At 04:20 PM 1/27/00 EST, WEmery7451@aol.com wrote:
>I plan on racing mostly Regional Races and an occasional National Race. Do
>any of you have suggestions on what approach I should take, or what is a
>reasonable level suit that I should buy? Any opinions will be appreciated.
I don't know anything about fire suit ratings, so I can't offer anything
from that perspective. However, after seeing what happens when a fuel
fire does occur (I've seen this more than once now, both as crew and as
a flagger), I would recommend getting the best suit that you can afford.
For example, FOTer Chip Bond had a fuel line break and spray fuel onto
a hot header; he drove straight toward the corner station. Unfortunately,
this region had not seen fit to provide fire bottles at all manned
stations, so the worker was no help at all. It took Chip more than a
few seconds to get the car stopped and extricate himself from the flames.
Luckily, he had a good fire suit on and suffered only minor injuries.
Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, I'd suggest the same thinking for fire
suits that I do for helmets - if you've got a $20 head, stick it in
a $20 helmet.
That's my opinion, for whatever its worth,
John Lye
'59 TR-3A, '62 TR-4, '70 GT-6+
email: rjl6n@virginia.edu
homepage: http://avery.med.virginia.edu/~rjl6n/homepage.htm
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