Maineiac

... HOLY CRAP!

One of the WILDEST rides I've ever seen.

Amazing he didn't get hurt. Kudo's to BMW and the safey equipment...

http://s25.photobucket.com/albums/c7...=m3flipmp4.flv

PA Z06

Wow that looked like one hell of a ride, was he ok

AU N EGL

8 end over ends plus 3 or 4 twirls landing on the track.

Looks Like the MID-Ohio ppl have to smooth out that ditch or dirt burm to make that part of the track safer.

and that is the reason for a ROLL CAGE and safty equipment.

Cobra4B

Holy crap what a ride.

Adam Boca

WOW WOW WOW! Was he ok?

cenman

OUCH!!! Hope he's ok.

DRKCYDE

Yeah, they pulled him out and he is okay.

TmillerC5

That is just amazing video.

z060ntrack

Race tracks just don't get it until an accident happens and then and only then do they correct obvious safety problems. How any race track owners could build a road and then have a drainage ditch on the side that race traffic comes from is way beyond belief. Greg Moore's death clearly showed the world the the ineptness of track owners to have anything but smooth run off surfaces.

Good interview with Joey Hand

http://www.speedtv.com/articles/auto/grandam/27471/

joemoia

Luckily nobody hit him when the car came back across the track and the spilling fuel didn't igniite

yellow01

That is freakin' insane. I didn't know about this until I just watched the video.

At first I thought maybe he went off sideways like the AM at the ALMS practice and then rolled... I was wrong.

I cannot freakin' believe they had a launching ramp/ditch in that location. To have a straight-off result in this is simply insane.

Glad he was ok.

corvette-pilot

Holy sheep ****
At least he didn't hit his roof until he landed.

sleeper02Z06

IMHO that's a bit excessive of a stance. All tracks have their "safe" and "not so safe" areas. No track is perfect, nor will there ever be a perfect one. Motorsports on a whole can be termed as fairly dangerous, hence the reason for all of the safety standards of the cars and equipment. I feel that most if not all tracks do their best when it comes to design and layouts with regard to safety. I personally have never been on a track where I do not feel safe. There are places where I personally choose to push, and others where i don't, but that is more or less for the safety of my car and protection of my budget, it's not because the track makes me feel unsafe.

In addition, one can only learn after things happen. I would venture a guess that this type of incident wasn't even close to the radar scope of ANYONE when things were built. It's like teething pains in a new race car, you learn as you go along. I think everyone can agree that Mid-Ohio is a class facility, and not one to disregard racer safety.

Joe

xsiveone

I just watched him on Test Drive BMW M Series a few days ago with Tommy Kendall. Glad to hear that he's ok because that was a violent crash.

I think it's all about dispersing that kinetic energy. The very worst crashes for the drivers are the ones where the car comes to an abrubt stop and the body absorbs the energy. When a car can go along and diperse the kinetic energy, no matter how violent the crash looks, the driver has a lot better chance of not sustaining injuries.

micro

wow

I doubt GTOs will be racing next year (right ???) as production of the road-going GTO stopped a month or two ago. The GTO.R is a tube-frame ringer though.

TLGunman

Interview the next day said he went to Steak and Shake for a double steak burger, chili, and chocolate shake after he was released from the hospital. Hopefully he survived that just as well

DRKCYDE

It kind of made me think back to my childhood of the General Lee jumping the river. That was some big air when he hit the burm.

63Corvette

We see World Rally cars jumping all the time. What causes a car to "tumble". That is, some cars jump fairly flat, and land on their wheels. Conversely, some tend to flip over either frontwards (as this M3) or backwards. You can also see this in the pictures of the C6 Z06 at the Ring, where Jan Magnussen "bounced" and almost lost control on landing. Understanding the vehicle dynamics would give us (drivers) a better understanding of the cause, and possible mediation actions we could take to prevent "air time" from becoming a disastrous tumble.

Comments/ideas/response

BuckeyeZ06

I know the place he went to!

I had a business appointment in Columbus earlier in the year, so my wife, my daughter & 3 of her friends went with me.

On the way back we stopped at the SNS off I71 (Exit 165) near Mid Ohio. My daughter and her friends (age 14) had a blast 'cause the waiter sang to them. He had a really good voice, we all thought he should try out for American Idol.

I guess the accident affected Mr. Hand more than we really know!

danswofford

You just don't realize how really fast race cars are going until they crash. Anybody ever see Richard Petty's famous crash?

As bad as this crash looked, nothing about looked like a real high G force impact. Although the initial berm may have been.

Dan