I was just e-mailed some pictures of a MX-5 cup car that was crashed at this years race at Road America. Truly scary. Does anyone have any ideas what happened?
[ 07-17-2010, 12:02 AM: Message edited by: Mike Tesch ]
-------------------- "I've got 5 kids... here there are hundreds"
Alright, I modified my post. Since you seem to know what happened, I would like to hear about it. It looks horrible. I can only hope the driver made it out OK.
-------------------- "I've got 5 kids... here there are hundreds"
you can read the re-cap on the mx-5 cup website...no real details other than who was involved and that they walked away. That's a good sign. Sorry to see one of your cars like this Ara
-------------------- -RA
"Happy birthday, I didn't get you a present...Oh, mom got you one? Well, that's from me then too, unless it's shitty." 9:52 AM Sep 14th, 2009 via web http://twitter.com/shitmydadsays
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From my perspective, the event was a mixed bag. I walked away with a second place trophy but two of my teammates suffered total car loss. Two other cars were severely damaged that weekend too. We had a strange event on the last lap, we were racing as a pack (and I was getting passed) on the run from the kink to Canada when double yellows came out. It was a little weird to get the double yellow that late in the race / lap. As we passed start-finish, the pace car picked us up. It was running very slowly and I started doing inventory in my mirror of my teammates and realized one was missing, that of Lyonel Kent. I tried to reach him on radio and no response… We went agonizingly slowly around turns one and three and inched to the bridge on that straight. It was obvious that something big had happened. There were several emergency vehicles ahead.
The first thing I saw approaching the scene was the rocker panel cover of Lyonel’s car. Those fall off the cars fairly often when there is contact, so that wasn’t all that unusual. But what made my heart sink and made me immediately sick to my stomach was that the cover was still attached to the rocker panel itself as well as some of the floor! The chassis of the car had been torn to pieces. LARGE parts of the car were scattered all over the track for what looked like hundreds of feet. There was another car there too. That of Jeff Mosing. I looked over to one of the helmeted emergency workers and yelled to ask if the drivers were ok and he said yes and gave me a thumbs up. I can’t tell you the sense of relief I felt. After an anticlimactic podium ceremony whose highlight was having my family with me for father’s day, I made my way back to the paddock to find a giant blob that used to be the ALARA Racing 13 car. In all my years of racing, I have never seen anything like it. Two cars had made contact with each other and had both gone into the right side wall at an angle, pushing the wall in. The next section of wall (that had not moved) then caught the side of the car at the right front and basically tore the right side of the car clear off from the front of the car to the rear, cage bars and all. The driver side of the car was untouched save for the top elements in the cage moving rearward and slightly down as they were pulled back from the right side. Lyonel is one lucky guy to have emerged unscathed and we should ALL be thankful for the advanced safety in today’s race cars. Lyonel was on the podium in his new car six days later.