When a driver has an issue on track at an INDYCAR-sanctioned event, there’s no one he or she would rather see than an “Angel in Orange.”

Those “Angels” are members of INDYCAR’s Holmatro Safety Team, which sees to the welfare of INDYCAR drivers and crew members at racetracks. The group is recognized by most as the best in motorsports.

So it came as no surprise that members of the safety crew were asked to demonstrate driver extrication techniques at this month’s Performance Racing Industry trade show in Indianapolis, where thousands of motorsports professionals and enthusiasts gathered.

As part of the International Council of Motorsport Sciences’ Racetrack Safety Program, the Holmatro Safety Team showed officials from tracks around the country state-of-the-art techniques in safely and expeditiously removing drivers following on-track incidents.

“We’re just trying to get people to understand motorsports rescue a little better than what they do watching on TV,” said Mike Yates, INDYCAR Manager of Track Safety Operations.

Yet even as they were displaying their well-choreographed extrication procedures to an eager audience, the Holmatro Safety Team is working behind the scenes to make their rescue protocols better in 2016.

Ever since James Hinchcliffe’s accident at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May, when a suspension piece pierced the driver’s thigh, Yates has spearheaded the effort to find a more effective way to cut through the Zylon panels that serve as an extra layer of protection for drivers in the cockpit.

If not for the Holmatro Safety Team’s rapid response to Hinchcliffe’s freak crash, the outcome could have been catastrophic.

When seconds matter in situations like that, Yates and his crew always look for ways to speed up the process. In conjunction with Holmatro, the maker of hydraulic equipment and systems used for rescue, industrial and special tactics operations around the world, Yates is seeking to develop a tool that will efficiently cut through Zylon, a lightweight, synthetic material once used in bullet-proof vests and designed to provide great resistance to penetration.

The inability to efficiently cut through the Zylon panels of Hinchcliffe’s car hindered extrication efforts. Yates doesn’t want that to happen again.

“We can deal with (cutting through) the carbon fiber but now they’ve added the Zylon panels and that’s really become an issue,” Yates said. “It’s so hard, but when it breaks, it’s so soft. You get hung up in the fibers so if you are cutting it and you get too much resin in the fibers, the fibers begin to catch the blade and it doesn’t cut anymore. It just tangles everything up.”

Yates contacted Pete Fiset, regional manager for Holmatro USA, to work on a solution. They have inspected the car from Hinchcliffe’s crash, dialogued with chassis maker Dallara and worked to acquire hard-to-get Zylon panels to experiment on with various cutting tools.

“The idea going forward is to see if we can adapt some existing equipment to make it faster,” Fiset said. “Our idea is not to burden (the safety team) with extra tools. In any mission that speed and stealth is paramount, less is better. If there’s something we can do to modify existing tools, maybe change a (cutting) tip or maybe it’s a whole different tool. Maybe it’s something as simple as an off-the-shelf vibrating cutting tool or something like that.”

Fiset said Holmatro’s goal is simple: “We want to be the solution guys.” A bonus is that the INDYCAR solution would benefit the company’s other rescue equipment efforts since more passenger vehicles are containing carbon fiber and Zylon panels.

“Whatever we’re coming up with, we foresee a need in some of these carbon vehicles that we have a way to (cut) into otherwise perfectly good panels,” Fiset said. “Like everything else in motorsports, it hits the streets eventually.

“We felt were way ahead of the curve with our competitors because we knew how to work with carbon fiber, and that was all thanks to our INDYCAR experiences. The carbon fiber and aluminum sections are nothing, that’s just (like cutting through) butter to us. It’s just that we don’t know what we don’t know right now with the Zylon.”

But they are determined to find out and INDYCAR drivers will be the better for it.