View Full Version : Thought you were having a bad day?
From this afternoon's second Qualifying session at the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix...
Ouch
https://forums.hamisland.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=12729&stc=1
The driver came out of Corner 11 sideways, and wrapped the car around a light pole. Yes, I mean wrapped... the front & rear wheels were almost touching.
Now, the good news... the driver walked away from it. In fact, the corner crew reports that he got out of the car, and started yelling at them about track conditions (it was drizzling for most of the day). Even so, he got taken to the hospital by city paramedics as a precaution.
KG4CGC
07-19-2014, 08:55 PM
Wrapped.
That's a wrap.
K7SGJ
07-19-2014, 09:14 PM
That should buff out okay.
NA4BH
07-19-2014, 10:09 PM
A little touch up paint and he'll never notice
XE1/N5AL
07-19-2014, 11:24 PM
Spicoli can fix it. His old man is a television repairman, who's got this ultimate set of tools.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN_Nod65e7o
They gave us an update this morning at the Corner Flag Worker's Meeting.
The driver is OK. He has some bruised, cracked & broken ribs, and a broken shoulder. So he's hurting. But he's alive, and he was in the Paddock during the day visiting.
The car (or what's left of it)? Well, when they took it off the flatbed, the frame broke in two. It's basically a total loss.
K7SGJ
07-20-2014, 07:23 PM
Bah. If the mechanics were half as talented as the folks on here, that car would have been back on the road and in second place by now.
XE1/N5AL
07-20-2014, 07:24 PM
I hope the driver quickly gets over his injuries.
WØTKX
07-20-2014, 07:35 PM
I used to work at Brainerd International in MN. Never forget the day a Shelby lost it, and killed a corner worker.
Yea, it was wet and drizzling, with oil on the track from a wreck a few laps previous. They stopped the race.
Bah. If the mechanics were half as talented as the folks on here, that car would have been back on the road and in second place by now.The 2nd year of the PVGP, one of the drivers managed to take a rare Italian sports car (I want to say an Avanti, but don't hold me to that) off the road and into the trees. Story is that when they pulled the wreck out... incidently, he walked away without a scratch... the flat-bed driver offered to take it back to the owner's home in Philadelphia at cost, as he was afraid that the remnants (basically the frame and some scraps) would break in half if they tried to take it off his truck.
The owner declined. The frame snapped in half when they moved it.
He ended up having it shipped back overseas to the factory, and paid for a complete restoration. More like a rebuild from the repaired frame up. The car had previously been a "one of a kind" modification, though, and the restoration was more back to the original specs.
We rehashed the story yesterday, amongst the corner workers and Coarse Crew, after the scrap metal was hauled out yesterday.
Now, I knew the basic story, as I'd been on the course that year. What I didn't know...
about 10 years ago At the 2003 PVGP, some maroon got his sneakers (NOT his racing boots) stuck on the pedals & plowed a rare pre-war (WW 1) class car into the jersey barrier at 18, just beyond the 2 meter antenna for race communications (ie, me and my equipment!).
I have a picture of it (courtesy of WA3JPP(sk)). He actually moved the barrier a few inches.
https://forums.hamisland.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=12737&stc=1
As you've probably guessed by now, the driver? The same maroon.
More money than brains.
I was told today that after THAT incident, the driver got thoroughly chewed out for being a maroon, and has received an invitation to never, ever return.
K7SGJ
07-20-2014, 09:47 PM
The 2nd year of the PVGP, one of the drivers managed to take a rare Italian sports car (I want to say an Avanti, but don't hold me to that) off the road and into the trees. Story is that when they pulled the wreck out... incidently, he walked away without a scratch... the flat-bed driver offered to take it back to the owner's home in Philadelphia at cost, as he was afraid that the remnants (basically the frame and some scraps) would break in half if they tried to take it off his truck.
The owner declined. The frame snapped in half when they moved it.
He ended up having it shipped back overseas to the factory, and paid for a complete restoration. More like a rebuild from the repaired frame up. The car had previously been a "one of a kind" modification, though, and the restoration was more back to the original specs.
We rehashed the story yesterday, amongst the corner workers and Coarse Crew, after the scrap metal was hauled out yesterday.
Now, I knew the basic story, as I'd been on the course that year. What I didn't know...
about 10 years ago At the 2003 PVGP, some maroon got his sneakers (NOT his racing boots) stuck on the pedals & plowed a rare pre-war (WW 1) class car into the jersey barrier at 18, just beyond the 2 meter antenna for race communications (ie, me and my equipment!).
I have a picture of it (courtesy of WA3JPP(sk)). He actually moved the barrier a few inches.
https://forums.hamisland.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=12737&stc=1
As you've probably guessed by now, the driver? The same maroon.
More money than brains.
I was told today that after THAT incident, the driver got thoroughly chewed out for being a maroon, and has received an invitation to never, ever return.
Some people should not be allowed to have mass quantities of money.
NA4BH
07-20-2014, 09:52 PM
He really should study that turn just a little more.
The original car looks like a Chaparral to me. Could be wrong, but that's priceless these days as are most of those vintage race cars. That's one of my favorites from the 60s. The Lola T-70 is, to me, the most beautiful race car ever built. Sorry to see the wreckage. It almost hurts, but there's a lot of people driving too much car for their abilities these days. Saw a vid of a driver test driving a $1 Million Ferrari and he crunched it into someones cement fence destroying it.
I understand that the car in the 2003 photo wasn't badly damaged, and was repaired. They just won't let that putz back in, not even just to exhibit up in the Paddock.
Also, one difference since then... at the time of that photo, the concrete barrier at 18 was just that -- jersey barriers, in some years plastic equivalents filled with water. Since then, there's a layer of hay bales stacked in front of the barriers. So if a car hits, and not too hard, there's much less damage to the car AND the barrier. (Not that it would have helped much when someone goes into the barrier at full throttle, like that putz)
Reporter for the Trib says that the car that was destroyed on Saturday was a "Lotus 23". However, she got a few facts wrong in her story (http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/6445605-74/grand-prix-car#axzz386bcp6wG ) -- it wrecked at Corner 11, not 16, for one thing. Some of the photos she took for the article (see also the "Photos of the Day segment) were from our corner; no I'm not in any of them. She did ask me about why the Flamingos; her caption basically quotes me, without naming me. So it goes.
WØTKX
07-21-2014, 12:20 PM
That's a damn shame...
http://files.conceptcarz.com/img/Lotus/62-Lotus-23B_num8-DV-10-RA_01.jpg
That's a damn shame...
< photo snipped >Funny. There was a vehicle with a very similar paint job running. I'm pretty sure I have some pictures of it.
Let me check... my friend AB3ED has already posted his pictures... http://bobtimmins.zenfolio.com/pvgp2014/h16762567#h16762567 that sure looks like the same car...
On Edit... and here's one of my pictures of that car, as he was coming around Corner 18 on Sunday afternoon...
https://forums.hamisland.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=12741&stc=1
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