If there is one risk with racing historic cars it is wrecking historic cars and this video shows just that. Amazingly, driver Karsten Leblanc walked away from the worst crash of a 1963 289 Shebly Cobra we have ever seen. Some of your road racing historians out there may be quick to call this a LeMans Cobra because of the roof but this is a car that was born an open top model and the roof was added later. If it had been one of the tiny handful made with a roof back in ’63 this bad thing would have been exponentially worse.
As you will see, Leblanc was really hauling tail down a straight when all of a sudden we see him lock the brakes up. Smoke pours off the tires, he lifts but the car still gets off on the grass. Once back on the grass he appears to go hard down on the brakes again and the car, like a missile, heads straight into the tire wall, taking a massive shunt. The little Cobra flips off the wall and slides to a mangled stop not too far from the point of impact.
Yes there was a tire wall that helped make this into a survivable crash and it seems like he crashed in one of the highest speed sections of the course so all of this is a total nightmare. We have no idea what happened. We don’t know if the throttle hung open, if there was a problem with the steering, etc. We do know that whoever caged that car likely saved the driver’s life.
Leblanc is a banking executive of some sort so we’re hoping he has the cheddar necessary to fix what is now a rumpled pile of aluminum and sadness. What a car, what an impact!
Couple months ago saw a ’57 pontoon Ferrari (basically priceless) at the Blackhawk C&C, Danville, Ca. Asked the onwer how he could drive it to a little free car show, he wasn’t worried, said it was handbuilt once, could be handbuilt again, no worries–great answer