One of the great gearhead movie exchanges of all time went down between Robert Duval and Tom Cruise in, “Days of Thunder”. Duval tells Cruise to pull out on the track and hit the pace car. When Cruise questions him why, Duval responds, “Because you’ve hit every other goddamned thing out there, I want you to be perfect!” In this video the racers aren’t the issue for the most part. It is the pace and safety cars that wreak all kinds of havoc!
This video covers the bases big time. From Formula One to Sprint Cars, wreckage and curious decision making on the part of pace car drivers is highlighted, usually by race cars wrecking into one another. We’ve shown a couple of the clips on the electronic pages of BangShift before. You’ve seen the 1971 Indy crash here and the lunatic that stole the Firebird pace car at Talladega in the 1980s as well.
Press play below to see irony in action. These cars are neither setting the pace or acting safely!
Pause the video at 3:37. Ahhhhh!!!!
Oh, and I don’t think the crowd was applauding the officials for capturing the pace car thief. I think they were applauding the guy who wanted to do some laps at “dega” himself. 😉 I wonder if they release that guys B.A.C.
A local dirt track had the pace car driver/track owner killed when a tire came off a super late car and hit him. 1971 Mustang convertible that has never been licensed for the street.