Huge crash in CART or IRL this weekend...

It was Ryan Briscoe in the Ganassi Toyota at the IRL race. He is supposed to be fine, I thought watching it he was a "Dead Man".

 

Can someone find a clip of a crash so we all can see it.

Mark

 

The incident with Briscoe was very similar to that of Kenny Brack two
years ago at Texas where the car was launched and cut in half with the engine and gearbox going on one direction and the cockpit in another.

I read a report this morning that stated he had two broken collar bones and a bump on the head but otherwise ok which is a lot better than Brack's list of injuries which he was fairly lucky to survive.

Fairly easy to tell the difference between IRL and Champ Cars (the CART name is no longer used) as the IRL cars have air boxes above the cockpits
and (of course) race primarily on ovals.

None the less, Ganassi has had to rebuild more damaged cars this year than
could ever be expected during the course of a season. There is talk he may
come back to Champ Car as grumbling about the amount of shunts in IRL is
worrying several team owners and Toyota's pull out of the IRL after next
year may find some teams without an engine choice.

BHW

 

yeah it was pretty bad because the monocoque hit the fence pole and literally split in half then engine almost killed one of the drivers behind him when it completely separated from the car...when it was sitting on the track you could actually see the pistons as it had ripped the head offof it as well.
very scary crash but he was lucky to walk away

 

Anybody have a video clip of this. It would be amazing to see.

 

Briscoe suffered a concussion, a bruised lung and broke both clavicles. It was nasty and he's a lucky man. He'll probably need help cleaning the pipes for a couple weeks, but otherwise he should be OK. Scary moment--I still think the IRL cars get airborne too easily.

 

http://209.43.92.201/brickyard/imsproductions/webvideo/chic%20highlights%2091105%20lrg.wmv

 

"Ryan Briscoe has NO injures...He has walked away un-scathed."

Maybe the announcer was a bit pre-mature in that assessment.

 

I saw the crash when it happened and he did not walk away. They took him to the infield hospital on a stretcher, then airlifted him to the downtown hospital. I did not see him "walking" after the crash. The crash was really brutal looking -- seeing the car just flying apart, then the pieces, like the engine block, and one end with the wheels and tires on it but nothing else. Yuck!

 

IRL does have the most spectacular crashes

 

All I have to say is wow. That really goes to show how advanced car safety is these days on open wheelers.

Mark

 

Robin Miller reported on Wind Tunnel on SPEED that he is alive because he went in "tub first". Tony Renna died in a Ganassi car a couple years ago in a similar accident at Indy. Going into turn 3, he somehow lost control, got airborne, and hit the wall cockpit first (top side first, instead of bottom first like Briscoe). He died from blunt trauma to the head.

When I saw this yesterday the first thing I thought of was "Kenny Brack". He had an accident very similar to that at Texas in October 2003.

Very glad to hear he's gonna be fine. It could have been much worse.

BTW, in that clip you can see that the IRL does put on some good races. I know many of you give the circle-track series crap, but they do put on quite a show at some tracks.

 

I'm glad the driver is okay and don't like seeing crashes like this. But IMO this is the best thing you can do to an IRL car.

 

Wow that was an unbelievable crash, gald he "walked" away from it.

I don't like IRL or CART, but that's some close racing. Imagine an F1 race with a 1, 2, 3 finish like that.

 

If you watch the 1981 GP of Spain in Jarama, it was that kind of finish with the top 5 drivers. Gilles Villeneuve won that race and as Gordon Murray (than Brahbam Technical Director) went up on top of a Motorhome to watch the race, he commented that was the best drive he had ever seen up to that time in the sport. Also the Monza GP's prior to the track being reconfigured usually finished pretty close, best example was the race in 1971.

 

Oh you are going way back. I was thinking more along the lines of modern F1. You would never see anything like that.

 

That is the problem with F1. That is what happens when you have Aero grip vs. Mechanical Grip.