We missed watching the 24 Hours of LeMans last weekend due to our attendance of the Holley NHRA National Hot Rod Reunion. We did manage to catch some highlights and we saw the replay that you will see below of the race’s scariest and most potentially deadly wreck. This one had all the elements of a complete disaster from the get go. There was the high speed as the cars were coming down the back of the Mulsanne Straight into Mulsanne corner and really moving along. Then there was the fact that one car was a super light prototype and the other was a heavier production class racer, add in the limited run off area, potential of flight, and you’ve made a very scary equation. Both racers lived through this but the driver of the Toyota prototype, Anthony Davidson sustained a couple of broken vertebrae in his back.
You’ll see a couple of replays of the wreck in this video, but the driver of the Ferrari seems not to have noticed that Davidsion pulled to the inside of him and the Ferrari turns into the corner, clipping the Toyota and then sending it into some sickening aerial maneuvers as at careens toward the wall. You have no appreciation for how fast the Ferrari is going until it hits the wall and force of the blow it lands on the tires and steel guardrail.
Press play to see things get ugly at LeMans 2012!
At the start of the vid we actually see the guy with the few broken vertebrae out of his car!!!
Interesting how the tires absorb the impact, rather than bouncing the cars back onto the track. How many crashes have we seen where the car bounces back into traffic, or in drag racing into the other concrete guardwall? Makes me wonder if there is a better way to make a guard rail. At the ice drags they use snow for guardrails, out of shape cars hit it and come to an easy stop, often with no damage.