Aussie drag racer Gary Phillips had a violent ride recently when he let the clutch out of his virtually new Camaro Top Doorslammer machine at Sydney Dragway. As you’ll see in the video Phillips got a few hundred feet down the track when fluid got under the tires and pitched the car completely sideways. Despite some pretty heroic efforts to avoid wall contact, the Camaro nosed into the wall, got up on two wheels, and then proceeded (without operable steering) to pinball back and forth across the track, striking both of the safety walls. A team member, commenting on the video claims that an incorrect vent on a fuel tank was barfing the fuel out from under the car. If you pay very close attention to the video, especially the head on shot, you can see liquid pouring out from under the car. We’re not good enough to see from where exactly it is coming from, but it is definitely leaking badly.
The thing that really sucks is that this was a nearly brand new car and it had a stunning blue paint job on it with the huge Lucas Oil logos down the side and on the hood. One of the interesting things we saw in the video is that Phillips uses a butterfly style steering wheel instead of the typical round wheel we normally see in Pro Mod/Top Doorslammer cars. You can see Phillips driving the hell out of the thing trying to keep the inevitable from happening. You can hear him on the brakes as well between the repeated impacts as well. We believe that Phillips is OK, which is the most important thing. The secondary impacts are very violent and the second camera angle from behind the car really illustrate just how hard those hits are.
Here’s hoping that Gary is a-OK and that he and Lucas Oil can get back out on the strip again soon!
PRESS PLAY TO SEE GARY PHILLIPS TAKE A VERY ROUGH RIDE IN HIS LUCAS OIL TOP DOORSLAMMER CAMARO!
Nice work by safety crew.
Thats a shame
Wow, hope he is ok and back at it soon. The thing about wrecks is no matter how good you are, things happen beyond your control and they happen so fast you often do not have much time to react if at all. It can hapen to anyone and I have found myself in a couple of racing incidents back when i was a kid racing go carts and the only thing lasting, other than the bills for replacing parts, was some tire marks on one of my new helmets. Safety has come a long way over time. One of my friends said it best years ago in racing or in life, its not if you will have a problem, its when and how bad. I have heard that so many times before but you tend to put it in the back of your mind until reminded. I do believe that the thrill outways the risks more often than not.