It was just a few days ago that we told you about the harrowing wreck which Jim Pace walks away from at Road America. Pace, the very seasoned road racer was piloting a brutally fast Shadow DN4 around the sprawling and very fast course when the machine basically took flight and landed upside down on the front straight. The video is wild and the quickness of stuff going wrong is even more shocking. But how fast is the car really? How hard to handle is a vintage Can-Am car with all the power and none of the weight? Well, this video, made the day before the carnage is here to show us.
You are going to ride with Pace in the DN4, the same one he was driving when it took off and you are going to hear him narrate the laps and explain how he is driving the car, real time. This is fantastic. You can legit hear the adrenaline in his voice when he’s talking about waiting to go onto the power and then jumping onto it. You can hear the Roush built big block Chevy which basically makes 1,000hp shoving this feather of a car down the track, and you can watch car just legit chew up and spit out everything in its way.
This is one of the neatest in-car videos we have seen in a long time and it would be even without knowing what monster was looming in the shadows just a sunrise or two later. Boss level driving and we’re glad that Jim is OK!
Awesome!
We were there !!! turn 3
Great vintage series at RA
He narrates it like we are just sitting in the pits talking about a lap….”wait , wait, wait…go! Down 1..,2…,3…hold,hold..go!”
And then, he wrecked it…. 🙁
Well he was driving when it crashed,but to say he wrecked it is a reach.
Because of the hill on the track unloading the front plus the air coming off the other Shadow killing the down force on the front air got under the front and it flipped.
One must remember these cars were designed when down force was in its infancy and much was still done with trail and error.
Other high down force cars have lifted the front at Road America and IIRC the NISSEN GTP flipped there years ago. That hill limits the FIA’s track certification as well.