the engine looks crazy, glad the driver survived.

 

That's what I was thinking too. He stopped quickly.

 

The ring is a very dangerous track & the most demanding on the planet.


I got dibs on his motor

 

I'm not surprised at all that the driver was fine. The cabin looks unscathed.

On a side note if I ever see a car accident where there was some serious carnage or if the owners didn't seem like they were ok I would just blow by too.
The major cause of traffic is rubberneckers rolling by slowly to check out the scene. I've seen it happen for something as stupid as someone just on the side of the road with hazards on, no accident involved.

 

As a long time SCCA race official, I gotta say, that's one of the nastier incidents I've seen in some time. And I've seen some pretty hairy stuff!

Just speculation, since I wasn't there and don't know the track, but my quick analysis:

First and foremost, can't blame the driver of the Mini. It is, generally speaking, the overtaking driver's responsibility (the M3 in this case) to get by cleanly. No matter what the speed differential is. The speed differential would be no different if he had come upon a safety vehicle. But I can't say for sure, as I have no idea if the Mini held his line, or made some sort of erratic maneuver.

I'm not surprised at all that the driver was OK. The cage of the BMW looks intact. You can clearly see the door-bars are fine, the window net only looks displaced due to the driver exiting the car, or the door being pried off. The roof hasn't collapsed. And you can clearly see a 5 or 6 point harness on the seat. The car was definitely set up for serious track duty. As a corner-worker, I've responded to cars that looked like this (granted, under full race prep) and the driver was nothing but a little sore the next day.

The guy shooting the in-car video came up on the incident fairly soon after it happened. And fast as hell! I imagine there was no warning before the crest of the hill, simply because the safety crews are still responding to the accident. Had it been under race conditions, you would have had flaggers already in place to yellow-flag the situation. Unfortunately, you don't have that luxury at track-days. The incident is only a minute or two old. You can clearly see the 'safety-wagon' on the left is just arriving on scene, and the Mini on the left is the only other 'official' vehicle in the area. They are just starting to assess the situation when he comes up on it.

It's all just speculation though.

 

Guy had a roll cage....saved his ***...terrible wreck, glad he is okay....

 

I hope the injuries weren't too severe.

 

I'm not saying they're not rubbernecking, but there also appears to be a great deal of debris on the track - probably not good to go over that at any significant speed.

You absolutely can place blame on the driver of the Mini. It's a blind corner on a high-speed racetrack, not some public road. The expectations of driver behavior are completely different, so it's silly to make a blanket generalization that any action on the part of the Mini driver is irrelevant in placing blame; that's why you felt the need to add a conditional of "generally speaking" to your statement.

 

Man...my heart is pounding. I thought the video was of the car that actually crashed. As I was watching it, I was waiting for the crash. Wow, glad the guy survived.

 

As I said, as long as the Mini held his 'line' and made no erratic move to one side or the other, he is entitled to the racing line.

While this clearly was an open track day, and not racing conditions, any driving instuctor will agree. It is the overtaking vehicles responsibility to make a clean pass. If the car being overtaken is at it's speed for the corner, why should he get off the line? It's more dangerous for the overtaking driver to predict which way the slower one is to go. It's safer to assume they will hold their line, and pick which direction to overtake.

Fact is, I'm not placing blame anywhere. I don't know what either driver did. I wasn't there. But as long as the Mini was 'at speed' for his car, and stayed on his line, he owes no fault. If it's a blind crest, the M3 could have dropped 500 RPM before proceeding full bore into a situation he couldn't see.

No, it's not a public road. But it is a situation where you have lot's of different vehicles with very large speed differentials. It's not like professional racing, where 95 percent of the cars are carrying comparable speeds through any given section of the track. This would be more akin to an SCCA or NASA event where you have multiple classes of cars running on the track at the same time. Staying on-line makes you much more predictable to faster, overtaking traffic.

 

A driver cannot avoid what he can't see. And the entire issue at hand, as I stated, is whether the car being overtaken was in fact at speed.

One need only consider the assignment of blame had, say, the Mini stopped for no reason on the natural line of a blind corner. That's why a blanket statement like "no matter what the speed differential" is silly. And again, I'm pretty sure you understood that, hence your addition of the conditional "generally speaking". I don't know why you decided to flip-flop from one sentence to the next.

 

So, a driver at an open track should assume no responsability entering a known, blind corner? Again, we are not talking full race conditions, but what is essentially a track day that anyone can pay their 10 Euro's and take the family truckster for a lap.

Your correct, we don't know if the Mini was at speed. But we don't know that he wasn't. We don't know anything other than the incident happened. Which is why I use the term "generally speaking". If the Mini had locked a differential, would it be the drivers fault? Or the fault of the driver entering a blind corner at 10/10ths, instead of having something in reserve? What if it had been a safety car responding to a scene instead.

So no, without all the facts, I place mo blame on the Mini. But everyone always assumes that slower traffic is the cause of an incident, when ussually it's not