SCR: Has being here in the midst of the NASCAR community made a difference in the way you relate to the community?
Nelson: Certainly. Roush, MB2, Hendrick-and now Ganassi-are just up the street, and a host of other Truck and Busch teams are within a 2-mile radius. You go out another 10-15 miles and you can get 90 percent of the Top 3 national series. We're able to stop in; they're able to come by here. For it to work right, the ideas really need to flow from the progressive thinkers in the sport. We're not going to lock ourselves in the back room and invent things. We're going to work together with the industry experts and experts outside the industry. This facility has become an idea center for crewchiefs, engine builders, vendors, and manufacturers. They come in and say, "Hey, I had this idea," and next thing you know, some things stick.
SCR: Some people have said that the NASCAR R&D Center is a direct response to the death of Dale Earnhardt. Would you agree with that statement?
Nelson: I would say that the process started when we lost Adam Petty. We had the building in Conover in place by fall of that year, before the Daytona race where we lost Dale Earnhardt. Adam, Kenny Irwin, Tony Roper [all died in on-track accidents]. That season was under way, and we just kept building this idea. It started taking off, and I can tell you that Dale Earnhardt was a big supporter of what we were doing in Conover. He actually scheduled a meeting that fall for us to come to DEI, and he offered any resources they had to help us in trying to make the gains or the progress that we were working toward. We spent the afternoon with him, going through the cars and his ideas, and we wrote them all down. We continued to work through that winter. We were in Nebraska that December working on the SAFER Barriers, and then his tragedy happened. So, all of those things were coming together, and that timing, at the Daytona 500, we certainly stepped it up another notch for sure. But the process was already rolling.
SCR: What other active projects do you have now?
Nelson: It's an interesting process that we're working on now, but let me set the stage with this. In our research, we were working very hard on car bumpers to try to make the car safer. We were struggling to find quick solutions. It became more and more complicated. In this process, I consulted John Melvin, Dean Sicking from Nebraska, and Jim Raden. All three of these fellows hold Ph.D.s and are well-known experts in the field of safety-and all are independent of NASCAR. I asked them, "We're really struggling with this bumper problem. Can you figure out how to make these bumpers better?" They went away and came back and said, "You're working on the wrong thing. Put your effort into the driver's restraint system and you'll make a 65-percent gain in safety if you improve the seat, the belts, and the head-and-neck restraints. That's where your big gains are going to be." I said, "OK, we'll go to work on that, but tell me about these bumpers." They said, "No, your next gain is going to be in the 25-percent range if you can get some energy to be absorbed by the barriers that you hit." So we went to work on barriers.