Motorsports Safety
NASCAR’s premier energy management provider
Coastal Automotive is NASCAR’s premier energy management provider. Since 2008, IMPAXX™ has been incorporated in NASCAR’s Car of Tomorrow (COT).
IMPAXX™ was chosen over 200 different materials and found superior to the others investigated including Aluminum Honeycomb, Rigid PU, Laminates and Composites including Fiberglass Reinforcements, and Welded Steel Assemblies.
James Treece — Manager, Design Technology at SSOE Group
“The car, equipped with IMPAXX™, hit the wall at 200 mph and rolled over eight times. McDowell walked away, got into a backup car and qualified for the Samsung 500 race”
Robin Pemberton — NASCAR Vice President of Competition
“Our team at the NASCAR R&D Center went to great lengths to study ways in which energy can be absorbed during impacts on the race track and the IMPAXX™ energy foam developed by Dow Automotive is what we found worked the best. The IMPAXX™ foam has performed extremely well in protecting our drivers and has proven to be a highly effective safety feature that NASCAR plan to incorporate further in our sport.”
Applications
You’ll find IMPAXX™ foam in both NASCAR vehicles and attenuators (entrance to pit row).
Why IMPAXX™?
In terms of weight-to-performance ratio, IMPAXX™ is the single most efficient energy absorption material available to the automotive industry today. For motorsports, that translates to:
- Improved driver safety
- Lowered driver G levels
- Less sensitive to off-axis impact
- 50%+ weight reductions
- Significant cost savings