Driver dies after Ferrari crashes at track Unfortunately a driver lost his life driving his spider today at a trackday at Taupo. Remember we are rhd here. Lhs damage looks bad too.
Basal scull fracture? I have a hans setup for my race car, may need to look into harnesses so I can use it in my fcar. Scary stuff as the passenger side looks pretty bad but the passenger was fine...
RIP. Raced there before it was upgraded and had a couple of big offs, guess I was lucky ... Poor guy. Pete
I think it must have been a skull / neck fracture; or possibly some other complication such as a embolism - there doesn't seem to be any deformity of the cabin especially on the drivers side and no obvious intrusion into the drivers area. Any idea if it was initially a rear impact or LHS impact. Makes me nervous as I have the same car and track her. Possibly time to get a HANS device. The only thing that could have been worse than this was if the kid had died and the driver survived
Very sad to see this happen. Check out the Hybrid HANS device Simpson Hybrid Pro Rage Restraint - SafeRacer
Hmmm....at 60 yrs. of age a myocardial infarct prior to the crash is always a possibility. The coroner will know.
That's awful! RIP The fact that the driver's door could be opened indicates that there may not have been much direct damage to that side of the car, so as rardoin opined, maybe there was a medical reason causing the crash and death. Either way, very sad.
L/H side impact only into tyre wall at 190kph. Cause of death still unknown. He had just fitted a brand new set of tyres after lunch before this happened.
190kph? How long is the straight there? That's moving for a 360 (especially if one adds on some sort of slowing before the impact from braking or friction or off the throttle.). Sure doesn't look like 199kph kinda damage...surprising there was a fatality there to me too. RIP.
Even before the extension the track was fast. Great little track but it is easy to arrive quicker than you think ... Pete
brand new set of tires? I was told that new tires need to be driven not aggressively for a little while to wear off the slippery "outer coating"? Am I wrong?
There is no cause of death statement. The driver's side looks to have hit the tire wall. Some tirewalls are not very soft. I have seen some filled with sand or tied together with steel rods. There is nothing to prevent the driver from getting partly ejected out the driver's window and hitting his head on the tire wall. I can envision multiple possible crash scenarios. In racing we have full containment seats and nets. People always think they are safer just doing HPDE in a streetcar. The problem is that street cars are very fast today and it is the speed that kills. OEM safety systems are pretty good but race systems are better, you just can't use them for daily drivers.
I smacked my 993TT into a wall on that track at some silly speed. I am lucky to still be able to write that here. But that track is not that easy, and I for one won't be doing that again in a hurry. The corners come up very fast in a quick car. I really feel for the guy and his family.
How right you are and what you say, unfortunately, is something not all track-day drivers take into account. I used to do some low level amateur racing some years back. Even though my race car was pretty low on the racing food-chain, I had a full roll cage, a fuel cell, emergency electrical cut-off switch, racing harness, racing seat, fire suppression system for both engine and cockpit, and I wore a very quality fire-suit and helmet. In addition I held a racing license after attending a rather extensive training program which involved attending a number of training weekends as well as a certain number of races. I figured there was a chance I could kill myself, but I felt that I had minimized the chances of that event. I sometimes joined a track day event to use as a tuning and set-up opportunity since it was an affordable way to get track time between races. More often than not, there were plenty of drivers with powerful cars able to lap much faster than I. Certainly their top speed was nearly always much faster than mine. Yet their safety equipment consisted of nothing more than the factory seat belt, a valid driver's license, and a helmet meeting the minimum legal requirements for a motor scooter. Plus, often their high speed driving experience was close to zero. Thinking about this still makes me cringe a little bit. Of course, I cringe when I think that I'm still driving a fast motorcycle at an age when I should be driving a golf cart. I'm not saying don't take your car to track days and flog the doo-dah out of it. And I'm not saying old farts shouldn't ride high performance motorcycles. But I am saying, don't be too surprised or disappointed if you kill your self doing so.
