Racing Wrecks

No wreck in this one, just some uber-cool airtime by Mikko Hirvonen in a WRC Ford Focus. Info courtesy of Autoblog.

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

Only ten days ago Jonny Greaves jumped his closed-course race truck from one dirt ramp to another — those ramps being separated by close to 300 feet. Greaves ended up going 301 feet, and set the record for the longest ever jump in a 2WD truck. It’s even more fun to watch than to read about, if only because his engine makes his Toyota sound like it’s powered by demons and banshees.

Source: Autoblog

Oh yeah, no wreck to speak of here… just some awesome footage of a truck that can flyyyyyyyyyy!

Travis Pastrana spent New Year’s Eve preparing to drive his Red Bull Subaru WRX STI off of a ramp, over 250-or-so feet of water, and onto another ramp floating on a barge. In earlier practices for the jump, at first he didn’t stick the landing, then he skipped the landing part entirely. The New Year’s event would be for keeps, though.

[Source: Autoblog via ESPN via YouTube]

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.