Saturday Turn 10 Road Atlanta Challenge Incident Photos

Wow, what an odd accident.

 

Uneven brake balance, it would appear. That's one badly wounded horse. At least he was lucky that the other cars all missed him. Great photo sequence!

 

Those are some great shots!

I was sitting on the outside of 10b and saw the accident but didn't have my camera up and ready. Obviously the front of the car is destroyed but I am wondering how bad the engine is messed up.

Here is a series of shots taken from a different angle. You can see the car sliding to the wall in the Pic 1 - notice that the wall is dry. Pic 2 shows the steam/coolant spilling out and spraying onto the wall (and you can see the coolant from Todd's pics). Pic 3 is after all the steam cleared. I don't know if these cars have automatic shutoffs or not but if that engine was running even just for a little bit with all that coolant coming out...that seems bad.

Any body have any ideas?

I heard from Will and Tom from FoA that the driver has a broken leg but they weren't sure about anything else.

 

Small world, we were right there when the accident happened as well. I'd be willing to bet it was you I talked to right after the fact and about what had happened. I was the tall guy in the bright red Ferrari shirt.

 

terrible incident, but the pics are breathtaking.

thanks for sharing. if you put them in an album and scroll through them, they "flow" in motion.

i enjoy photography, and am not trying to belittle the accident or the injuries.

 

Very wierd.

The track is not bumpy there, its very smooth and from the pictures that did not look like a very aggressive maneuver but a fairly typical pass in the braking zone.

Was this early in the morning? If the track was still wet or damp, it would be more so off line like that and often when its just beginning to rain after a number of days without rain the first half hour or so of the track being wet can be diabolical. The rubber and slight bit of oil film will sit on top of the water and create very slick conditions.

No telling really, I watched a viper who had passed me cresting the hill one time do the same thing, but after nosing it in the same manner on the outside of the track he came back across backwards and had an equally hard impact to the rear of the car on the inside of the track. He had no idea what caused it, said he touched the brake pedal as normal and the car instantly shot into the wall.


One other thought.... in the first photo where he is already sideways he really is not that far into the braking zone. Yet it appears all 4 wheels had locked. Strange. If these cars are not running ABS, I would suspect he locked them up on the instant of braking and did not correct in time, but the fact that he is fairly early in the braking zone tells me he should have had time to modulate the brakes, regain traction and still make the corner. Hmmmmmm left front locked up first, car went sideways, he modulated brakes but too late to correct and straight into the wall he went. Greasy spot due to wet track is my guess.


Terry

 

You were definitly in the right spot! I was across the track watching the race and for just one second took a break to catch the guys flying down the hill through the bridge. The one second I took to run over there I missed it. My girlfriend saw the whole thing and said it was a pretty spectacular crash. Any word on the driver? I saw them helping him to the ambulance with what appeared to be a leg injury.

 

In the Ferrari Challange sticky another poster wrote the following:

 

Did you take a picture of the wall that was damaged? I was on the other side and really wanted how bad the damage was considering they stopped the race.

 

Great shots.

I thought these cars had ABS? Not that that makes a difference just speaking on what someone mentioned. Last year I was working 10 for a test day and a driver crested the hill and did similar, but missed the wall and ended up in the gravel. The Ferrari guy told us when ABS fails everything locks up...not sure what he meant but...

I have seen these types of wrecks here many times, cars can get squirmy in the braking zone, not sure if he's braking yet or not. Could have pumped the brake or something and all hell broke loose.

Glad he is decently ok though.

 

This incident toke place on Saturday afternoon where there was no rain whatsoever. Track was pretty bone dry. The crash occurred either through driver error or errors of the braking system. I assume its a combination of both since he did not correct in time.

 

Fantastic sequence, pretty breath taking. Thanks so much for sharing them!

 

I'm glad the engine is in the back. Great shots. I think the rolling, smoking tire would be a fantastic 'metaphor' shot if cropped a bit.

What body/glass did you use?

 

I was wondering what happened, and you can't ask for a much better answer than this. Great string of photos, thanks for sharing.

 

WOW! That is a hard crash.

Looking at the pictures it is hard to tell what happened. Whatever did happen started about 50ft from the spot in the first picture. You can see the car is laying down 4 tire marks as it is skidding. It is hard to tell but it appears there is little to no driver input of the front wheels. And in the first picture you notice the left front is the tire that starts skidding first. All of this happening is very odd in this part of the track. I have driven Road Atlanta more times than I can count and never had this kind of an issue this early in the brake zone before. I am going to say that probably what happened was a mechanical with the car. I hope the driver is okay.

 

We have to also remember the lack of obvious driver input to the steering could be from just panic and not having time to, especially with the front wheels locked. It happened very quickly. I would have to agree something went wrong and it wasn't really driver error. I have gotten on the brakes coming into 10 before and have had the car squirly, but held it. Sometimes things just snap. Like I said, last year during test days for F430 Challenge one car did the exact same thing, all four wheels locked, but he missed the wall entirely.

 

I've also run Road Atlanta numerous times and the only time I've seen this so early was on a missed downshift locking all the wheels.I assume all of these cars are F1 trans.Could the rev matching function fail?

 

He was in second place at the time and all over the first place cars bumper. Unless there is a problem with the sytem F1 won't let you down shift into an over-rev.

 

Incredible sequence of shots!

Ciao,
George