xsiveone

http://www.comcast.net/sports/index....h=itn_racedeer

xsiveone

Wow! I hope that he's all right. He was unconcious when he was airlifted to the hospital and had to undergo surgery for head injuries.

You always think about hitting a Deer when you're at a track like Road America.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...archived=False

Ojustracing

We were there in May, and they had a deer roming around the tire walls trying to get out. Never thought of hitting one at speed though.

John

xsiveone

The Champ Car is the worst possible car to have this happen to.

Wicked Weasel

dam I cant imagine seeing a deer in front of you. I was scared of the Wood Chuck that was at WGI and the Road runner at Spring Mountian

John Shiels

sounds serious

xsiveone

Speed TV has some more info on this. Apparently, he was headed for turn 6 and the Deer jumped out from the woods on the right hand side of the track, landed on his car and cockpit and he crashed into the tire wall with the Deer on the car. That's not a very fast part of the track at all. I was picturing hitting the Deer heading down the long straight down Kettle Bottoms after the Kink and before Canada Corner. Then again, there are very tall fences along Kettle Bottoms, so I guess I can't see how a Deer would jump on the track from the woods in that area.

Anyway.. Here's the Speed TV story. It has a little more information. There isn't any update on Cristiano's condition yet unfortunately.

http://www.speedtv.com/articles/auto/champcar/30253/

BTW.. This hits close to home because Road America is a local track and I've been there several times over the years. Plus, I've met Shorty on several occasions at the CART/Champ Car races. He's a great guy and I hope that he makes a full recovery.

xsiveone

Ok.. I dug up a couple of photos for those of you not familiar with RA. Here's what turn 6 looks like entering it. It's at the top of the hill. You go up the hill and under the Toyota bridge and then there's a left hander right after the bridge. The Deer jumped from the woods on the right and Cristiano continued going straight into the tire wall instead of making turn 6 to the left.



This is the view from the other side. This is taken from turn 7 looking back up towards turn 6. The bridge is to the top right out of view of the photo up by what looks like a blue and a white trailer. The tire wall that he crashed into is to the left of the photo and the woods where the Deer jumped out of is straight ahead at the top of the photo.

xsiveone

In case you're wondering, the photo of the silver Z06 in turn 5 looking up towards turn 6 crashed at a DE. Something happened to the brakes or the suspension coming into turn 5 and the car veered across the track and hit the wall along the left hand side before sliding to a stop at the bottom of turn 5. The driver and passenger were fine. I didn't want to use this photo, but I couldn't find a better photo looking up at turn 6 with such short notice.

Ojustracing

That is excatly where we saw the deer. It came from track left, about 3on the braking marker and continued down to the tire wall and tried to jump out. You can see alot on the tracks Video Survallance system.

I hope this turns out very well.

John

TRAIL BOSS

A few years back I was fortunate as a guest of Newman-Haas Racing to have had lunch with Christiano and his parents. He was very open in his discussions and I found him to be very personable. His parents were equally friendly.

Prayers go out to he and his family for a positive outcome.

VetteDrmr

Unbelieveable! But at the same time, completely believeable. Deer are a constant driving threat around my home (adjacent to a pecan farm, lots of food for them).

Prayers go out for he and his family; hopefully the surgery will allow him to make a complete recovery.

Makes you think about all the whining we do about rules, classes, TV coverage, etc.

Today is a good day for almost all of us. Don't take it for granted.

Have a good one,
Mike

Slalom4me

I looked up deer weights and found that Ohio White Tail adults
scale between 60 and 205 lbs. I am not a hunter and this
is less than I thought - but it does not diminish the seriousness
of what happened.

Needless to say, providing contingencies in the event of encounters
with 200+ lbs animals is probably not part of the design criteria for
those cars.

I believe da Matta replaced AJ Allmendinger in the #10 RuSPORT car
less than two months ago. He made his 100th career Champ Car
start here in Edmonton two weeks ago.

From an update 30 minutes ago:

My thoughts go out to him and those who are close to him.

.

TmillerC5

Even if he was only doing 50mph, it sounds like the deer ended up on top of him in the cockpit that's a lotta weight to have land on you at that speed or any speed
.
I am going to RA in October. I better get those deer whistle thingys for the bumper.

Prayers go out to the family.

xsiveone

They say now that he's in a medically induced coma for his own welfare.

Even though people have seen Deer on the property, I can't remember when I've ever heard of a car striking a Deer on the track. It's definitely a freak accident, especially since it happened at a relatively slow corner.

I was digging through some old digital photos and found these. This is from the Target Grand Prix in 2000 at Chicago Motor Speedway when he won his first CART race. He was in the pit/paddock area hanging out talking to people and signing autographs. He's definitely one of the nicest guys in the paddock.

Slalom4me

ALMS: Road Atlanta race report Sun, Oct 1 2000
Seems as though it was a matter of time simply because of the nature
of the locality. I've come across several references to off-track
encounters with deer. Apparently there is a Deer flag at Road Atlanta.

For those interested, there is a recounting of a deer strike at 60-70 mph
in Texas by motorcyclist Keith. He had a helmet-cam and the video is
out there, too.

.

the blur

it's no freak accident. I know 1 guy personally that creamed a deer at a HPDE.
I heard another guy where the deer ran into the instructors helmet, (passenger side seat) at WGI. blood and guts all over inside of car.

I killed a skunk.

**** happens, and at speed it is deadly

63Corvette

I was a spectator at the ALMS race at RA in 2000. The deer actually crossed the track and ran around in plain sight for quite a while, in front of thousands of people, before jumping a fence and escaping without harm.
I also attended an IMSA race at Lime Rock in 1974 when a driver hit a deer at high speed on the back side and had to be cut out of his roll cage which deformed and trapped him in the car (while saving his life).

xsiveone

I've heard of deer on the track before, but never heard of anyone striking a deer (thankfully) while at Road America. The track opened in 1955, so that's a pretty good record.

I'm seeing things reported about the accident that don't make much sense. One article said that Cristiano was going full out at 180 mph. No way he was going that fast heading into turn 6. The other thing that I've heard is that the deer wandered onto the track. That can't be right either. He would've certainly seen it if it just wandered onto the track unless he hit it when he was apexing turn 6 because it is a blind corner. I'm thinking that the deer jumped out right in front of him as he was going up hill.

I just found some additional photos that I took of Cristiano. This is from the 2001 race at Road America. This is the year when he took over Michael Andretti's car for Newman/Haas. As luck would have it, this is turn 6. These were some of my best photos of the day because the digital camera that I was using had a slow top shutter speed. The cars were going slow enough through turn 6, where I could catch them without being a complete blur.







This is on ther other side of the hill as he was entering the Billy Mitchell Bridge. You go under the bridge and then come out and go into turn 14, which leads onto the front straight.



These are from the Target Grand Prix at Chicago Motor Speedway in 2000 when Cristiano won his first CART race. These aren't the greatest, but they show him in his Pioneer car. Again, slow top shutter speed with this digital camera, so the best photos were the ones taken when they were under yellow.





Side note: Check out the amount of rubber on the track that the Champ Cars put down. I'd love to drive Road America right after a Champ Car race with all that rubber down.

xsiveone

Here are some additional photos that I uploaded.

When I took this shot of Gil De Ferran, I was probably standing near where the deer jumped out of the woods onto the track.



Here's a good shot of the inside of the Toyota bridge. I was on the complete opposite side of the bridge from the first photo. If I could move to my right a little bit and look to my left, I'd be looking right at the photographer in the first photo.



This photo of Christian Fittipaldi (Cristiano's teammate at the time with Newman-Haas) shows the elevation of the track from turn 5 to turn 6. You don't see these elevation changes that well on tv.



Speaking of elevation, this shot shows the elevation pretty well of the front straight from turn 14 to the start/finish line.



Here's the winner of the race that year. I believe that it was Bruno Junqueira's first win in CART in JPM's old car. This is the year that Junquiera replaced Monty when he vacated the seat and went to Williams in F1.



Here's PT. This is a good scale shot of turn 6. The distances get kind of skewed when you're using a telephoto lens. The Toyota bridge is off to the right just beyond what I photographed in this shot. You can see the same photographer with the blue vest from the first shot of Gil De Ferran.



Michael Andretti's first year with Team Green driving the Motorola car before he bought the team. He left Newman-Haas because he wanted a multi-year contract and they wouldn't give it to him at his age. Cristiano took his seat at Newman-Haas.