Touring car racing in the 1990s ruled. The drivers were unhinged, the cars were just modified street cars, and the racing was mental on a basic race day. When competition, stress and emotions flowed into the mix, things went down that NASCAR still can’t quite hold a candle to. Announcers would have to smooth over in-car shots of drivers screaming at each other while flipping each other off and it wasn’t out of the ordinary for competitors to remove others from the race by any means necessary. We aren’t talking a light tap in the bumper that upsets the car, we’re talking about no-kidding PIT maneuvers at speed in the hopes that the car itself won’t make it back to the track. Outside of some of the legendary scrap-ups in NASCAR’s history, BTCC racing might have trumped America’s race in the violence category. Which is why I was glued to Speedvision whenever this stuff was on…flying Honda Accords and Alfa Romeos going backwards into walls at over 100 MPH was cheap entertainment!

The driver you need to pay attention to is Will Hoy, in the #2 Toyota Carina (the one with the yellow-green sunstrip on the windshield.) Hoy had been driving since 1985 in various touring car and sports car series, but in 1991 he had made the move to drive a BMW, where he clenched his first championship. In 1992 he moved on to Toyota and had a poor year, with only two victories, and 1993 wasn’t much kinder. The Toyota Carina that he was driving wasn’t competitive to the Renaults, Nissans, and BMWs that were running away with the wins. At the ninth race of the year at Silverstone, however, Hoy and his teammate, Julien Bailey, had managed to get out in front of the pack…and then this happened.

Now, to be fair, this was not an intentional hit by Bailey but instead a combination of poor communication and sheer bad luck. But when you’re staring as track marshals roll your car back onto it’s wheels, thinking about how you were just leading the pack, even the apology from the teammate isn’t going to remove the sting. By 1995, Hoy abandoned Toyota for Renault, then later on for Ford before making the jump to providing commentary for iTV in 2002. Sadly, that career was cut short as cancer claimed Hoy that December. But he is remembered for two things: his solid driving behind the wheel, and being the guy whose teammate put him on his lid, sliding towards the wall.