Bleh to rollovers, just slam the car on 19's, it won;t go anywhere LOL But serisously, its a Lambo, its oging to be well engineered. Most likely in aroll over the roof would collapse to the point where it stresses on itself and absorbs a lot of energy, dissipates it nicely, and won't kill you necassarily. I've seen some Incredible crashes in PIles of crap that were wya underengineered and the drivers walked away with bruises.... It really depends on speed, kind of flip, if they hit anything, etc. You can't really generalize or have an "average" flip.
Finding if its sufficient to protect in a rollover wouldn't be that bad. You need to put all the data into CAD or Proengineer with all appropriate material constants, then calculate a stress and strain relationship to see which portions of the roof would be structarily strong enough. Basic physics can be used to determine at what speed of the car landing on the roof would survive. My Guess is the thing would never survive an upside down drop above 10 feet, these cars are engineered for leightweight and rollovers can be extremely rare.
Basically accidents in these cars will be blamed on the driver and inappropriate use of the performance. Thus the companies (including Ferrari) have an out. Thus driver safety and survival are not IMO taken seriously, as there will always be another customer cashed up ready to buy one. Pete
No way the factory structure is strong enough to survive rollover. Ferderal motor vehicle safety standards for rollover are quite lax, hence no incentive for manufactures to build strong, proper roof structures. The government's moving in the right direction though. Side impact standards are increasing, next will be rollover, hopefully. All production based race cars require additional roll over protection. The F40 comes close, but tubing diameter is a bit too small for the main hoop behind the driver, and the windscreen/ A pillar area is way undersize. Best regards, Rob Schermerhorn
The F40 chassis is pretty puny I think. An early 1990 test in the UK saw a road F40 with slicks fitted, strapped into a chassis dyno for a full power test, with it's engine cover, one door and the front bonnet removed......and it twisted so much under load that the windscreen lifted out of its aperture......... The F40 LM cars I have looked over here in Austraila(1x LM and 1xLM GTE) both have huge amounts of triangulation and cross bracing, way over a road car.....
