One of the common, angry refrains that veteran 24 Hours of LeMons teams voice is the fact that the $500 junker series keeps increasing the safety requirements, especially when it comes to roll cages. After all, their cage passed the tech inspection last time, no problem. Why the hassle, man?
It can be safely assumed however, that the driver of the Ford Escort ZX2 sees no problem with tighter, tougher (and yes, safer) LeMons roll cage requirements. First and foremost, the driver walked away from the wreck (it took place at last weekend’s Gator-O-Rama 2010 race near Houston, TX) with zero injuries. Second of all, the following video is a very good lesson in why your wheels shouldn’t stick out past your car’s fenders. Sadly, the AMC Gremlin that the Escort climbed up isn’t visible. However, you can see a little piece of its side wing airborne in the image above. Watch the video, after the jump.
AJ Carlisi, a 13-year-old from Dalton, GA, flips and rides down the front stretch wall at Huntsville on April 11, 2009. The car was destroyed, but AJ walks away.
In-car camera and track-side footage shows Jari-Matti Latvala of Finland in a Ford Focus WRC flip his car in a corner and roll 500 feet a hillside during last weekend’s Rally de Portugal.
While not strictly a “racing wreck”, we thought this was interesting enough to post.
The inevitable has happened, someone has crashed a 2010 Chevy Camaro, ripping it’s nose off. It happened near its birthplace in Oakville, Ontario. Nobody was seriously injured in the accident — except the Camaro.
The details are thin, but the crash happened March 20th on Dundee Road in North Oakville. We don’t know who was behind the wheel but we wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was someone from GM at the helm. It makes for a pretty decent metaphor about General Motors right now: just as they start building really good cars, a confluence of unrelated and unpredictable events act together to destroy a good thing.
Video and all information are courtesy of Jalopnik.
This latest video, taken at the Okayama round of the Super GT championship, shows two different cars - the YellowHat YMS Tomica GT-R and the Zent Cerumo Lexus SC430 - getting into trouble.
The new R35 GT-R has already dominated the first two rounds of the JGTC but the car used for competition is considerably different to the production model — for one it misses out on the sophisticated ATTESA-ETS AWD system.
Virtually every component of the road going car has been improved or replaced, including the potent twin-turbo V6. The engine was still too new for race teams so instead they stuck with an older 4.5L natuarally aspirated V8. The car also sports a six-speed sequential transaxle and RWD layout as per the rules of the series.