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CART postpones Texas indefinitely (updated)

Two hours prior to the scheduled start time of Round 3 of the Champ Car series at Texas Motor Speedway, CART officials postponed the race indefinitely because of safety concerns.

Twenty-one of the 25 Champ Car drivers admitted in a private meeting that long runs on the 24-degree banked oval caused them to experience dizziness, nausea, or visual distortion.

CART CEO Joe Heitzler apologised to fans and TMS officials, but said that the safety of the drivers and spectators was the overriding issue.

"It's disappointing but yet necessary for me to announce that CART, along with its teams, its drivers, its manufacturers and sponsors, have determined that we must postpone today's race," Heitzler said.

"We cannot comfortably race today. We are cancelling the Firestone Firehawk 600 due to the demands placed on our drivers when travelling at speeds of more than 235mph on this 1.5-mile oval.

"On behalf of CART and all of its constituencies, I offer our sincerest apologies to our fans, to Texas Motor Speedway and to all of our sponsors," Heitzler added. "I am confident that we have exhausted every available option to find a solution. This decision has the full support of Firestone and the engine manufacturers. Once we process the data we gathered over the last 18 hours, we concluded that there was no alternative."

CART Medical Affairs director Dr Steve Olvey said the extent of the problem was not fully known until the regular drivers meeting Saturday afternoon. He explained that the intense vertical and lateral G-loads the CART drivers experienced when lapping the 1.482-mile superspeedway were in uncharted territory for racing drivers.

"A situation developed Friday afternoon that in my 25 years of being involved in motorsports, I have never heard of or never seen at any other racing venue," Olvey commented. "It came to my attention that two drivers pulled off the race track after long stints at over 230 mph and they pulled in because they were experiencing rather severe dizziness and light-headedness and felt that they could no longer safely control the race car.

"Then on Saturday, a driver who came into our medical unit for another reason said something really funny had happened to him that day when he got out of the race car. He said he couldn't stand straight or walk for 4 to 5 minutes. This led me to think that we were possibly having a problem with too high G-loading with our drivers in these cars at these speeds at this particular type of race track."

Olvey consulted with Dr Richard Jennings, a former flight director at NASA who currently specialises in aerospace medicine at the University of Texas.

"Dr Jennings said that the human tolerance in a sitting position, whether in a boat, and aeroplane or a car, in terms of vertical loading is somewhere between four and five G, depending on the person," Olvey said. "He also said that because we experience high lateral Gs due to the cornering of these cars, that effect is additive and actually can be worsened by that situation. He also added that all those things can be aggravated by dehydration, heat, and by the duration of the exposure to those Gs.

"I then got a telemetry printout from one of our teams, because none of us knew what the vertical G-loads were because in testing, none of the speeds approached the numbers that were produced this weekend. The maximum instantaneous G-loading over a lap was 4.33 Gs, and a force of 3.36 Gs was sustained throughout the banking at either end of the track. Our lateral Gs are somewhat over 5 in different cars in particular situations. I notified key officials and we brought all the drivers together to discuss this. Dr Jennings related that when Gs are 4 or higher, like in a fighter plane, pilots are required to wear a G-suit.

"I don't know of another instance, and neither did Dr Jennings, of any incident when this was a problem in racing cars on closed course tracks," Olvey continued. "We know at this particular race track that you can relatively safely run a race in the realm of around 225 mph and below. Over 225 I cannot give you an exact figure, but there appears to be a threshold somewhere around 230 and above where it becomes an issue. The combination of vertical and lateral Gs is unusual, and it's never been an issue at any other race track, and there is an edge we don't want to go beyond."

"Unfortunately there was no way of knowing this before we came here," remarked defending CART champion Gil de Ferran. "The speeds we were going were really uncharted territory. It was impossible to predict and no racing driver was ever subject to this type of experience before.

"Some guys were not feeling so well in the car, and that was brought to the attention of the Medical Director. They felt this was the best way to go until we can decide what to do. As a racer, you try to go as fast as you can, but there was no idea of knowing that this was the territory we would be in. This is a physical or physiological issue ­ not psychological."

"All in all, we found the limit of our bodies," noted Mauricio Gugelmin, who survived a massive multiple accident on Friday with G-forces that reached 113Gs.

"We had a new situation, with vertical and lateral Gs. The speed was not a surprise, but the physical effects were. It's all about safety. I'm very impressed with the way Joe handled the situation and the way he stood behind the drivers. The track did what it could to improve things and they did a fantastic job, but these cars are just too fast. I only felt dizzy after a 25-lap run, but it wasn't a factor in my accident."

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