IMCA's roll cage rule hits the spotlight

VINTON — Rules are ever-evolving in auto racing. They kind of have to be, given racers' propensity to work the gray areas to find an advantage.

Well, some rules are ever-evolving, anyway.

Within IMCA and almost all of its divisions — save for Late Models — one rule that hasn't changed in decades, according to President Brett Root, is the size and thickness of a car's main roll cage, which surrounds and protects the driver. The rules state the tubing must have a 1.75 inch diameter with 0.095 wall thickness.

So recently, when sonic testers found several cars using 0.065 wall thickness, it put Root and IMCA in a position to have to address the situation. Root expressed amazement and disappointment in his monthly column published in the IMCA newsletter sent to racers, writing, 'it truly amazes me that any person, especially a professional racecar builder, would blatantly violate such a rule.'

In his and many others' mind, this specific rule violation marks a 'death sentence,' for that racecar.

'In our market, that's a fair assessment,' Root said. 'If the main cage itself is all made out of roll bar tubing that is too thin, it's not like that can be fixed over night or at the track between races.'

Who all this affects and how it affects them is a matter of perspective.

Calling violators on the carpet isn't as cut and dried as it seems, given everyone has a side to the story and there's not a great way to prove how these racecars ended up the way they did.

Root gave an example from Sunday at Benton County Speedway in Vinton where a car was found to have an upper control arm moved. The car was owned and driven by someone who bought it from another racer; who bought it from a manufacturer. Root asked, rhetorically, 'Who did that? Did the racer do that? It's the second racer that was in that car this year. So did the racer who has it now do it? Did the one before him do it? Or did the guy who built the car do it? It's very difficult to pinpoint that.'

Root said IMCA has caught home-built chassis, and mentioned GRT Race Cars and Big Daddy Race Cars being among those that failed recent tests. He was quick to point out, though, that every manufacturer that has had a car fail also has had far more pass. At this point, Root said there's no pattern that would justify severe punishment against a particular chassis builder.

For Root and IMCA, the roll cage is not an issue of performance, it's an issue of safety, so 'from our standpoint it's a no-brainer,' to do the best to get those cars off the racetrack in IMCA competition.

IMCA isn't the only game in town, though.

Cars with the 0.065 roll cages, in many cases, come from racers competing in other sanctions that allow less than 0.095 thickness. The origin of how or why the car was built that way is almost impossible to prove either way.

Joe Garrison, who owns and operates GRT, addressed the issue with The Gazette this week. He said the GRT cars that have been found as illegal were built out of 4130 Chrome Moly tubing, which he said 'is as strong or stronger than 0.095 DOM or electric weld,' tubing, and that 'the customer requested that and they were aware of the situation, and had no concern of it.'

GRT built those cars to customer specification, he said, but the trouble came when the cars were resold and knowledge of the specs wasn't passed onto the second buyer. Garrison was adamant GRT would never willingly put racers in danger, and expressed frustration with the situation and how it has impacted GRT's standing in the market image-wise.

'GRT Race Cars does not build cars illegally on purpose,' Garrison said. 'We discussed with (the customers) that it was not legal; they still wanted to purchase it that way. We won't do that now because it's not worth all the issues, even though the cars are fully safe and there's no problem with that. It's still not done by the rules in (IMCA's) rule book.

'Some of those (initial) customers are paying for the repairs for the customers who bought their car from them because they did not let (the second buyer) know what they knew. It's frustrating and that's why I'm saying we won't ever do it again, no matter if a guy begged me to do it.'

It's a no-win scenario, and one that frustrates pretty much everyone involved.

Chassis manufacturers in Iowa reacted to the newsletter in a few different ways. Some stayed silent, others didn't. Regardless, everyone asked was surprised anyone would take the risk.

Jake Murray, who owns Jake Murray Race Cars, Justin O'Brien of Rage Chassis and Kyle Brown of Harris Auto Racing all said definitively their shops have never put out a car less than 0.095 thickness in the roll cage. Murray said, 'I don't want that on my conscience, to put somebody's life in danger,' and echoed Root in saying, 'What do you do after that if someone gets caught with a chassis that you can't use anymore? It's useless.'

Brown went so far as to make a public statement — both on social media and the Harris website — stating that fact, and offered $1,000 off a new chassis to any affected customer who wanted a different car. His refusal to build a thin-wall car came down to the fact that 'at the end of the day, the customer's not the one that's going to get ran in the dirt. You're never going to win that battle as far as having a car built illegally, whether they want it or not.'

All three acknowledged the root of running the risk: Docol tubing (used in Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series cars) or Chrome Moly tubing is lighter weight, which allows racers to put ballast in specific locations and better control weight balance on the car.

O'Brien added that on top of the safety issue, the liability of having to fix it means chassis builders don't want to take the risk.

'There are just so many variables that go into chassis-building that who knows if it would work on my car or whatever other brand of car,' O'Brien said. 'I don't think the guys who got caught are just going to slow down because they've got a legal (roll cage) now.

'I think most times this stuff, it's a fad right now and it usually goes away. I think they'll tech it enough that people will know about it and know they're teching it and it'll come to a stop for the most part.'

Brown's sticking point in his frustration with the situation was who, in his estimation, takes the biggest hit.

The racer who buys the car third-hand is affected the most, he said, and when those kinds of racers can't afford to go racing, 'that's not good for the sport. That guy got burned by someone who should care more about the sport than they do. …. The guys requesting things stuff, when they get caught it gets brushed under the rug. It's not affecting them. That's obvious.'

Whether it's a manufacturer or a racer, Brown — and many other people — want someone held accountable.

Brown said he respects Root not casually tossing out manufacturers as having bad motives because, 'I would expect we (at Harris Auto Racing) wouldn't get ran through the dirt if we had something like that, too.' Garrison said GRT wants to stay in good standing with IMCA and wants, 'no bad blood,' with anyone. That is one of the motivations in repairing affected cars and making things right, he said.

Motive is hard to prove in a court of law, much less the court of social media, and Root said he and IMCA don't want to overreact when — as he said — there's not been a pattern found yet. That's not to say Root hasn't put thought into what IMCA could do if they found one, though.

Rules may change with the times, and relationships can, too. It just all hinges on a giant, 'What if?'

'There's no doubt the people participating in our chassis Manufacturer's Cup, their participation in that, we view that almost as an endorsement of sorts,' Root said. 'There's no guarantee they're building cars legally or illegally. They could build a car for someone not racing in IMCA and it could end up in IMCA. The only way we would ever punish a manufacturer, we would look at that Manufacturer's Cup and remove their participation and refund their sponsorship money and just cut our ties with them. That is not something we would rule out doing. We would do that if we felt our association with them was not as good as what we thought it was.'

l Comments: (319) 368-8884; jeremiah.davis@thegazette.com