Idiot question: why do race cars have blue seats?

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Seats contain urethane foam for padding, and some of that foam is flammable. Maybe that has something to do with it. Sort of like a fire resistant sofa, so that Uncle Ed doesn't torch himself when he falls asleep while smoking a cigar.

 

Could it be a fire color code, like using a yellow dot on the body to indicate an alloy body and a red dot to indicate fiberglass (like at LeMans)?

 

Blue seats make the car go faster, plain and simple.

John

 

Really , need to change colour of mines in my car

 

May have just been a tradition that got started for who knows what reason.

Mercedes used plaid for decades, hardly German in origin.

 

I've read that the material on the race car seats was usually corduroy, blue or whatever else was around. Cheap, durable, easy to fit and repair or replace between races.

 

Hi Team, you can discount the Nomex / safety issues. The best apocryphal story that I've heard is that the race team were working late one night finishing a car when they realised that the trim store was closed and they had no material with which to trim the seats, some quick thinking and blue race overall / coveralls were cut up and used as seat material. Great story which deserves to become " Legend " cheers Kev.

 

How about: Why do they have red seats, yellow or black? Or even, why do they have seats?

 

The seats are blue so that when the blue-bloods who race them crash and bleed, they don't stain the seats...

Art S.

 

I've heard the blue coverall story before. When I first found FChat, there was a similar thread regarding the blue seats in the GTO.

 

I think we have a winner.
for the privateer/customer race cars, I think Ferrari would put whatever you wanted (at least in the mid-50s) - Francois Picard ordered our car w/ red vinyl seats/headrest; the assembly data sheet calls it "plastico"