A SCCA Friend told me about this. Man oh Man, not good. Not one hurt, but lots of $$$ gone.

GT3 AX crash

Thats in Portland, Ore at PIR so JP was probably there...but he ain't here.

Friends don't drive other Friend's cars....even Jeroen knows that one now.

There will likely be some very interesting insurance claims filed in the aftermath of that carnage.

He hit the clutch instead of the brake? Shouldn't his left foot have been on the clutch?
Mark D.

Insurance??? All bets are off.. Most policies won't cover any form of autoracing

That was my first thought. Maybe they meant gas pedal?

It still sucks for all involved

Oh jeezus, i was there for the morning runs & wondered about the finsih. To the course designers credit there was a 90 degree left hander corner just prior to the lights & the run off was real long with another 90 degree right hander to head folks away from parking.

I struggle to comprehend how the driver didn't have time to realise his mistake & re-apply the brakes. Plus a GT3 has awesome stoppers.

JP didn't run in his run group during the morning, woosed out due to weather. I didn't see him prior to leaving around 12:30.

Maybe we can get his motor....

I was thinking the same thing.

BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD No good in this one no matter how you look at it. Except no one was hurt. The one GOOD

Quoted from the other board....

""As a Solo Safety Steward, who ever built that course and approved it should be held 100% accountable for this disaster. You never build the course so there is a high speed section that would allow you to run towards the staging area or the pits. At least no one was hurt as the cars an be replaced.""

I agree entirely.
I also park away from the entrance/ exit of the course if I have any doubts.

Rich

Looks like they were try to take too much advantage of the new patch of asphalt added last year. More asphalt=more speed..........
We run next weekend with the Porsche club. I'm sure this will come up in spades.

But, but, but.......my car wuz just parked! You mean I'm not covered?!

Brilliant!

Why didn't the guy just go BUY a trophy at a store? It would have been MUCH cheaper.

"friends don't let friends drive period." John

so........................



ouch

This is the one that talks to me. Ouch!

Truer words were never spoken. Only accident in 24 years of ownership my car's been in was when I let a "friend" drive it about a week after I got bought it in '83.

That guy is staring at the side of that GT3, while the owner is thinking "Don't you have like magic powers, so you can fix this? Do you have any tools?!"

i wonder if he knew how to drive a stickshift ...

i mean, seriously, how would you hit the clutch instead of the brake?
Andy

My thoughts exactly. I sometimes wonder if drivers freak out and stay frozen on the wrong pedal - sort of like that old guy in that Santa Monica marketplace. Glad no one was hurt.

I was thinking same thing Andy. How the hell do you mistake the clutch for the brake? I could see my foot slipping off brake back onto throttle by mistake, but not all the way over to clutch. In all my years of driving I have never taken my right foot and mistakenly hit the clutch.

Did anyone here actually see it happen?

It looks like the GT3 had stickies.. Stickies and OH SHIT does not work... they become slipperies...

Thats a combination of a lot of factors... ONE include Course designer error... I have seen WAY too many autox courses with fast last legs run right into a crowd, or the pit area.. IF you get sideways at all... and start spinning, it will take a WHOLE lot longer to stop..

One story I heard is that the driver was used to his own Tiptronic and was in the habit of left-foot braking, went for the brake with his left and got the clutch.
I do know from experience that the brain tells you to step down harder when you believe you are on the brake pedal and nothing happens. Happened to me once years ago. I believe that phenomenon was the cause of the famous Audi "unintended accelleration" fuss in the eightys.
My mother in law nailed a tree real hard while parallel parking. Claims the accelerator stuck. I don't have the courage to suggest that it can only "stick" in a position you put it in with your foot, wide open!

when i ran at p-land, there was a short straight section that lead to the finish beam. folks would be on the throttle hard to gain that fraction of a second. as you cleared the beam you had to be hard on the brakes to loose speed. you were then pointed directly at the area when the smashem' up happened. a # of people locked up their brakes trying to slow down. somewhat of an unnerving finish. i could see how an incident like this could happen. it sure would have been exciting when the gt kept on rolling at speed. a video would be perfect! i still contend axing is hard on the equipment.

k

This has certainly gained mileage on the forums...

From what I understand, the driver was accustomed to autoxing an automatic Vette. One can only assume from that, that he jumped on what his left foot -thought- was the brake, only to hit the clutch, and then stood on it harder when the car didn't slow.

I wasn't there, and didn't see the course design, but I make it a point to never have the finish stretch aimed in the direction of grid/paddock/spectators. It doesn't matter how slow the finish actually is, everyone and their brother will make every effort under the sun to cross those finish lights with their foot firmly burried in the carpet. Even if they were slower than dirt everywhere else on the course...

The red mist is at its worst at the finishing lights...

A stuck throttle (or brain) can make that slow finish into a hair-raising adventure in the blink of an eye...

-Josh2

All seriousness aside...

It just goes to show you what happens when you put excellence in the hands of a Vette driver.....

A quick vid showing a nearly identical stopbox on that site.....cept the SCCA guys didn't get as good a run at it The finish lights are in about the same place...within a foot or 2. I will admit it's not idiot proof, but it is a major challenge to screw it up that badly.

OH...ya gotta sit thru some lousy driving to get to the finish.....think of it as perspective over the whole venue.

There's one other thing. Anyone who has set up & run an AX knows that compromises are made.....safety is one of those things that no one *knowingly* compromises. The SCCA spells out minimums for the course/solid object interface. Much stock is put in what has worked before. That stop box worked for 20-25 (or more) previous events.....hundreds of passes & drivers....SCCA & PCA. Having said that, it was not bullet proof.....so we all learned something.
If you can do better, go set yourself up an AX and you can sweat out these compromises....and good luck to you. Sniping is easy, putting your ass on the line is something else and without someone doing that, you have no events.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSZZ6LuN7fI

Back when I used to setup courses for our sports car club auto-x's (Cal Poly SLO) we always had a scale map of the parking lot that we used to lay out the course. Then we drove a big pink eraser like an idiot might drive just to see what could happen. It was very low tech but it worked - it showed what could happen if someone hammered the throttle and lost it.
The only thing that ever happened was some of the guys from Tilton came out with a customers car (a Nissan Skyline that was being fitted with a prototype clutch - silly thing was so fast I couldn't keep my feet on the floorboards at full throttle) and lost it so bad that they took out our timer (and the cinder block that was holding the reflector)) They had lots of fun getting a new rocker panel from Japan overnight to repair the car before the customer found out.

Was Eddie Griffin driving? This looks like his work.

Steve, now thats funny! I make CART/INDY pedals for them... and this comes to no surprise.

relax jp. i wasn't pointing fingers fer christ's sake. i just stated i could see how this sort of thing could happen with the driver unacustomed to the car. *unnerving*...

k

That wasn't directed at you specificaly. There is a bunch of finger pointing going on all over the net about this accident. It seems that maybe 25% or less of those commenting put the blame squarely where it belongs.....the driver of the GT3.

The "stop box" is a misnomer as it's really a slowdown box. It's part of the course and all cones hit count against your time (isconsequential here ). Like any other part of the course as a driver you have to set up for it and execute...not to mention having a plan should something go to hell in a hand basket.

We've had (PCA) had to chase people out of the area parked immediately past the end of a box in the past.......50 feet closer than those unfortunates in the pit area.....WTF were they thinking?

We all live & learn. We were chased out of the infield at PIR ( which has fewer opportinities for a fool to hurt someone besides himself) and stuck in the South
pits by PIR management. It is a shitty venue, but *the only one in town* or outside town for that matter. We'll come up with something fool proof....that is to say the fool will only have the opportinity to hurt himself.

even if he was "used to left foot braking", what the hell was he left foot braking for at the end of the track?
left foot braking is for those corners where you need to stay on the gas with the right foot.

at the end of the course, it's both feet in! (and that does not include the gas pedal)
Andy

Same old story of lending a friend a car and getting it back destroyed. We all need to recognize this law of nature and head this lesson besides, balls out cars should be driven for a while just to get use to it even if it means getting use to the tires or the pedal spacing. Sounds stupid but when it comes to a microsecond decision, if its not done instinctively, it won't happen SQUEEEEELBOOOOM He probably did the right thing but for the pedal cluster spacing of a Corvet

I bought a used 86 Audi 5000 for next to nothing in 89. Audi screwed themselves by going quiet instead of jumping up and down that it was driver error. They placed the brake just slightly to the left to give more foot space. There's been statistics for all auto manufacturers of this phenomena.

One second on the gas instead of the brake makes a big difference in close quarters.

My neighbor did this just last year. I heard a bang, then screech and engine roar. She was turning around in the driveway, punched the throttle instead of the brake, drove forward into her Caddilac, put it in reverse and drove backwards into the neighbors driveway before finding the brake. She claimed something was wrong with the car.

With respect to the dude in the GT3, bottom line is still, "yee who has their ass in the seat is responsible".