While many Formula 1 and other top-flight open-wheel race cars end up museums and collections in non-operative order, there is a series in Europe where once can race wheel-to-wheel in “retired” cars. That is the BOSS GP—Big Open Single Seaters, that is—and the top class includes the likes of F1, IndyCar, and ChampCar chassis with a lower class that includes junior-formula (GP2, World Series by Renault, etc.) cars. If you think that sounds like gentlemanly vintage racing where drivers give each other quarter to preserve their investments, you would be wrong. Very wrong. These drivers race as hard, maybe harder, than your average professional open-wheel series and this unfortunate crash in July at Monza in Italy makes that evident.
The camera car is a Panoz DP01, remembered often as the final car used only in the last year of the ChampCar World Series. They are stunningly beautiful race cars, as far as open-wheel formula cars go, and were seriously awesome performers that were discarded with ChampCar’s acquisition by IndyCar in 2008. Yet, they continue to race in BOSS GP. Unfortunately, the driver in an old Benetton F1 car pokes the car’s nose in near the Curva del Serraglio, which is a long left-hand fade on the run to the Ascari Chicane. The two collide, bounce into the walls, and then slide to a stop near where the old Monza oval goes over the remaining racetrack.
That’s not gonna buff out for either of the drivers.
Perfectly good mirrors, guy was dropping back, WTF?
At the end I think the passing driver was heading back to clock him.