Well if you’re gonna crash out, you might as well do it in style
February 29th, 2012 at 04:41am
From yesterday’s NASCAR Daytona 500, this is what I call a spectacular crash.
(h/t Fox Sports)
This happened shortly after another crash had placed the field under a yellow caution flag. Juan Pablo Montoya lost control of his car, seemingly due to a mechanical malfunction of some sort, and careered in to the back of a truck which had a jet engine on it which was being used to blow debris off the track.
Amazingly, nobody was hurt. This always amazes me as an awful lot of careful planning and design has obviously gone in to the whole car racing industry so that people can usually simply walk away from incidents such as these.
The couple hundred gallons of burning jet fuel damaged the road surface so badly that it took two hours for the track to be fixed up to a usable state. It wasn’t great, and the drivers did mention that it was still a bit rough, but the fact that it was usable at all a mere two hours after such a large and intense fire is quite extraordinary.
The race had a number of other spectacular crashes with multiple cars flying all over the place, and set a few records too. It was the first Daytona 500 to be held on a Monday night, and was also the first in history to finish on a Tuesday morning. I have my doubts that the V8 Supercars here in Australia would bother continuing later in the day if there was going to be a two hour delay to fix a melted track.
Samuel
Entry Filed under: Sport
