ’em when you’re at the track, you know, go talk to the guy who’s, there’s got a race car there, a cage. Say, Hey, you mind if I sit in your seat? And I also tell ’em, you know, don’t walk over there eating a chili dog. And have food all over your fingers or, or screwdrivers in your pockets, you know, be mindful of that.

A lot of guys will probably say, sure man, have a seat. You know, if you don’t have an idea of what fits, it’s hard to pick one. They all fit a little differently. You know, we have, we have a lot of manufacturers out there, Sparko, o and p, race Tech, or Carro, some of the other ones that the tuner guys, like, I think the bride seats and Momo [00:08:00] Bel, the Curie aluminum seats, Butler seat, you know, the list goes on and on and on.

But they’re all sort of shaped a little differently. In the case of like the, the St the fixed back seats that are f i a certified, they’ve passed the same testing, of course, with the exception being the race tech seats that have that newer certification up to 60 Gs, I, I forgot the number on it, but our body types are all different.

So, you know, find one of these seats, you know, uh, Sparko and omp were car. They’re all high quality. They’ve all been designed properly, gone through the testing, the safety testing on them. I’ve seen the end results of rollovers hits in the tire wall, multiple hits in the tire, wall hits and concrete walls with all of them.

And it’s amazing that they hold up. They do. I’ve got one in my basement. The car was, and while at Summit Point, on the outside going into one, they car rolled three, twice in the air and turned around and came down with the back end facing the skid bed landed upright and the seat held the side [00:09:00] bounce. As soon as we unbolted ’em from the seat, they sprung crooked.

They, everything stayed in place. Driver walked away and was in the paddock, but go for fit cuz a ray seat is just like a pair of shoes. There’s nothing worse than walking around all day in a pair of shoes that don’t fit right or pants that are, that don’t fit. Right. You know, think of the seat that way cuz.

You know, that’s your desk. You know, think of that as the business. And when you’re in the cockpit, that’s what’s keeping you secure, you know, along with the rest of your safety system, you know, your harnesses and everything, but you know, that’s the office. You, you want it to be comfortable. I was just gonna piggyback on what Mark was saying, uh, about walking around the paddock and, and talking to people and asking if you can sit in their seats.

If you’re gonna do that, look for someone that’s got a similar body type to yours. Good point. I meant to say that you’ll hear it in our big guy little car episode, but there’s several people that we’re all six four. I mean, there’s like five or six of us that are 6 4, 6 5 in the group. But we all have different body types.

We’re all different sizes and we don’t fit in each other’s cars [00:10:00] because of that. So look for somebody that’s of a similar bill to you. Uh, and then ask if you can sit in their car, assuming they have the stuff that you’re, you’re interested in buying. Okay. Yeah, it’s an excellent point. A lot of people nowadays are shopping online for a lot of things, and maybe, you know, I found that great deal on Amazon for that, you know, Corbo seat or something.

I don’t know. Is there a guide though, that you know how to measure yourself and then measure a seat for fitment? Like as an example? I find the older Corbo TS is super comfortable. A lot of people hate them. Mm-hmm. I also find the Sprint five extremely comfortable, but it’s a very narrow seat. My sister has a Sparkle courses.

I hate them. They’re way too narrow. Right. They’re way too, just too thin. I’ve also found like the EVO two US is more comfortable than the EVO two. You know, things like that. But I also know my measurements because I’m, I’ve sat in a lot of different seats. Mm-hmm. Like I need a, you know, minimum, you know, so many inches on the bottom and, and height and all this kind of thing.

But is there a good reference or a guide out there for people that are shopping that aren’t able to go to a showroom? [00:11:00] Yeah. All the manufacturers do put out their own sizing charts. Well, then they’ll measure, you know, width across the shoulders. Torso length from bottom of the seat to the shoulder belt cutouts.

They’ll measure in the hip area at the front end of the seat, you know, between your thighs and your, and your knees. But they, they tend to measure some areas a little differently. We’ve been trying to standardize it, you know, so you could do a side by side comparison. Right now with the manufacturers, you know, doing certain measurements on, they vary.

Um, it’s hard to compare a RO or APAR O to an O M P because of their, their sizing charts are different. I’ve tried to take that data, one, put it in US standard of measurements, and also try to get the measurements from the same points to do a comparison. Where I try to give them a starting point is, you know, make sure it’s not too tight in the hips where it’s gonna pinch, because, you know, that’ll lead to discomfort over the course of a 30 minute session on the track.

And also the, you know, the importance of making sure your [00:12:00] shoulders are not totally above the shoulder belt openings. Where it makes the shoulder, the shoulder belts have to go in an incorrect angle that would create compression when you tighten the belts. You know, we try to avoid that. I tell them to sort of use that as a starting point.

We’ve talked a lot about different kinds of seats and one of the next things that comes into question is whether those seats should be fixed or on sliders. What is your recommendation when it comes to that? If you’re using a proper double locking slider available from Sparko, o p Ro and if you’re sharing a car, you know, in a lot of cases, person’s not able to fix mount it and you know, my race car, I had a slider in it cuz my wife drove it.

And if you have a, you know, height difference, you know, it can’t fit. You know, if Brad and I were, were gonna share a car, you know, we’re gonna have to have a slider in the car, you know, being that he’s six four. The times where I’ve seen people not use them is person not sharing a car. And it’s somebody who’s tall because someone who’s short, you [00:13:00] know, where their seats positioned when they’re driving, may now, but may have trouble getting in and out of the car.

I’ve seen that too. You know, in the event they had to get outta the car in a hurry, they’re squeezing out because the seats fixed mounted and you know, they’re five foot three sitting right up on the steering wheel. I’ve also heard some wives tales about the sliders aren’t safe because it’s a failure point in the whole system there.

This is where you run into people buying stuff on eBay, counterfeit sliders that aren’t double lock, that could fail. The lock mechanism fails. Now if you have a race seat in the car with harnesses on and everything, the harnesses are attached to their mounting points. The seat can’t go forward and slam you into the, you know, into the dashboard.

You know, cuz the harnesses aren’t gonna allow it. But it goes down to, you know, proper installation in most cases. You know, rarely by seeing a slider made by a motorsports manufacturer fail the car I was telling you about that had the, the big hit at Summit point and the rollover and it was airborne and came crashing down.

Fortunately, [00:14:00] right side up that car had a slider in it. The slider was, you know, we threw all the, all the hardware was replaced afterwards, you know, because it was such a violent impact, but it did not fail. Everything was still locked in place where it should be. So that brings up an interesting question that often comes up, which is when you’re using a fixed back seat without a roll hoop, without any type of rollbar, you now are in a seat that has no way of deflecting outta the way in a rollover crash, and you are also held more upright in a rollover crash.

My thoughts on that, when I have a person asking about seats, my next question is, do you have a rollbar or a roll cage in the car, or are you going to be installing one when you put the seats in? And I’ll tell people, if they say no, I’m gonna do that later, then I tell them that, don’t do the seats. Now, the beginners don’t see it as a system.

They see it as, oh, I can add this piece and then next month I’ll add that piece. If you’re gonna do it right, when you get [00:15:00] to that crossroads when you’re driving on the track, you know, when people start talking about racing tires, oh, I, I’m gonna put a super, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do a flash on my 9 97 turbo.

Are you putting seats in a rollbar? Oh no, I’m gonna use three point belts. That’s what I’ll tell them, don’t, please don’t do that. I tell them, you know, whether it’s someone I’m instructing who asks me or someone who’s asking me, you know, in my role at OG Racing, you know, which there’s so much overlap, you know, I, for me, it’s just about one and the same at this point.

I will tell them, if you’re going to a fixed back seat and you wanna start using harnesses rollbar or roll cage, you know, obviously if it’s a dual purpose car, you don’t want to tell. Yeah. Put a, you know, put a cage with NASCAR bars and everything in a car you’re gonna drive on the street. You know, that presents its own safety hazards, you know, like hitting your head on that section of the cage in the front with no helmet on with you’re driving the car in the street.

It’s very refreshing to actually hear someone in the business say that because we have had experience [00:16:00] with other vendors that have toted the benefits of, uh, fixed back seats that’ll hold you in place better. And you know, it’s a cheap and easy upgrade and that’s the only thing you need to do to get better lap times.

It’s good to hear vendor proper advice. If you have a person that’s not putting the rollbar rollover protection in and they’re, you’re gonna sell ’em a fixed back seat, then what are they using for, are they using a three point seat belt, a racing seat with the higher bolsters on the sides there? There’s another set of problems you’re creating with the lap belt, not being able to, you know, that retracting locking.

Black belt, it’s part of your street safety system not functioning properly. If it’s not over your hips, like you said, three point with a fixed back seat with no will cause submarining in an accident. I’ve heard that, you know, harnesses with a, with a regular stock seat or adjustable seat will break your pelvis in an accident.

And I’ve seen people do that with, I’ve seen guys get in the car and take their three point, it goes right over [00:17:00] the top of those tall thigh bolsters. You know, like on A O M P W Rrc or a Cobra Suzuka seat that’s got those big tall thigh bolsters. I’m like, you’re gonna slide right underneath it. You know, cuz the pretension thing that locks it, you know, in the event of hard deceleration or an impact.

Isn’t gonna be able to front cuz the belt’s not across your hips. And I think that’s the overarching theme of this entire episode is safety as a system. Yeah. You can upgrade your seats and your harnesses and, and you get your head and neck restraint and everything. And the, the rollbar, that itself is a system, but your cars Yes.

Stock OEM equipment is a system in and of itself. Yes. So if you start mixing bits and pieces of the two, They don’t, the, the pieces don’t fit. They become a disparate system. That’s what they’re known as. Yes. I think you touched on something really important here as we lead into the conversation about belts versus harnesses, but there’s one more piece to the seat equation that I don’t think a lot of people [00:18:00] understand, but it does lean itself to another, uh, later part of the conversation where we talk about head and neck restraint.

Because again, this is all a system, but the whole point of the conversation here is we are building up to a kind of final package, what you should be really at, and that that investment that you need to make. So the other one here about seats in particular is halos, and everybody looks at it and goes, Ooh, ah, that’s super cool.

That halo seat’s really kind of neat. But the problem is there’s a time and a place for a halo seat, just like there’s a time and a place for a fixed back seat. So would you care to elaborate on the whys and why Nots of a halo seat. Yeah. Okay. The whys in a race car with the rest of your proper safety system.

It’s a good idea. It protects, you know, from that lateral impact pancake into the door car hitting you in the door, you hitting it right? Hitting the tire wall into the door. You know, the head and neck restraints are primarily focused on that forward motion. Now you, with the advent of some of the newer ones, like the, you know, the Simpson [00:19:00] Hybrid s, that the way the tethers are designed it is to help sort of offset impact to keep your head straight.

Halo seats in a race car. Good idea. Halo seats in a dual purpose car you’re driving on the street. Not so good idea because they limit some of your side vision that you need on the street. You know, that quick look over your shoulder changing lanes, you know, where you go to check your blind spot. Can’t do that with a halo seat in street driving.

And we’re not gonna get into the extreme versions of these systems. But with a halo, the expectation is that there’s a window net and that there’s armor restraints. Yes. And there’s all sorts of other things that a full club racing car would have that your normal H P D E driver just getting started who were, you know, catering to in this particular conversation.

That’s way beyond what they need to go to the track. Yes. Yeah. For, for our h p d friends and students, customers, you know, however you wanna refer to us, it’s not something that’s entirely required. You know, it’s, that’s my personal feeling on it. You know, like your car, if you made the [00:20:00] Audi a full on race car, I would say yeah, it’s, it’s another part of the system that reduces your chances of injury.

You know, should you have an impact or an, you know, an off that leads to an impact. You know, especially our guys with the dual-purpose cars, we have a lot of them. I see a lot of ’em at the, you know, whether it’s one of your events, PCA, driver’s, ed, bmw, C A H P D E, nasa, you know’s a lot of guys driving the cars to the track.

One of my coworkers does it. He’s got race seats in his car and a harness bar, which I keep telling him, you need a roll bar, dude, you need a roll bar. Because he’s getting up to the point. He’s soloing now, now he’s still on street tires, you know, so I’ll give him that. He hasn’t like slap Hoosiers on the thing yet.

But what I wanna talk about Mark next is really the difference between a belt and a harness. So do you want to explain three point, four point, five point, six point, I mean, soon they’re gonna be up to 10 points, right? So what does all that mean to somebody that’s just starting out? Well, of course I tell people, you know, we, we all use the term, oh, what kind of belts do you have in the car?

Even though what we are referring to are, they’re [00:21:00] racing harness obviously belts to the beginner three point seatbelt. I know that there are some four point ones out there now, and it, it used to be that going on the track, a lot of car clubs would not let you use a four point with a race seat on the racetrack because it did not have an, you know, an anti sub belt, which is that belt that comes up between your legs to keep you from sliding out from under the belts.

Now I know that Schroth makes one that has that, where it, it tensions the shoulders. I, I forgot how they work. I, I haven’t tried them. I’m pretty sure the way the Schroth four point works in order to prevent you from Submarining, there’s a doubled over section of belts on one shoulder that breaks free in an accident so that it lets your body roll forward to not go under the belt.

So it simulates a three point? Yeah, simulates a three point tensioner with a four point belt. Oh, so it breaks, so it breaks away probably on the inside one so your body can go Yeah. You know, not towards the window, but. [00:22:00] Yeah, it doesn’t break away fully. It, it has like a section that’s folded over and stitched but not stitched as strongly so that it then becomes longer on just that side.

So the stitching were full if you were to have a hard impact? Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I’ve seen people get those and useable a stock seat. I’ve just never been a fan of that. And I know in the old days, even in Porsche Club, you could use a harness with a stock seat and have the sub, like a sub belt just go right up in front of you.

Which of course now has been pretty much banned by everybody. Seat has to have a proper pass through. But I think the consensus here is four points are no-go, don’t even bother, you know, buy, I mean for the cost differential, buy a five point or a six point, whatever you can get. One of the things that I wanted to call into question was CG locks.

What do you think of those? For the, for the folks still running three point belts? Mm. I tried one, one time. We don’t sell ’em at og. I don’t think OG ever did. You know, it was nice that it did tighten the, [00:23:00] you, you could get the, the left, you know, the portion of, you know, is you came over your, to snap a new receptacle, you could snug it, so it was firm on your, across your hips.

I didn’t see it as a bad thing, but I, I just don’t, I, like I said, I never, you know, never really used one in practice. I know the people that bought ’em, like them, I don’t think they create any safety hazards, but as you know, as I tend to tell people, you know, if you’re looking at that kind of stuff, Start considering doing the safety system, you know, as your next upgrade.

But back to harnesses. Yes. You know, now there are these four point ones that they say they are legal to use with raise seat and tested. You know, the FIA has tested them. I don’t know about SFI since they’re European manufacturer and I don’t think I’ve ever sold a four point belt to somebody. And then there’s five and six point now six point.

Basically you have a sub belt that’s doing the same thing as your, the sub belt and the five point harness, but it’s got two attachment points, which, you know, has more places to make sure it doesn’t come [00:24:00] loose or come out, you know, the better. It’s always a debate between what’s better, five and six and different companies don’t even make fives anymore.

I mean, I, I I buy G-force and, and they go either way depending on how you wanna set that up. Yeah. They make a, yeah, the SFI belts, they make either way. The European belts that I’ve been seeing, you know, the last five, 10 years are all six point race tech at one point made a five point. But they haven’t for a long time.

Yeah. So I think the FIA standard now is six, you know, for competition and it’s, and it’s basically two attachment points, you know, for the sub instead of a single. Yes. But some people wanna save a buck or two, like you said earlier, you know, go on the eBay route or on Amazon. And so there are some manufacturers that are more expensive than others, and I’ve priced out different ones.

I have a tendency, yeah, to like G-Force belts because they’re wider. So some people don’t take that into consideration. The width of the belt across their shoulders and across their hips and things like that. Mm-hmm. They tend to be a little bit wider. Fargos are a bit narrow. [00:25:00] And this is just a personal thing.

I dislike Schroth because of the placement of the cam. I don’t like it on the sub. Mm-hmm. I prefer it coming across my hips. So there’s all these other considerations. Yeah. When you’re looking at belts and the way your car is set up, maybe the way your cage is set up, you know, my cars are set up for time trials, so I’ve got a different type of cage in my car.

So all these things are taken into consideration during the setup process. So I think that’s, it’s very subjective when it comes down to that. But I think we can all agree that five and six point are the way to go, especially if you’re gonna use a fixed back seat. So the bigger question that is unanswered is the why should you never run harnesses with a stock seat?

Because the shoulder belt, you know, race seats have a pass through for a reason. So they come straight over your shoulders and down, you know, to where they attach to the laps and the. Sub through the cam lock. In the case of those, and they still make latch link ones too, but with them around the going around the seat, there’s where there’s a chance for it to slip off your shoulder despite how [00:26:00] tight you get them, because they are not coming straight.

They, they have a, they, you’ve now created a curve. They have to go around that, you know, the, the back of the seat and then come back over your shoulders. It’s, it’s not a good way to go. Most of the, the track groups, and I, I’m guessing you guys are probably the same, have it in the technical regulations.

You cannot use a racing harness unless you have a racing seat. Yes, that’s true. Right? Yeah. Everyone’s gotten away from that. The other thing I wanted to say, why we’re talking about belts on is for your listeners to be very careful of what you buy online. I don’t know if you guys have seen the now semi infamous video of the guy somewhere in Eastern Europe who bought counterfeit OMP harnesses for 40 euros.

And they said these were omp, FIA six point belts, the guy’s incar video. It’s all over YouTube and I think it’s been on Facebook, and he had an impact into a tire wall. Those belts failed in multiple places, including the [00:27:00] tabs that you would, uh, you know, the, the snap in ends that would go into an eyeball, right?

Those broke. Yeah. These were counterfeit belts. The guy’s chest hit the steering wheel. The steering wheel was deformed. I mean, he went forward to the inside, came back and is sitting there slumped over, moving, and obviously a lot of pain. So if you see a what should be a $350 pair of harnesses for 50 bucks, and they say they’re brand new.

Run. Okay. So you mentioned that the slots in the seats and the, the sports seats are designed to allow the belts to pass through straight over your shoulder. Yes. Now because of my size, there are very few seats where those inserts or tho those holes are straight over my shoulder. Mm-hmm. Is that something that I need to be concerned of as a larger person or is it the belt coming into the seat a little bit lower, going up over my shoulder.

Is that still okay. And your, the car you drive now, are your shoulder’s, you know, an inch above the top of the opening [00:28:00] or are they somewhat, somewhat close? Uh, I would say probably about an an inch. Over the, from the top. What seat do you have in the car? Well, I’ve got a corbo sport. I don’t have harnesses.

I’ve got, I’m still using a three point, I’ve got a corbo recliner, but this is something that I plan on doing over the off season. So I wanna make sure that I get, you know, the correct seats for, for my body type, you know, not just fitment wise, but with the, the inlets for the, for the harnesses as well.

Are you tall in the torso, legs, or a little of both? It’s a little of both, but primarily in the legs. Okay. See big, long-legged and tall is actually, it makes it a little easier. Most of the manufacturers now make a wide and tall or tall seat for, you know, people your height, it’s six four. So there, there are certain seats you’re not gonna fit in, but there are seats out there that, and this would, this would be another thing to sit in, you know, a couple examples.

Sparko makes this new one called the pilot. It’s a halo seat. [00:29:00] You know, if I sit in it, my head is probably three inches below or four inches below the top of the seat. You know, I’m only five 11, you know, the shoulder belt opening, the bottom of the shoulder belt cutouts is probably three inches above my shoulders when I, I sat in one just for giggles in the showroom ma race deck make in some of their seats, they make a wide, then they make a wide and tall for someone, you know, someone your size that you would fit in it and be like, wow, this is comfortable.

You know, like it’s made for you. Now you have to be really careful because some of those seats get so big that you’ll only be able to track an Escalade. So if you wanna, if you wanna jam that in a new Mustang, it ain’t gonna happen right? With a low roof line or, or a Supra or anything like that. So you gotta be really careful.

Sparko used to make the A seat, they just stopped it after 2019 was called the Ergo, and they made three sizes, small, medium, and large. The large was for tall, it was wide in a car that still had door panels and it and all, its interior and sound ending. It [00:30:00] wasn’t gonna fit. You know, we had a guy try to put one in a 9 97.

And it just wasn’t gonna go to the stock mounting locations. If, if you’ve got a car where you’re, you’re gutting it, it’s getting a roll cage in, in those cases, you’d be surprised how big a seat you can put, you know, I, I saw one of those large Argos put in a Cayman. Now they had cut the original mounting out.

They’d made a plate, welded a plate to the floor, basically had the thing down on the floor cuz the guy was six foot five. But that, that was the only way they could get the seat in. You know, with our friends who have dual-purpose cars. Yes. When you get into those larger seats, OMP used to make one called the big.

I did see a guy get in a Mustang. He tried to put, two, wasn’t gonna happen. They would touch in the middle and you couldn’t close the doors. I mean, this is the point where you just say, all right, the heck with it. I’m cutting the windshield and the roof. I’m going e prepared. And it doesn’t matter at that point, you got all the room in the world.

But yeah. But that, that’s a whole nother story. But so, so when I, when it comes time for me to start buying my stuff, [00:31:00] just to give OG a little plug here, I am gonna go down and see the experts at OG and sit in a bunch of seats, and they’re gonna tell me the right stuff for my car, so I don’t need to worry about it.

Yeah. Because I know OGs got me covered. I mean, he drives a flying brick. I mean, the golf’s got all the headroom in the world. So, yeah, I was gonna say, you could, you would, if you strip out of golf, there’s a lot of real, real estate in there to put a big scene in. And of course with the big tall roof line, he’s got nothing on Mike though, with the Beetle.

Talk about headroom. He’s, he’s swimming in that thing. But at any rate, so we, we’ve talked a lot about seats, but let’s kind of wrap up this conversation about belts and seats together, because there’s something really important here from a coaching perspective, because a lot of organizations will lean on us as instructors to say, you guys gotta, you, you should really do a kind of ocular pat down of these belts.

You know, check ’em out, do an inspection. And I’m like, what the heck does that mean? Am I sitting here checking dates? I understand that this stuff, uh, apparently expires, but I don’t [00:32:00] think it’s like a carton of milk where all of a sudden it’s, it’s gone bad. So can you really explain to us what it means when a belt expires or a seat expires when I’m supposed to kind of do this inspection of these belts or these seats?

What am I looking for? Mm-hmm. Well, you mainly wanna look for as condition, you know, I’ll give you an example. I have a pair, a pair of belts in the, they’re in the garage. I used them once in a borrowed car. I didn’t like the belts that were in it. I bought belts, installed them, attempted to run the club race.

You know, we had some mechanical issues that led to my retirement, took my belts out, put his belts back in. Cause I just didn’t, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the adjusters. I just didn’t like them. You know, it was a total preference thing. Now, would those belts be unsafe if you took them in a car, you know, they expired in December of 2019.

Would they be unsafe if I took ’em out on the track? Of course not. They, they haven’t been used where I’ve seen old belts, belts that were expired five plus years ago. The car spent a lot of time [00:33:00] outside. The material does degrade. It gets stiff. The adjusters start to bind. The little things like that the clubs require now, and I think probably has a lot to do with liability.

Uh, when the expiration date’s on the belt, they’re, they’re junk. You have to replace ’em. And that the sanctioning bodies go with that, the expiration date. And I know that s f I now has an expiration date on them. The labels used to have the data manufacturer, and you’d go two years out from the data manufacturer.

Now they have an expiration date on ’em. I’ll say not valid past what? You know, February, 2021. I just threw that in. It was random date, but I seats too. A lot of it is conditioned, you know, if it’s, if it’s a car that’s, you know, stored in a garage, a car gets taken out once or twice a year, does some H P D E, it’s never had an impact.

You know, I’ve told people if you’ve had a, a severe crash where they’re required the car to be towed in and you had to go to medical to be checked out, replace the seat. It has been deflected, stressed [00:34:00] within the g loading that they’re tested for. Just put another seat in the car. So the last part of this triumvirate or trifecta here is the head and neck restraint.

Mm-hmm. So we’ve talked about the seats, we’ve talked about the belts, and you threw out there and kind of hinted at, you know, Hans and Simpson Hybrids and we talked about halos. Mm-hmm. I mean, there’s even, you know, collars and things like that. How does that play into this whole system? One, not a fan of neck collars.

You know, the old foam ones, like they give you at the cart track in, in a car, at the speeds that you’re going, I don’t like it. I feel like, oh, it makes your helmet not feel as heavy. But I feel like in the event you do have a, you know, let’s say you have a, you have an impact with the tire wall. You’re gonna get this sort of whiplash effect with it.

Cause it’s gonna compress and it’s gonna push back as your head goes back. I don’t know. That could, some people may say that’s a wives tale, but I’ve just never been a fan of those. Of course. So what now? A lot of the clubs, if you’re using a harness, they’ve made a head and neck restraint, mandatory TCA does.

It’s required. I imagine [00:35:00] BMW has done it. Not sure about nasa, but at this point, really most people are wearing them. You know, guys who have race seats and harnesses in the car, even if they’re H P D E, people are wearing a head and neck restraint at this point. I don’t see a reason not to. The knock was, oh, I can’t turn my head, oh, I don’t like it.

Oh, it’s uncomfortable. There are multiple devices out there. You can find one that works for you, whether it’s a, you know, a next Gen a Hans, the Simpson. Uh, Simpson Hybrid Thero, flex Sparko sells one that’s made by Stan 21. It’s like a Hans. They fit a little differently, you know, find the one that’s comfortable.

What I tell people, you know, they’ve been, you know, the, the Hans and the, and the Stan 21, you know, the, the SCH flex, you know the ones that are European or have f i a certification in addition to sfi, some Hans, you can get, you can get one that’s either sfi, F i A, or both. I think it’s the same device. And you know, they just put, they put both labels on it.

Cause I know a lot of people running in the Oval Track world, they require SFI stuff. [00:36:00] And what’s funny about the Hans is there’s an expiration there too, but it’s a giant piece of carbon fiber. Isn’t that the padding and the tethers that need to be updated, but not the physical unit itself, they want.

Hans wants to see your device, I think about every four years they’ll examine it. You should replace your tethers clubs now will check dates on tethers. I think bmw, c c a, I think they, I think it, it’s like a, it’s, it’s within two years. They’ll make you replace ’em. It’s, I mean, they’re cheap. They’re $40 just by you.

You can buy a new tether, send you, Hans wants you to send the device back. They will put a new SFI sticker on it with more current dates. And I know some clubs will enforce that. Some do not. If you’re in an impact, I would have the device check. If you’re in a serious wreck, send it back to ’em. Pay ’em, you know, they’ll put new tethers on it.

They’ll, you know, they’ll, we’ll check to see if there are any cracks or anything that could, could render it unsafe and, and have it fail. Should it be tested again? You know, with [00:37:00] another impact. Yeah. And I mean, I spent the extra money for the adjustable Hans, which I have adjusted once and never mm-hmm.

Messed with ever again. So, you know. Yeah. To your point about fitment, right. It it, and I had to get the adjustable Hans because of the particularities of my car and stuff like that, and there was an issue. Mm-hmm With the regular one, with clearance, with the seat and all that. Again, reiterating the fact that all of this stuff works together.

You can’t just go pick it off the shelf. It all has to be fitted. It has to be fitted with you in the car. So we’re talking about all this as a system, and we’ve talked about it a couple times, but is there really such a thing as a safe dual use car? Hmm. If you’re using belts without a hands, could be, you’re not safe.

But if you’re using three point, if you have fixed seats in the car, you need to use belts to get proper safety. So therefore you’d have to use a hands while driving on the street, which means wearing a helmet. Which screw screws with your visibility. And technically it’s illegal in a lot of states to run harnesses on the street.

So you still have to have [00:38:00] Yes, a three point belt if you have tags on the car. So it becomes a whole kind of cluster there at the end of the day. Yes. I do know guys that will change out their seat, you know, their car has the rollbar in it. That Rollbar is, is in the car and they, a couple days before they leave for the track, they’ll go out in the garage and take the stock seat out, put their race seat in, you know, all their mounting for their harnesses is there, install that they, they will drive it out to the track and some guys still trailer, even if it’s a dual use car, they’ll still trailer it to a track event, you know, in the event something breaks, you know, so they can get home if they, when they want to take the car out on the street, they’ll swap the seats out.

Some states will say you can’t use your harnesses on the street. I still think you could have a safe dual use car. I, I think you can. I mean, Mike, I think I would wanna redefine what dual use means because to me, I would see it as, in the case of this particular conversation, we could have a dual use card that can do autocross and track and it would be safe for both, but not street.

Mm-hmm. And [00:39:00] track and not street and autocross or, or hill climb or whatever. And I will say, if you look at the different regs, especially if you go to S c A or NASA or some of the organizations and read through like the Gcr, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s an endless bible of information there. Yeah. There’s a lot about how cages are built, how the restraint systems are supposed to be put together, and then they will have caveats based on the discipline.

So if you’re in rally cross, there’s extra things you have to do. If you’re in club racing, there’s things, you have other things you have to do. I would say the great compromise though, if you’re looking to build a Swiss Army knife from a safety perspective, and Mark, you can correct me if I’m wrong.

Mm-hmm. If you follow Hill Climb slash time trial spec, it’s kind of the best of all worlds. But you’re not looking at a full cage, looking at a half back. You know, you’re looking at full harnesses with fixed seats, partial fire system, you know, so the car is still usable in other instances like autocross and at de and things like that.

Yeah. But it’s not legal at club racing, but it’s also not [00:40:00] legal on the street, so it kind of sits in the middle. Well, then you look at some of the new cars that have those optional sports seats, you know, Porsche with the Corvette, the, I think the GT three 50 have those karros in them where they have provisions for you to use a racing harness on the track.

The Porsche one at least, you know, on the driver’s side, there’s a cutout for a sub belt. There’s a sub bar to attach it to underneath. It’s part of the mounting system for it. But now you’re back in that hole. You’re using an adjustable back seat again still. So if you’re saying, you know, ultimate safety is a fixed back seat.

Mm-hmm. There’s no way to have a safe street and track car with a fixed back seat unless you’re swapping out seats like you described. You’re, you know, people you know are doing well. The ca and the case of those, I know with the Porsches, I’m not sure about, I know BMW has that M four GTS car. It’s like a, a joke and say it’s a BMW cup car or club sport.

Like the can, the sport buckets, as Porsche calls them, they don’t recline. You could tilt it slightly forward to put [00:41:00] things in the back seat, but the seat will not recline. It’s in a fixed position when it’s upright. Interesting. It’ll tilt forward just a couple inches. If you were to want to put a duffle bag, your gym bag into the back on, you know, where the rear seat would be like in a GT three to go to the gym.

But yeah, the, the seats do not recline. They only have a, a forward, where it moves forward a little bit to put packages in the back. In the back where the rear seats would be. Yeah. The Porsche world. Those are popular with guys, people buying those secondhand. So let’s jump back to close out the whole idea of head and neck restraint there for a second.

And, and you mentioned, mark, that there’s multiple vendors in that particular space, but you know, most of us know two of them. And you mentioned ’em, it’s Hans and it’s Simpson. Mm-hmm. So let’s, let’s throw it out there, Hans versus Simpson. What do you think is, is Hans Passe now, everybody’s moving to the Simpson?

Or is the Simpson, is it everything that it’s cracked up to be? What do you think? As a professional, I still wear Hans. I [00:42:00] have for 15 years. I’m used to it. It’s comfortable in the right seat. I was into the tire wall and turned 10. It wasn’t a major hit. Had it been a race weekend, the guy would’ve kept driving but still had a, you know, we did have an impact.

It worked and there was a lot of science. I mean, years and years of development. It was the first one. A lot of the other ones came on the scene. It, it was really the, the impetus was Dale Earnhardt’s crash. Then you saw that Hutchins, that cr crazy strap contraption that some of the NASCAR guys were wearing that would basically crush your nuts in a, in a wreck.

But it was cuz it went up between your legs and it was like, you’re wearing this like we gear thing. Never sold them, never sold anybody, you know, and our, our World of Road course was wearing them. The Simpson Hybrid s Simpson did, or somebody paid to have that sled tested like a Hans device and they tested it with a three-point seatbelt.

It is the only device that was actually tested and s f I certified for use of a three-point [00:43:00] seatbelt. If all you’re doing is instructing. Or even if you’re driving on the track and you have no interest in putting a, a rollbar, a race seat, going to harnesses. And there are a few instructors I’ve seen that do it, that haven’t.

You can use that device with a three-point seatbelt. I actually did a test ride with one. I had to jump in the right seat the last minute to go with the student, and his instructor hadn’t shown. And the chief instructor said, here, you wanna wear this? I’m like, sure. Might as well test drive it. Hans is owned by Simpson.

Simpson also bought Safety Solutions. What got them? That whole design for the hybrid, there was an evolution of the old original safety solutions. R three came out, I think 6 0 7, somewhere in there. It’s been a long time. The, uh, the Simpson Hybrid s not the sport, they have another one called the Sport.

It’s cheaper. It’s about half the price. It has not been tested for, uh, three point seat belts. It really, it comes down the fit. I, uh, and maybe it’s be just because I’m used to it, that I, I feel naked without my hats when I [00:44:00] get in the, when I get in the car. Like if I have to get in with a green, green student with three-point seat belts and I can’t wear it and it, it feels funny.

But I also know that, you know, I have things there to protect me in that car because it’s got curtain airbags, it’s got airbag in the seat. You know, these newer cars have airbag, you know, they come outta everywhere to keep my, my head’s not gonna snap forward where I could have the, you know, the basal skull fracture.

A lot of the other designs of, you know, the Stan 21, you know, Hans did allow some of the other manufacturers to make them under license when they were in Europe. OMP made a Hans device, said OMP on it, but it also said Hans on it. But they were allowed to produce it to Hans standards for a licensing thing, cuz I, I don’t think Hans could sell in Europe.

So there were a couple manufacturers who made them under license. It really comes down to what you’re doing if you’re primarily instructing and you’re getting, you spend a lot of time getting in beginner’s cars. The, the hybrid S makes sense. Because you, you know that you can use it with [00:45:00] a three-point belt or if your car is equipped to harnesses, it works with that too.

Me personally, I still wear my Hans, there was a ton of signs behind it. The one time I had to test it, it worked. I didn’t have any neck soreness or anything. The next day it was back in the car. I was gonna ask about the Simpson Hybrid s being as effective with these, you know, the harnesses as it is with the three point.

Because as an instructor, I actually over the winter just bought a Simpson Hybrid S because I am gonna be mm-hmm. In and outta students’ cars with three points. Some students do have harnesses cuz they’ve got full on race cars, uh, and and things like that. Yeah. And I wanted the Simpson hyper desks because of the flexibility.

But it is just as effective with harnesses as it is, as careful with the wording cuz I don’t think that the wording that they use, they didn’t say just as effective. They said it will reduce the chance of an injury. And I guess this is the legal use that you gotta be careful, you know, the, for the, the lawyer speak, be careful of how they word it.

Because they’ve said that, you know, what they’ve said is they, [00:46:00] when, when it was tested, it worked will be just at like a hundred percent as effective with harnesses. I’m not sure because it’s funny. And you ask them, I think you’ll get a sort of a Well, it passed the test. It passed to the test and it was certified answer.

I was gonna say that’s like 27% of all statistics are made up. But, uh, continue your thought. No, but Brad’s right, will it protect him if he, he’s in the right seat of that beginner’s car and. Yes. Now the thing I have with the Simpson is it looks wholly uncomfortable. Like it reminds me a lot of the old spine protection that the cart racers had and stuff like that.

So for me, I, I’m okay with the Hans being that yoke around my neck, but on the same token, I’ve seen it and it, there’s a sizing issue with the, with the Simpson. To me, it, it always seems too small on everybody I’ve seen wear it. It’s like, you know, it looks like a G-string. I mean, the Hans kind of is like a one size fits all, as long as you can get it around your neck, it looks appropriate.

It looks [00:47:00] like it should fit. Mm-hmm. At most everybody. How do you size the Simpson Hybrid? To me, it just, again, it doesn’t look right. They never, if you’re me, you just buy the largest one. The measurement for the, you know, the strap that comes around. It’s almost like if you were buying a dinner jacket. The medium is like 40 to 42, which I think, you know, I wear a 42 and the jacket in my suit, I just remember, not that I’ve worn one in a long time.

And then they have the large, it’s, it’s outfits around the torso area and of course that little part that comes down partway down, you know, past your shoulders. It’s really the strap that seems to be bigger. I think the one I borrowed was a medium, you know, but I’m like average Joe size. So what you’re saying, mark, is I gotta go to my local Joseph A.

Banks to get fitted for my Simpson Hybrid. Yeah. You would wanna know your jacket, like a size, like on a blazer? Yes. Yeah, it would, it would, would be helpful. That’s fair. I mean, I, I’m like you, I’ve had a Hans for a long time. I’m probably due for some tethers, so I’ll come visit you soon. It’s really a how, how [00:48:00] does it feel?

Is it comfortable? Cause you don’t want the distraction of it. Like you’re sitting there and that portion of your brain is saying, I don’t like this thing. It’s uncomfortable, it hurts. You know, my, I don’t like how my head feels. I don’t like how it sits on my shoulders. It really comes down to fit. I remember when the precursor to the next gen, when it was called the Defender, when that came out, it had that, you know, piece that went over the belt, sort of went in the piece that sat over your shoulders and it had that piece over it.

And I talked to a guy who bought one and he said, you know, it’s neat. I like it. I like how I, I know the belts aren’t gonna slip off, but I have a short neck. It’s pushing the chin bar of my helmet up when I’m in the car. When he said he had a spec racer for it and when he’d said in it, the seating position and the thing because he had a short neck, it was pushing on the chin bar of his bell dominator or whatever he wore at the time that had the little, you know, lip spoiler on the, on the chin.

And that, you know, that was an interesting observation. And I, you know, when people would ask about him later, [00:49:00] I’d ask him, do you have a, do you have a really short neck, you know, a lot of muscles on your shoulders that make it look like you have a short neck cuz you may not want to try this device. You may want to get, you know, go with the Hans because of that extra piece that went over the belt.

So it really comes down to fitment there, you know, all the devices out there these days have all been tested. You know, with the, the crash test dummies and shown to work. And then of course, you know, Brad’s case, he liked the hybrid S because he does a lot of instructing and a lot of times it’s in a car that doesn’t have harnesses.

So it, it makes sense for him. And he, I guess there’s a comfortable for you. Yeah, it’s comfortable. I, I, I haven’t had a chance to actually use it on track yet. This weekend coming up, it’s gonna be my first time, but I’ve put it on and warned it around the house. Just for fun. Mm-hmm. And it was quite comfortable.

I, I didn’t know you, I didn’t know you mowed the lawn with your helmet on Brad. That’s pretty cool. Safety as a system, Eric? No, he was doing private modeling. He was only wearing that, yes. Oh, just, just the, just the Simpson in my helmet [00:50:00] with a beer in my hand. And the steering wheel of the lawnmower and the other, I mean that, I mean, it does look like a combination jockstrap cod piece sometimes.

So I’m at the right angle. But that, that aside, so let’s switch to Mike for a second from the coach’s perspective. And there’s this concept in the classroom and a tech and even pre-registration that is this, this idea of equal restraint. So let’s talk about it from your perspective, Mike, and what that means by definition.

And then let’s go to Mark to kind of back that up as to what equal restraint really means at the end of the day. So, Mike, go ahead. So some of it will come down to instructor preference because. Some instructors are, are more tolerant of risk than others. Mm-hmm. Basically, it means anything that the driver has available, protect, protect themselves in terms of the seat, the, the restraints and any other devices needs to be equivalent on the passenger side.

So if the driver is using a five point harness and a fixed back seat, [00:51:00] you can’t have a stock seat and a three point belt in the passenger seat of seen cases where both sides had a fixed back seat or even a reclining sports seat where the driver had like a Schroth four point or maybe even a five point, but there wasn’t equivalent on the passenger side.

And mm-hmm. Oftentimes I’ve seen, especially in the case where it’s like sport reclining seats and where the instructor just made the student uses three point belt instead. Because when that student is using that three point belt, rather than the harnesses, they actually become a little self-conscious themselves and dial it back a bit.

So that’s the best compromise I’ve seen in a case where there was the ability to have equal restraint, but the the maximum level was not available on both sides. So as we turn this over to Mark, mark, does that mean when I come into OG and I’m shopping for seats, I’ve gotta buy two o p wcs? Or does that really mean I just have to have what’s known as like and [00:52:00] kind seats are both black and they can both support five point harnesses or six point and I have to have six point harnesses on both sides?

Or what’s your recommendation there if you’re gonna do it STRs all around or, or whatever. Everything matching. So what does, is it a loose interpretation of equal restraint? What does it mean to you as a distributor? What it means to me is if the driver has a race seat, there needs to be one for the passenger.

If the driver is using a harness, there needs to be one for the passenger. I see it all the, I see it plenty of times and it’s acceptable. I’ve gotten in cars this way where the driver may have an O M P H T E. Payload seat, but on the passenger side, he’s got a WRC on his side, he’ll have an OMP harness on the passenger side.

Since it doesn’t get used much, he’s got a G-Force harness. Am I okay with that? Yes. Does it meet the rules? Yes, because I’m in a fixed back racing seat with a harness that I can use my head and neck restraint as the driver is [00:53:00] doing. Yeah. They don’t have to be like a perfect match. Like if you were to go to the track, I wouldn’t do it.

And I’ve never seen anybody else do. Oh, you have a, a Sparko pro, a DV on your side and only a, an EVO on the other side. No, I’m not getting in the car. Like you don’t have to have two halos. Having a halo over the passenger seat does restrict vision with that second one over there really bottles up when you’re, you know, if you’re trying to throw that quick glance, you know, to the right just to double check your mirror, you know, the way I’ve always interpreted it and I think the, I’ve seen it with the clubs.

I’ve seen cars going to grid. That way. People, the passenger side, they’re gonna maybe seldom gonna be used, you know, if it’s an instructor that I’ll throw a passenger seat in this weekend, cuz I may wanna take my student for a ride. Yeah. The seats don’t have to be the exact same seat and the exact same belts.

As long as you’re providing the same type of restraint that you have as a driver to the passenger, that’s acceptable. She used Tanya as an example. Again, she’s tiny. She can have a tiny [00:54:00] little seat. Yes. But she’s not gonna find an instructor who fits in that tiny little seat most of the time. So, or, or even a student, you know, if, if she’s instructing.

So having a more general purpose, friendly, equivalent size, equivalent seat, like a more accommodating fixed back seat in the passenger seat that will fit a wider range of people is actually a very good idea. Because you’re more likely to be able to have someone safely secured in that seat than sitting awkwardly on top of it or, uh, yeah, uncomfortably contorted in it.

That’s acceptable. I’ve seen it. I see that all the time. You know, you got a driver who’s a smaller guy, he’s got his, you know, skinny European guy, Sparko circuit seat. Better be wearing your skinny jeans and a 30 inch waist to fit in it cuz it’s tight. But for the passenger side to accommodate his range of instructors.

Maybe he’s got, you’ve got an EVO too, because it fits. I’ve seen people do that all the time. Don’t they want the brand to be the same, but it does not the same model. And that, I mean, that’s a pre, you know how some [00:55:00] people, I don’t want to have a OMP driver’s seat in a sparko passenger seat, or vice versa.

You know, they like to at least match the brand. But yeah, you can, you, you wanna put a seat in that’ll accommodate a wider range of passengers. Cuz your instructors are all different too. Well maybe it’s the, the stance, bro, in me, I’m vain, I want my seats to look the same. So I got matching seats for my car matching belts.

But to your point, Mike, about, about Tanya’s car, not to call her out on the episode, but you know, she’s on here. Enough people have gotten used to hearing her. But yeah, she’s got matching courses in that beetle. And I tell you what interesting story. We bought ’em at OG and the one she has on her driver’s side was a floor model.

So it had been sat in a bunch and somewhat, I would say stretched because the one that came out of the warehouse is really tight and it’s really uncomfortable. I dunno what it’s pull the padding, you know? Yeah. The padding, the padding compresses, you know, even the parts you can’t take out, you can pull the bottom cushion in the, in the five bolster cushion.

And even the, on the, [00:56:00] in the old days before they made it a one piece, you could pull that little pad that’s behind your back. Take all that stuff out. Interesting. The one the, the one she ended up putting in the driver’s side was the display. Yep. And after being sat ined by however many people over the course of a year or two, padding got a little compressed.

It is so much more comfortable. I’ve sat in the passenger one and it’s like my whole bottom half goes numb after a while. I mean, it’s really tight, tight fit. Yeah. The course of, yeah, the course’s a tight seat. I’ve sat in those, but she’s, you know, she’s of, of, uh, a smaller stature. So for her it’s perfect.

Mm-hmm. But for the rest of us, normal humans, it ain’t gonna fit. But with that being said, when talking about being stylish, let’s talk about racing gear cuz that’s the next thing. Everybody wants to look like a race car driver. Right. So I gotta get my helmet. Yes. I gotta get my shoes, I gotta get my driving suit and all that kind of stuff.

So let’s talk about, you know, helmet sizing and fitment and racing suits and cool suits, alternatives. Mm-hmm. Just want to piggyback on the, the helmet discussion, cuz Mark, you and I had a discussion a couple weeks ago about this. [00:57:00] Mm-hmm. But I’m looking at everything through the big guy lens and so everything I ask is geared towards me and Mike mm-hmm.

And the other people in the group, but the discussion of helmets and are there helmets that are lower profile than others? To answer your question, there are manufacturers who make a more compact shell. You know, like I’ve, I’ve found that, you know, out there in the market of the, of the ones that we carry and the ones that I put my hands on and put my, put my, you know, put on my head the arise and the steel lows have a more compact shell and say a bell, you know, the bells tend to be a little bit bigger.

And in your case, being a six foot four big guy, you probably have a lot of I issues getting fitted where you don’t want your helmet buttoned up against your roll cage and you can find some room in some of the, you know, the other manufacturers that do make a more compact. Shell, it still meets both the SA and the FIA standards, you know, for, you know, the helmets that are, that are also get the FIA certification, but in a tighter package.

And that must be with some of the stuff they use on the inside for the [00:58:00] padding that allows them to have the same amount of protection in a smaller shell. You know, I always tell people when we start with helmets, you know, because all our heads are shaped differently, uh, you know, whether it’s, you know, around the crown of our head, or some people have like fuller cheeks than other people.

You know, some people have a, like sort of a long skinny head. Some people have a round head, and of course a helmet manufacturer can’t make three different shapes of each model of helmet. It’s just not cost effective. So they try to get one that’s sort of in the ballpark that’ll, that’ll try to fit a wide range of drivers.

And then, but then we’ll offer. Different thickness, cheek pads, you know, on steel, you can remove the crown pad on top of your head and go thicker or thinner to get the helmet to sit properly on your head. Some manufacturers don’t let you take the cheek pads out. I would, I think they all should at this point, but not all of them do.

You know, they’re glued in and the one piece piece from the whole bottom half of the helmet. But that being said about our heads are different. When you go to try helmets on try for fit, it’s just like a pair of [00:59:00] shoes. You’re not gonna buy a pair of shoes that are uncomfortable. You don’t want a helmet that’s uncomfortable.

It’s not only is it protecting your nogging, but you don’t want the distraction of, man my head’s, you know, my helmet just doesn’t fit. Right. And one common mistake a lot of first time buyers make with a helmet, they buy a helmet that’s too big and they slip it on. So you’ll think, oh, this feels pretty good.

And then after you, you wear it and break it in, and they’re padding compressors a little bit and you find out later, you know, I’ve seen people in a paddock. I look at ’em, they’re like, your helmet’s too big. Maybe they just went on a website, you know, Google. You know, whichever model helmet it was and hit the first link that popped up, purchased it online, didn’t talk to anybody.

You know, there, there are, you know, measurement you can take to get you in the ballpark if you have the opportunity to, if you’re at a track that has a Trackside store, like Summit Point has the Muck five Pro Shop, they have helmets in there, you can go try on a couple different brands. If you go to N jmp, the general store, she’s got different brands of helmets in there.

Try one. Try one on if you [01:00:00] can, because there’s nothing worse than having an ill-fitting helmet. A lot of beginners will come out there with a motorcycle helmet that they borrowed from their buddy. And can you explain why that’s a bad idea? Well, it’s funny, I’ve seen in including PCA will let you use a EM rated helmet through Blue group, which would be like, you know, the equivalent to H P D two and NASA or an, I’m sure like your intermediate group, I guess with.

Hooked on driving. It’s not the beginner, but they, it’s still, you’re in, in an instructed group, but the drivers in there have experience, you know, once he get to solo groups, they require an SA or FIA rated helmet. I can see the beginner coming out for the first time. You know, he wants to check it out and see if the hobby for him.

But, you know, if the guy’s been coming out to the track for two years and he is still wearing a motorcycle helmet, he needs to get a helmet because they’re, I think they’re crash tested differently. And of course, motorcycle helmets won’t have a fire resistant [01:01:00] lining to ’em. Like an, you know, like a, a helmet made for motorsports comes down to having the proper gear, the, the, the beginners.

I get it. If you’ve been doing it, if you go through a first season of it, obviously you’re committed. At that point, it’s time for the proper helmet. So I think you make a really valid point there, and I’m sure the listeners are probably scratching their heads going when you talk about crash resistance.

Technically a motorcycle helmet would have better crash resistance that a car helmet would just because of the fact that you’re in the open air. But I think what the major difference here is, is the fire retardant part of the helmet mm-hmm. Is much more involved in a car because you’re in an enclosed space.

Unless you’re in that e prepared Miata like we were talking about earlier. But so that’s the real big thing here, and that’s the reason why, you know, when we talk about a lot of this stuff, again, it works as a system. There’s a lot of Nomex gear that we wear in Motorsport that you don’t wear on a motorcycle.

Motorcycle. You wear leathers. I mean, granted, there’s. Probably some fire retardant stuff on motorcycles too, but it’s very [01:02:00] different. The, the, the race suits are different. Everything is different between those two disciplines. So in this case, car helmets for cars, motorcycle helmets for, for motorcycles.

That is the rule of thumb, but I’m glad to see that some club, to get people ingratiated into the sport are allowing them to at least not sacrifice their investment and say, Hey, for your first couple events, come on out with your m helmet. And you, you’re good to go. I’ve also seen this Yes. With carting where carting for whatever reason, requires SA helmets and not m helmets as well.

Mm-hmm. Again, look at the different disciplines to see what the regulations, uh, allow and require. Yes. Go ahead, Mike. But the cart, you’re strapped into the cart. That’s true. That has gasoline behind you. Usually that’s true. Motorcycle. You just fall off it. Yeah. Or get thrown and skip, skip and skip. It’s skip across the ground like a skipping a stone.

Let’s go back to fitment for a minute. Cause we, I don’t think we closed that, that thought. And to, to your point about bigger helmets and, and things like that, and this is why it’s important to get fitted. [01:03:00] There are companies that run small. In terms of their cut. Yeah. So it’s like, you know, it’s funny, a lot of this is like buying shoes.

Once you know how you fit a certain manufacturer, you know what to buy and you’re always that, you know, let’s say size 11 Adidas, even though you’re actually a nine and a half, because a nine and a half is super uncomfortable just because they cut, they’re small. So the same is true I found of like Sparko and, and some of the other helmets.

I prefer the bells. I wanna try on a ru, but I don’t wanna look like an astronaut with all those hookups either. And we’ll talk about that in a minute. But I have found my actual. Fitment size is an L and I have an large bell, and it’s uhhuh. It becomes incredibly uncomfortable even after I’ve broken it in.

So what I’ve done is I upgraded and I wear an xl and it’s ridiculous, but at the end of the day, after a long day, I, it, I feel less claustrophobic. And I don’t have all that, that pushing and [01:04:00] the, and the, basically the headache that comes with wearing a helmet that realistically fits me, but really doesn’t fit me comfortably.

Mm-hmm. And so I think it’s really important that people do try them on, uh, and try on, yeah. All sorts of different helmets. Because a large sparkle is not the same as a large bell, is not the same as a large rue at the end of the day. No. You know, like ex Exactly. I’ve worn, I’m on my fourth bell helmet.

They’re all size seven and a half, and they’re four different models. As they progressed over the years, consistent, they consistently fit me. If I put on were to put on an awry GP six, I need an extra large, I can’t even get a large on my head. Steelo large. Plus I don’t remember what size Simpson I tried on, but Simpson just didn’t fit my head.

It was nothing wrong with the Simpson helmet. It’s my head. The shape of my noggin just didn’t fit in the thing. You know? Same with the rooks helmet. Wanted one of those with the integrated communications gear. I was like, I was all about it. I tried changing cheek pads. [01:05:00] What it was was, it was around the crown of my head.

It just, my head just didn’t fit in it properly. Just not comfortably. Or it was like, it was sitting more on my head than my head being in it, which is, you know, I like my helmet. I feel like it’s in it, you know, it’s in, it’s down. It’s tight, you know, cuz it’s, you know, you don’t want an uncomfortable helmet.

You’re distracted. Cuz that little portion of your brain is gonna be going, man, I hate this helmet, man. I hate this helmet. Why? You’re going down the. The shoot at Summit Point. And just to, to add onto that, how should a helmet fit? Like what does the proper fitting helmet feel like? It needs to be snug, it needs to feel like it’s tight, slight, you know, pressure on your cheeks, but not that, where you can’t speak without biting the inside of your cheek.

You know, that’s generally what I tell people. What you don’t want are the, an uncomfortable pressure, right on the, on your forehead. You’ll know if it’s too tight, if you’re, you know, if you put it on in the, in the showroom and walking around and within two or three minutes it starts to hurt [01:06:00] cuz you know, it could be that you have an in or go to the adventures of Mark Francis for a second.

I, I’ve had like this in between size head that I tried to the size down and it was slightly too tight. And so the size I wear now with the head sock is perfect without the head socket feel. Yeah. After it broke in, feels a little loose. My old helmet that I, I raced in for several years that I now use when I go carting.

You know, the la I don’t, I didn’t even take a bottle of cava anymore. But it, it’s funny, it, it doesn’t fit the same without it. You, you, you don’t want it to feel like it without a chin strap. If you were to abruptly like flop your head forward to have the thing come off your head needs to stay in it.

Since we’re still talking about helmets, a lot of organizations allow you to run open face. How do you feel about open face helmets? Personally, I’ve worn one, one time at a track days event where I was asked to get in the car and I didn’t have my gear. And I’ll tell you what, it felt weird cuz I’ve always worn a full face helmet.

I’ve always wanted that protection, you [01:07:00] know, whether it’s debris, you know what happens if I hit a deer and the thing comes, you know, the pieces of it come through the windshield or the side door, you know, I don’t want to have my face messed up. Now, of course, there, there have been all these, you know, various discussions about fa open face or full face in a car with airbags.

But I don’t know the right answer for that one. Cuz you, you hear on the forums, you hear everybody arguing both sides of that all day long. I mean, personally, I like the, I like a, I like a full face helmet. Open faced for autocross. Sure. On the track. It, I don’t know, it just, it just feels weird. It’s just like, why, you know, I wouldn’t go out on the track without a shirt on or barefoot.

So, visors up or visors down. When you’re behind a windshield, I keep mine cracked at the bottom. I need a little airflow. I just get, I get claustrophobic when it’s shut all the way. But then again, I’ve never driven an open car. Obviously in an open car it’d be closed. So I’d have to, I’d have to learn how to deal with it.

You know, there’s other parts to this whole setup. The helmet is just part of it. And [01:08:00] nowadays the helmets are already pre-drilled for Hans Vices and Simpsons and all that for anchor posts and whatnot. Yeah. But helmet, yeah, they have the threaded, they have the threaded terminals or molded into the shell during the manufacturing process.

I see. Yeah. You’re not allowed to drill any holes in a helmet right now. It, it’ll avoid the certification. I know FIA made that very clear, you know, the days of, you know, wiring up radios and popping a couple rivets in the rivet, the, uh, connection for your earbuds onto the side of the helmet. You know, we used to drill helmets for Hans Anchors.

I guys used to drill holes in the, in the chin bar to run a drink tube. You know, you cannot do any of that anymore. It voids the certification. That’s actually really good to know because I had a helmet drilled years ago, and so I, I didn’t realize that that was the case. Well, back then, well, back then you could back, you know, the pro team, you see the, the pros running the 24 hours, a Daytona with a drink tube going right through the chin bar.

Now, you can’t make any alterations to the shell for the, for the fia. Um, that’s why you see these [01:09:00] manufacturers now, like Steelo and Rooks. It’s already in there and there’s like a little cool shirt adapter on the side to plug a drink line into, you know, to get your hydration. You know, the, the threaded terminals are now in there for, to screw the Hans anchors into no more getting painter’s tape in a, in a sharpie and in a tape measure and measuring and drilling holes in it, and putting a backing washer between the padding and the shell, and screwing the anchors in that went out with the, uh, uh, SA 15 helmets.

All the SA 15 helmets had. Threaded terminals molded into the shell during the manufacturing process, trying to get in line with the FIA certifications. So since you brought that up, we actually talked about this a good bit on an episode called Things I Wish I knew as a new, where we discussed mm-hmm.

Helmets and gloves and things of that nature with, with Brad and Mike, who are here with us tonight. And one of the things I wanted to just bring up again, since we’re talking about it, is the expiration and certification dates of helmets now. Mm-hmm. Most people don’t realize helmets are good for about 11 [01:10:00] years and that’s because there’s a one year grace period there where the new helmets generally aren’t out yet.

And so, you know, you aren’t gonna buy your 2020 helmet until probably 2021. And that just has to do with manufacturing logistics and, and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Time. Time for the time for all the distributors to have inventory for you to make a selection. Yes. Exactly. Um, I was made aware that two weeks ago, S C C A has said they will allow an SA 2010 helmet through next year to the end of the season.

So I think other clubs will follow suit at least maybe to six months. I know, uh, the past PCA and NASA have said, you know, we’ll let you use it till, you know, June 30th of the, of the next year. By then we’ll want you to have it in 2015. There was a, there was a supply shortage when the SA fifteens came out.

You know, bell had moved their worldwide manufacturing. There was obviously logistical hiccups with getting that up and running and getting the helmets produced. Two other manufacturers [01:11:00] didn’t even release theirs till January of 2017 was by the time we received them. So we’d already missed a year, you know, going through the, uh, the, uh, SA ratings, you know, testing process.

They were late. But yeah, generally, you’re right. A lot of the clubs will, we’re gonna give you that grace period. In this case. S c A has said the end of 21. Right. Okay. The other clubs have not made a decision yet. They’ve implied that, yeah, we’re probably gonna give you some extra time, but they haven’t, they haven’t put it in, you know, in an email blast yet.

Uh, what it is. We haven’t seen it, and correct me if I’m wrong, most of the reason the helmet quote unquote expires. I’ve heard two different things. One, the outer casing or you know, the m and m shell there holding all that gooey chocolate inside gets brittle over time and that’s, and that wears down cuz you know, and the enamel and all that stuff that’s on the outside for the paint, but also your sweat because it bleeds into the foam and the material inside the helmet.

Yes. Accelerates the [01:12:00] breakdown of the fire retardant material and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, they say that. They say it could, and you know, with each certification they may come, they may come up with a new safety feature that’s part of that, you know, like when FIA came out, you know, they used to have FIA 88 59 and then when they came out with FIA 88 60, there was more reinforcement in the chin bar in the frontal area around the I port.

And I think that was a, something that came out of, after the. Incident where Felipe Masa took a spring off Ruben Bar’s, brawn that hit, went, hit him right where his shield was. You know, that that led to them putting that, uh, piece along the top and now these double pane visors that you see on some helmets.

Interesting. You know, more protection cuz it, cuz it broke through and hit him, you know, it cracked his skull above his eye and had nearly killed him. But that led to his, you know, changes in that reinforcement area around there, around the front of the helmet. You know, here’s a question you’re gonna hear from your, probably new people showing [01:13:00] up at your event this weekend.

You know, when are the 2020 hell helmets coming out? Should I just wait and get a 2020? You know, the answer is, you know, I always tell people it depends how much are you going to the track? Oh, I go, I do like 12 events a year. And I ask them, are you, do you, you really think you’re gonna wear the helmet for 10 to 11 years of sweating in it?

Of, you know, getting paint chips, you know, bumping it against the roll cage, getting out of the car or whatever. And you know, a lot of times they’ll be like, No, I said, you know, then there’s a chance to pick up an SA 15 on sale, cuz they will all be on sale, especially when the twenties start shipping, which will be October 1st, by the way, is when according for the, uh, Snell Foundation rules, they can start, manufacturers can start shipping them to the, their distribution network starting on October 1st of this year.

I, I will say I’ve used my 2010 helmet since 2014 and mm-hmm. And Eric knows just how many track events I’ve done in that thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:14:00] It could, it could, it could do its own track date at this point. It could drive, it’s, it’s measured in dog years at this point. Yeah. Ty typically, typically the manufacturers will, you know, sort of the party line, you know, for lack of a better term, they’ll say in five years it’s time to get a helmet if you’re using it a lot.

Now, for the, for the Autocrosser that does a couple auto crosses a year, and we know what’s, you know, typical CROs runs about a minute. Minute, 10 seconds, maybe less, you know, they’re not really the helmet’s, not getting the wear and tear of an H P D E or a club racer, got person. You’re not wearing it for long periods of time.

You know, you put your helmet on, you do your autocross, first of your three or four runs of the day, come in, you take it off. I would not be surprised if my helmet has 160 days on it. That’s, that’s good. You’ve had it for six years. The longest I’ve worn one is, I think I wore one helmet for seven. But the funny thing is, is there was a stretch of about three of those years where I, maybe I wore it once, once that [01:15:00] season.

So, mark, another big question that comes up and, and this is again along the lines of wives tales and MythBusters here. I’ve heard if you drop your helmet from any height, you know, be in an inch or 10 feet, it’s time to throw it away and get another one. Now there’s always instances and, and I’ve heard.

Swearing all over the paddock. Somebody had it on the roof and they mm-hmm. They didn’t grab it right. Or it fell off the cage or off the hook or, you know, you had it on the fender or the go-kart and it hit the ground. I mean, what’s, what’s the truth here? I mean, you don’t wanna do it repeatedly or beat it into the ground.

Can your helmet take a fall and you don’t have to rush out tomorrow and go buy another one? Depends on the fall. How many times have I seen it in 23 years of going to the track where, you know, the guy gets out and he sits it on the roof of his car and it’s Derek sits and then, you know, blue run group, five minute call and the guy jumps in the car, fires it up, throws it in gear, drives away, and that helmet, you know, rolls off the car and bounces [01:16:00] across the paddock.

Yeah. That’s not, it’s not good for it. I’m very careful with mine and I even, I, I even reinforce that with students. Be very careful when it don’t, don’t sit it there. Nope. Take it off. Sit it when I get outta the car. Sit it on the passenger down in the foot. Well, Not even on the seat, you know, just to, so it doesn’t bounce around.

Now, is it true that if it were to fall off, say sitting on the back, sitting on the wing, on the back of your, of your, uh, TT and fall and hit the ground? To be honest with you, I don’t know. That’s, that’s a question for an engineer. I would ask a manufacturer for definitive. Yes, I’ve heard the same thing. I was told that at one point, as you know, when, when I was a beginner, if your helmet falls and hits the ground, it’s done.

And one of the people was a doctor. So, I don’t know. I just, I tell everybody, just be safe. Don’t leave it sitting on the top of your car. Don’t leave it sitting on the, you know, the open tailgate of your pickup truck is if you decide, oh shoot, I gotta run to the gas pumps. And you’re gonna forget it’s there.

It’s gonna [01:17:00] fall off. And also don’t leave it sitting out in the sun. That is bad for it. You see too many people doing that, sitting on the roof of the car at some point in August. That’s not a good idea. I could keep it in the shade. It’s not good for it and it’s not good for you. I don’t wanna put a hot helmet on.

Yeah. Yeah. I’ve actually walked by people’s cars and picked it up and sat it like inside the car and then, Hey, I put your helmet, don’t leave it up here. Yeah. So if, so listeners, if you’ve ever wondered why your helmet moved from where it was and mysteriously ended up in your Be Me, it’s Mark. Yeah, a hundred percent.

The last portion of like our conversation here, now we’re graduating into the clothing part of this because it is again, part of the system and we’re not advocating that everybody rush out tomorrow and go buy all this stuff. But they definitely need to be aware that it all works together. So just like the seats and the belts, you know, the helmet?

Mm-hmm. The Hans and the neck restraint and whatever. Now we get into the clothing you wear at the track, and so Mike. Oftentimes the rules state you must wear long clothing, [01:18:00] cotton, and things like that. Do you wanna elaborate on that? The rules for long sleeves have especially been relaxed in recent years.

Don’t be, I’ve seen that. Don’t be surprised if you show up to a track event and you are required to have long, they might even get so hard as non heavily fire reactive material. I’ll put it that way, you know? No, no, uh, polyester sweatpants or anything like that. Uh, they’ll, they’ll probably gonna want you to have a cotton or cotton blend pan.

You mean, you know. No, no, no. Juicy yoga pants while I’m driving my juicy van. Anyway, that’s from another episode. They could, they could be cotton. You don’t know. Yeah. Um, yeah, you, uh, closed toed shoes and possibly requiring a long sleeved shirt for while you’re in the car. I. Rise of all that. And, and jeans are usually preferred as well because they’re a heavy cotton material and, and cotton shirts, et cetera.

And again, to your point, that’s because of their, uh, their flame resistance. They will [01:19:00] light on fire. It’s just more difficult to light cotton on fire, heavy cotton on fire than it is a lot of other materials. Yeah. So Mark, as a, as a, as an expert in this, in this arena, do we all need to just run out and go buy fire suits tomorrow?

Or are we gonna be okay if we’re just wearing Jean think I jeans and a t-shirt? When I instruct, I still wear jeans and a long sleeve, you know, whether they’re going long or short sleeved, I still, uh, I’ll, I’ll wear a long sleeve cotton t-shirt. All too often I see people wearing, you know, sports fabric, moisture wicking stuff like you said, polyester.

What happens to polyester when it gets, if it is exposed to flame, it melts. What happens when the polyester melts in, in, on your skin? It sticks. You know, that’s what I’m telling guys. Don’t wear that, you know, your cool sport fabric, body hugging workout clothes to the, to drive on the track. Jeans are good, you know, long sleeve cotton shirt is fine.

There are, if you wanna wear a suit and, and you know this, there’s been a, you know, the last few years there’s been a lot of [01:20:00] talk, I’m seeing more people at driver’s ed events wearing a driving suit. You can wear a, a single layer fire, uh, fire resistant material. It’s not gonna set you back seven or $800.

You know, they’re about $150. I’ve seen guys wearing, they go to the surplus store and get a flight suit. You know, maybe the helicopter or fighter pilots wearing the military. Those are fire resistant and they’re thin, a little more comfortable. So that kind of brings up some wives tales there. Right. So is it true that the Nomex thread breaks down?

I don’t know a hundred percent. I’ve heard that, but eventually the treatment that’s part of the, when it’s made can. You know, my suit is, was manufactured in 2005, probably worn it maybe 12 times, 15 times maybe total. You know, I just, I had a block of years. I didn’t race. I don’t, you know, so it stayed in the closet, you know, I’d bring it home, I’d wash it properly, I let it dry, and then it goes back, hang, it’s hanging in my closet.

It’s not ball up, you know, out in the garage. So [01:21:00] that, that one I’m not a hundred percent sure on actually if, if it degrades or not. Now, the, the newer FIA certifications that started with this products made for this year, now have an expiration date before is long as your suit met the current standard, you know, let’s say in case of my suit, 88, 56 dash 2000 is still a valid f i a standard.

So therefore it, you know, if I were to go to a pro race, it would pass tech. The, you know, the, the stuff that had came out is, you know, for 2020 models now have a new certification on it and I think they’re going eight or eight, eight to 10 years. Max, obviously if your suit’s on fire, you need to, if you’re in a car that’s on fire and you had to discharge your fire system and get out, yeah, you need a new suit.

Yeah. I’m not gonna wear it again for other reasons. You know, the big thing, you know, when the beginners ask me, I’ll tell one thing that’s important. Get a good pair of shoes. Don’t show up in your nearly inch thick. So, running shoes or [01:22:00] shoes, you’d wear hiking on a trail because you’re, you’re losing pedal field.

You know, I’ll tell ’em you wanna make your first inve investment in safety gear. Get a pair of driving shoes and a pair of gloves. Gloves that give you a more relaxed grip on the steering wheel. You know, weather steering wheel, hot day at the track, air, palms, sweaty hands. You’re gonna be gripping the steering wheel tighter cuz your hands are slippery.

You know, the gloves make you have a more relaxed grip. Relaxed grip releases tension going up through your arms to your shoulders. When you’re tensed up like that, your body’s burning, expending energy. You know, anything to make you more comfortable. So you’re not holding on with the Vulcan death grip on the steering wheel and the shoes.

I, I like, you know, driving shoe for pedal field so you could, you know, get a more sense, you know, that you could, uh, the, you know, the pe, the gas break, you know, clutch unless you have a, you know, DSG or a p dk, you know, those are the two places I generally, somebody asks me, okay, I’m ordering my helmet, what else do you think I should get?

And I’ll tell ’em, get a pair of shoes you can buy. You could [01:23:00] buy a Nomex pair of racing shoes that will be legal if you wanna race for under a hundred dollars. There. There’s several out there. You know, you don’t have to spend, you know, $250 on a Nomex shoe. Same thing with a pair of gloves. You can get a good pair of driving gloves.

You racing gloves for 60 bucks all day long. Let me know when they have a 13 four E driving shoe. Four E. Yeah, I know. Uh, OMP makes a shoe. The, the OMP one. It’s, it’s like an oversized, it’s a, it’s an extra wide. I don’t know if it’s four E. I’d have to look, but they make a wide shoe for people. You know, some people have wide feet.

For a second there, he said, omp, whatever that model was. I thought he was telling you to put race seats on your feet in difference. Well, never, o o p makes driver gear too. It’s really good stuff too. Let’s talk about gloves again for just a second. Mm-hmm. We talked about this in our nubes episode, but mark, [01:24:00] best color for glove, I’ll, I’ll tell people, get a G glove that it’s not the same color as your car in the H P D E setting.

And there are a few manufacturers that make nice, bright yellow. Easy to see when you’re giving your hand signals that you got, that we’re all still doing it at, at, uh, HPD slash driver’s ed. You know, if you have a black car, don’t get a black glove, you know. Oops, sorry. And, and for the, in the, in the HPD setting now, hey, I’ll be the first to admit, I had, I had, uh, actually, I had blue the first time, but I’ve had black gloves too.

Probably gray. I look like Darth Vader when I’m out there. Everything’s black, so they’re all blacked. Yeah. Yeah. But you’re also driving an instructor group too. True, but I, I tell the beginners, you know, if you have, if you have a, a yellow car, then yeah, get a black glove or a red glove, or, you know, does a, does all your stuff have to match?

Some people want it to, doesn’t have to. I, I’d say on shoes, stay away from red. The, the, I’ve noticed with the red shoes, eventually they start to turn pink, you know, as they fade out, you [01:25:00] know, shoes and, and they show dirt things, you know, get, get, get a darker color on your shoes, especially if you’re gonna walk around on the paddock in ’em all day.

So to your point, mark, about shoes. Uh, so I wanna come, I wanna kind of give you a little bit of rebuttal or counterpoint there. Couple things I found with driving shoes, right? Mm-hmm. I have, I have a set of sparkle booties. I love ’em. I use them when I’m competing, but I also wear them with my race suit, with my long socks.

Mm-hmm. With my whole setup, right? Because it’s all Nomex and it all goes together. However, as a coach, yeah. I’m in and out of the car all day long. I’m running around the paddock. Yes, like a chicken with my head cut off. They are not the most comfortable shoes in the world, and they are not the most resilient, especially if the paddock isn’t smooth.

You go somewhere like Palmer, where it, where, I don’t know if it is anymore, where it used to be all gravel or some of these pad. Oh yeah. Where pad the falls out. Yeah. It tears up the shoes. So I usually recommend people, if you wanna get the same experience for even less money and save a couple bucks, go buy yourself some Adidas [01:26:00] Samba indoor soccer shoes or some classic Chucks or something that’s a flat shoe with a thin sole, and you can pick ’em up for 40, 40 bucks or 50 bucks or whatever at your local target.

Good. But the upside is they hold up better when it rains. They hold up better when you’re walking around all day. Mm-hmm. And they just kind of hold up better all together. So I think when you’re learning, I, I wouldn’t really say get hung up on buying, you know, off the shelf shoes. Mm-hmm. They look really cool, don’t get me wrong.

I mean, it puts the whole package together. Right. But what are your thoughts on that? I drove in wrestling shoes, so I had to have no mix when I went to, did my first club race, cuz yeah, they were 40, 50 bucks at sports authority and I got the same thin soul feel. The one thing you notice would though, when you do put on a pair of driving shoes and I, you know, I, I wear chucks around the paddock all the time and I’ve jumped in a car at the last minute to go drive and my truck’s, you know, from time to time at the track.

The only thing is, is you know, where you’re sitting with, you know, with your feet [01:27:00] basically resting on your heels. That’s where you feel the difference. You know, the driving shoe has the sole that comes up over the backside of your heel and there is a little extra padding in there, so that is more comfortable.

But you’re right, walking around in them all day, I’ve got a pair that I wear driver’s heads and I, my boots that I race in the, the race boots, I don’t wear to de cuz a lot of times once I put my driving shoes on, I stay in them unless it’s raining, then I will come in and take my shoes off. But I, I like mainly, I like having the Nomex on my feet just in case, you know, feet and hands and face to me the three big places you don’t want to have burn.

Now how likely is a fire? Seems like these days not very, but just in case. Absolutely. You know, those would be the hardest things to deal with. If, if, let’s say I happen to be in some guy’s old, older race car and we had a fire, you know, I don’t want my feet burnt. We need our feet to walk, we need our hands to do things.

And to feed ourselves and open doors and everything else. So that’s where I can, at a, at a de [01:28:00] every time I get in a car. That’s usually where I have my Nomex on all the time. And one last question about the, the suits, right? And what you should be mm-hmm. Kind of go, going into battle with, as we put all this stuff together, what should you, what’s your recommendation for under a driving suit if you decide to go down that path?

What, what would you wear underneath of your racing suit? Commando? Um,

I mean, if you wanna go walk around the paddock, paddock, like Elvis with the things, zip down to your navel, I mean, that’s fine, but you gotta wear something under there. When I have my driving suit on, I have a, a short sleeve, fire resistant shirt, but most of the time I’m wearing some sort of cotton boxer briefs.

You can get no mix underwear, and obviously the more layers you put on, the more protection you have. The technology has gotten as such that, you know, a three layer driving suit today feels paper thin compared to a three layer driving suit from even 10 years ago. As these manufacturers, it’s like everything else.

It’s like with cars and [01:29:00] electronics and cell phones and TVs and every, whatever, everything else, you know, they’ve made it where the, the nomex has become more, has become lighter and more breathable underneath. Yeah, typically, you know, a lot of times I’ll have a cotton T-shirt, you know, I have a three layer driving suit now, cotton T-shirt, cotton boxer briefs, and I, I will wear nomex socks.

Of course it’s required. So going back to what you said before about like the dry fit clothing and the Under Armour, et cetera. Yeah. Because of the protection that the race suit gives you, is it okay to wear that type of material under the race suit? Well, the, the race suit would keep the flames out, but you’re still gonna get hot.

I would, my recommendation would be don’t wear that. Don’t wear that fabric in a race car. Now the manufacturers are getting more into that, make the nomex are now making these moisture wicking, but it is fire resistant material and it’s actually really nice compared to what it was. You know, I’ve got an old nomex turtleneck from like year [01:30:00] 2005.

That is, I wear it on cold days. Like if we got to, we were out the track in February or March where it’s 35 degrees in the morning cuz it, it’s a layer of warmth. But if you hold it up to something today on the shelf, You’re like, good God, this thing feels like it’s four times as thick. I understand what you’re saying about the moisture wicking stuff, but if you look at some of the undergarments made by, you know, Sparko, omp, Alpine stars, putting that moisture wicking properties into a fire resistant shirt and it works.

And there was a company called Track Gear that, that had a really nice, I don’t know how he came up with it. You know the, the guy who found her and the guy that developed the stuff and they were black but I wore it underneath my suit and how cool, how much cooler I felt I stopped wearing my regular t-shirt, you know, whatever random t-shirt I had on that day underneath my driving suit.

After seeing the newer undergarments and what they do and how much more comfortable it is, cuz they do allow, they, it’s weird. It’s, they breathe, but they keep fire out now they’ll still get warm. Obviously fire makes heat, [01:31:00] you’re gonna get warm. That’s why I just don’t like the idea of wearing, you know, the under, you know, under Armour or whatever the sports fabric.

Polyester stuff. I don’t think it’s the brightest idea. People do it, but they’re, they’re motorsports undergarments that’ll give you those, some of those properties that you can wear and be safe at the same time. Nice. So Mark, before we wrap this up, is there anything that we didn’t cover that you wanna bring up that, you know, newbies and intermediates and even advanced drivers alike mm-hmm.

Maybe haven’t thought about in a while, that we didn’t cover in this particular episode that you wanna mention? Well, I would say to newbies, and, you know, we, we are, obviously, we are in an era now where the cars coming off, the dealer lots are faster, and a lot of cases of cars that were raced at the professional level 10 or 11 years ago, right out of the box, they’re faster.

You know, the beginners are coming out to the, to the track. Think safety first, because I, I, we still see guys [01:32:00] coming out beginners and they’ve got, you know, they’re brand new Corvette. Oh, and I just had it at such and such and it’s now 790 horsepower at the wheels and, but three point belts, you know, no head and neck restraint.

You know, guys get, get out of the track, drive the car a little bit, get used to it. You know, go safety over horsepower. You know, I’ve been, I’ve been preaching that as an instructor even before I was in this business. You know, the business of motorsports and safety gear, you know, don’t, don’t rush, I guess would be a lack, you know, lack better term, you know.

Build up that your experience, the speed comes, you know you’re gonna get there. You know, all too often we see guys that, you know, come out that first day and after that first day they want to go buy a race car. Now there are some that can actually pick up that fast where they could be, you know, they have that natural talent, you know, that some of that talent that we, you know, we as instructors can’t teach.

You know, that natural ability, whatever you wanna call it, [01:33:00] God-given ability, take the right approach, take it slow, learn, have fun at the same time the speed comes, you’ll get there. Absolutely. And Mark, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show. OG has been supporting G T M now since we started. I mean, thanks to you and thanks to people like Matt Yip.

And, and others. Yeah, I was gonna say, Matt Yip. Yeah. That we’ve been involved with forever. So, you know, OGs been a great sponsor. I mean, there’s other distributors out there and other safety equipment manufacturers. Obviously you’re the closest one to us in the DMV and we’ll continue to, you know, support you guys.

Mm-hmm. You know, hope to see some of you guys come by to OG racing. We are in our 30th year, three Zero since the company was founded in 1990 by Bill Love. We’ve come a long way. Everyone on staff are car people. We’ve got instructors, we’ve got racers, we’ve got former racers, we’ve got Autocrossers. We’ve been doing this a long time.

You know, we keep a large stock of inventory in the building. We’re not a bunch of guys with a, a [01:34:00] website and an iPhone. You know, we, a lot of experience, bills had a lot of experience in, you know, picking the best products that are out there in this industry. You know, we pride ourselves on our excellent customer service, having what you want in stock, getting, you know, 97% of the orders go shipped the same day, you know, just depending on the time of day they come in.

You know, we really push our customer service and our long-term relationships with our customers, and we’ve all made a lot of friends along the way. For the listeners out there, visit og racing.com. They do more than just safety gear as Mark alluded to. They’ve got brake pads in stock and fluids and all sorts of other things that you need for your track day or your track weapon or your autocross car or whatever it might be.

Yeah, but I, you know, we can’t thank you enough for coming on the show. This thing could have been probably six hours long cuz we could nose dive on any one of these topics. But we’re hoping our lessons are, are getting more and more exposure to what it’s like to be in Motorsport answering some of these tougher questions.

And maybe just maybe after this conversation [01:35:00] feel just a little bit safer about the whole concept of H P D E and track time. So again, thank you so much. Oh, thanks for having me. Oh, uh, one more plug. Our, we watched a new website during the Covid lockdown inventory is live on the website, so come check us out og racing.com.

But on that note, I think it’s timed end. What do you think, Brad? Yeah, I think we’ve, uh, we’ve beat this horse to death. Yeah. But at least he’s wearing a harness. Yes. Yes. I just wanna say thank guys. Thanks for having me. This has been a great time. I’d love to do it again. Oh, definitely, absolutely. Come up with another topic.

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