This is one of the weirdest racing videos we have ever seen and it is weird in kind of a funny way at first and then a straight up scary way by the end. You are going to see driver Damion Gardner suffer a high flying, end over end, big speed spring car crash in his 360ci racer. The car comes across the track and does all the stuff you would expect on the way to a collision with the wall…except for one thing. When the car gets to the wall its nose actually gets tangled in the steel cable that makes up the top of the “catch fence” at the facility. That cable is strong enough and the car is light enough that it literally hangs from the cable like a fisherman holding a bass by the jaw. Gardner climbs out of the car and makes a hasty escape, seemingly uninjured. Then things get weird.
We first see a track worker scaling the fence to get the car free’d up and then the shot cuts to show Gardner shimmying across the sign that the car is hanging in front of with a wrench in his hand. He uses that wrench to back out a bolt which is essentially holding the entire weight of the car. Admittedly in the grand scheme of things, that isn’t a lot of weight but it is still a dangerous situation. Gardner does that thing we have all done known as the, “Lean way back when loosening a bolt that you know could shoot out and kill you while loosening said bolt.” After getting it to a certain point he decides that it is close enough and repositions himself to kick the thing free. After a kick or to the bolt comes out as though it was shot from a rifle and the car hits the ground. All’s well that ends well but if Gardner were a foot or two in the other direction he would have been in serious, serious pain and probably pretty badly injured.
This is a close call in about a dozen different ways!
So they have a payloader… but nobody thinks to use the payloader to lift the back of the car and take the tension off the wire?? I wasn’t there and these guys do it all the time, but that seems like a logical step….
Am I the only one who thinks it’s ludicrous that the DRIVER is the one doing all of the climbing and work to free this thing? Shouldn’t this normally be done by some kind of track or safety crew member? Weird.
Driver might be crew member and mechanic !
That said, adrenaline is a hell of a drug….
It was a 410 car and the tail was sitting on the burm. It swung away like it did because the had it chained to the loader. Quite amusing to see in person.
one of the dumbest things I think I’ve ever seen….the tension on that cable was huge, as witnessed by the way it let go – could have easily cut somebody in half or other injury…..