BangShifter Brenhan Chapman sent me an email with a link to the footage below and it is pretty stunning stuff. You are about to see racer Dave West in a Freightliner Argosy suffer the worst wreck we have ever seen a racing big rig have. Powered by a 14-liter Detroit Diesel that Chapman believes makes some 1,200hp, this is a truck that can make some serious speed. The video stars as the calamity does and there is little lead up to what happened. Being that it looks like the trucks are hauling down a straightaway maybe it was a mechanical failure that caused the truck to go dead left beginning a series of events that tested every inch of the machine’s construction.
The track is a 1.6 mile facility that has a straight which measure about a half mile long. It has been open since the late 1950s and is the second most southern racing facility in the world. Only a track in Argentina is closer to the South Pole than this place. We’re not sure what the rules of the series that West was competing in are but we can tell you that the cab of his truck must have a good cage in it because it seems to be the one piece of the rig that was not compromised by the impact and ensuing flips. You will actually see West climb from the truck after all the madness stops.
We’ve got nothing else to say about this one. Truly wild stuff and a good indication of the amount of energy a vehicle of this size and weight have when moving at the speeds it was in this video.
