This happened at a rally in the Netherlands. Looks like once the wheels locked he couldn't steer and it just got worse from there.
Sorry if this is a repost.
This happened at a rally in the Netherlands. Looks like once the wheels locked he couldn't steer and it just got worse from there.
Sorry if this is a repost.
Ouch, so much went wrong so quickly, that's got to be a one in a million. Apparantly they got out OK.
It looks like his navigator forgot to say something. Neither of them were looking in to the corner until he saw the barrier - and then he locked 'em up.
I think he was expecting the corner to follow the curvature of the barrier, and then suddenly realized it was a 90deg right about 20ft back.
No one looked too interested in jumping in to save from drowning either
From what I saw, the car was upside down in the water.
NOHOME wrote: No one looked too interested in jumping in to save from drowning either From what I saw, the car was upside down in the water.
If you read the youtube notes people were bitching about that. But note the vid stops a couple of seconds after it comes to rest, people were still in the OMG stage and you can't see those out of shot. Apparantly lot's of people went running and the crew were OK
Armchair quarterbacking here, but it seems like he had them locked up for a fair bit. Needs more training to get out of bad situations? I think GPS talked about something like that with track day people. Enough training to go fast, but not enough to fix it when you berkeley it up.
Glad they were OK.
mazdeuce wrote: Enough training to go fast, but not enough to fix it when you berkeley it up.
This was the hardest part of the learning curve for me when I was racing. Some people have the ability to react while others freeze. You wont know where you will you fall until it happens to you.
Looking at the video there are some things in it that make casting an opinion difficult.
The biggest thing is that it is a head on shot of the car so you don't have any real reference for the cars speed (I think he was going a lot faster than it looks) Also it is difficult to get an idea as to what the driver could see and what his options were. Form the video's point of view you have no clue as to what the driver was presented with and at what speed he was traveling and what options he had in his line of site when he realized things were not as they were supposed to be.
I suspect a navigator error / map error or something like that.
Adrian_Thompson wrote: How do you know?
"Hey fish ladies, check out my sweet ride. Yeah it just fell in the stream and I claimed it. Wanna spawn?"
I noticed something.. yes, he locked them up, but the front wheels were pointed straight ahead the whole time. He did not even attempt to turn.
Like I said I think he mis-remembered where the corner would be, then when he first locked up the wheels he realized he had the option to let off the brakes & turn right and go flying into the creek, or try to minimize impact speed with the barrier, and took the latter, but didn't do a great job of it.
GameboyRMH wrote: "Hey fish ladies, check out my sweet ride. Yeah it just fell in the stream and I claimed it. Wanna spawn?"
LOL's
The speed he carried into the corner made contact unavoidable. I do believe if he had let off the brakes enough to allow some steering input the impact would of been less spectacular and probably could of avoided swimming. The barriers went pretty far alongside the track, so if he could of got the car turned he should of been able to ke it shiny side up and on track. Maybe
Dude watches a car crash hard off a barrier, do a barrel roll mid-air, and land upside down in the water...then goes back to looking at his smart phone...BOOORING
There's been a lot of focus on the driver here (rightly so) but it looks to me the Jersey barriers didn't help the situation. They certainly didn't contain the car on the course and seems to have contributed the barrel-roll resulting in people being upside-down in the canal.
true Pete.. but the alternative would have meant a nose first into the pond/creek with it's very unyeilding bottom. At least the barriers gave some and redirected the energy into keeping the car moving long enough to shred some of it's momentium
In reply to PeteD:
Except they did do their job, because otherwise the car would have been right through a spectator area at 3x the speed.
The driver does start steering a little to the right after the tires locked up, had he let off the brake it may very well have started to turn.
As far as the Jersey barriers 'not helping' there is no 100% way to contain a race car (or even a street car) with any sort of barrier. There's just too much force and inertia involved.
wrt the barriers ... I did not mean to imply that NO barrier would have been better than the concrete barriers seen in the video. As Duke & others pointed out, that could have been worse. I mean that a better barrier could have lessened the severity of the crash.
What I see in the video is at least one of the barriers falling over and that the car rode right up & over another barrier. To me it seems these barriers should have been linked together and probably taller.
-- Pete
You'll need to log in to post.