Racing Wrecks

Photo/info courtesy of Jalopnik

If you’ve ever found yourself as a spectator at a race track, it’s easy to lull yourself into believing that you’ll be as safe as can be just so long as you keep a crash barrier between your brittle bones and the lightspeed chunks of metal blasting by. Thing is, that’s not always the case. The interwebs are full of videos of cars gone airborne, leaping guard rails and tire walls by leaps and bounds to come crashing down in the middle of a passel of spectators. We can officially add the video after the jump to that list of horrors.

According to our English cousins, Portugese driver Francisco Carvalho had a bit of a mishap at this weekend’s World Touring Car Championship event at Brands Hatch. Carvalho was competing in the Seat Leon Euro Cup Race when he received a nudge from a fellow racer. Instead of losing a position, Carvalho’s car was sent veering off of the course and into a crash barrier before bouncing end-over-end and vaulting back over the wall. The crash sent a crowd of race marshals fleeing before the car came to a stop, but amazingly enough, no one was injured. Not even Carvalho. Hit the jump to see the devastation for yourself.

All information courtesy of Autoblog

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.

Courtesy of AutoBlog

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.

This video was courtesy of the Georgia Stock Car Racing Newsletter.

It looks like someone either forgot to tighten some suspension bolts, or this thing is making way more horsepower than the rear end can handle.

Video courtesy of FailBlog.

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.

Info and video from Jalopnik.

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.

Thanks to Jalopnik for this video.

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.