Conclusive evidence
 

Well, I guess the good news is that judging by the damage, that person was driving hella fast and a good 50% of that car is still intact.

They must have be thrown clear because, the cockpit is relatively undamaged. I've seen a Carrera RS rolled off the track where both driver and passenger survived, and that car had way more damage.

Conclusive evidence
 

See, this is why I like you NFH, your glass is always half full. Ain't nobody gonna breaka your stride, ain't nobody gonna hold you down....

Conclusive evidence
 

Conclusive evidence
 

http://images.ibsys.com/2005/0602/4562697_320X240.jpg

It looks like the passenger side was sheared off by the barrier. Not coincidentally, the driver died at the hospital while the passenger died at the scene --- no word on the specific injury, but it wouldn't surprise me if he lost limbs and bled out within minutes.

I would not --- and this is just me personally --- ever consider racing at 100 mph on a track shared with other street-legal cars, exotic or not. You can potentially (but not necessarily) survive a NASCAR, dragster or F1 wreck at those speeds because you're in a steel bucket and cage, which in all but the NASCAR context is located in the exact center of the vehicle. These guys were wearing helmets and died anyway, because a hollow four inches of production car door is not going to prevent your arm from being torn clean off.

ETA: It's good news that the 50% of the car that didn't hit anything is still intact? What kind of beater do you drive that when you hit something 100% of the car is damaged? I guess a POS early '90s Accord is more robust than all your Porsches, Horatio.

Conclusive evidence
 

I would also consider not racing at any track that uses only concrete jersey barriers, with no padding/cushioning of any sort.

I can't visualize how the impact occurred from the debris field and damage, but they must have still been going very fast when they hit the wall, and they mave have sheared part of the car off against an edge or something. It looks like most of the debris is right there, which suggests a relatively perpindicular impact, but the passenger side is obviously much more damaged. Even if they were going 100 mph when they hit, that kind of crash should be survivable absent unlucky circumstances. With the kind of power a GT has, they may very well have been as high as 130 or 140 when leaving the track and scrubbed at least some of the speed, but there are no approaching tracks. It's hard to imagine that they could lose control that badly on a straightaway and have much more speed that 140 or so when leaving asphalt.

I agree with Bilmore: naked concrete barriers are idiotic if they are at all reachable. There should be berms in that kind of situation; there are all the tracks I have raced at. Wheel to wheel or even time trials or hot lapping in a production car requires you to constantly evalute how safe something is and whether you should really be doing it, regardless of whether they actually let you do it or not. I'd never really race in an open-air car; the Z4 was allowed some pretty hot laps but never as all out as I would take the old 911. And really, doing anything when you're really pushing it in a production car is stupid without a rollcage.

eta Various internet forums suggest the car was more or less all-out on a straightaway at about 165 mph when a Ferrari, perhaps due to driver error, entered the track from the pits. The GT swerved to avoid, lost control and left the track at high speed, hitting the wall at about 100 mph. That sucks. When I first did wheel-to-wheel, we learned that you should always choose contact, even significant, with another car if the alternative is an evasive maneveur that you are not sure you can safely execute, whether because of traction dynamics, other traffic, track location with respect to barriers, etc. Looks like that was the fatal mistake here.

Are you saying that there was NOTHING between the track and the concrete barriers? Not even tires? That's ridiculous. I've never seen such a thing.

And I seem to recall that when you leave the track, you actually pick up acceleration on the grass.

And the driver probably thought, "WTF? This guy's going to hit my half-million dollar car with his piece of shit Ferrari," and probably swerved to miss the collision. Split second decision that cost him his life.

eta, I take that back. When we saw the Indy cars in Reno, there was nothing between the track and the crowd except for the concrete freeway barriers.

The only way that this statement is even remotely correct is if you are braking on the asphalt and therefore have significant negative acceleration, and then experience a greatly decreased rate of deceleration[1] when confronted with a surface with a lesser coefficient of kinetic friction. Thus, you "pick up acceleration." Maybe.

[1] Almost any production car is capable of -1.5Gs or so. I'd be surprised if something like a Carrera GT (if they were at 100% braking, which they almost certainly wouldn't be if trying to regain control) couldn't do -2.5G or so in the right conditions.

Physics is hard.

Sometimes scientists are inartful writers. This board needs a Philip Cooney.

Yeah. Something like that. Like when you're in a 4 wheel drift on pavement, the coefficiency of friction changes on grass, but the momentum remains the same and causes acceleration.
Of course, I could be whiffing.

Physics is hard.

You will not accelerate absent an ability (and desire) to apply force to the car. An absence of friction, as might be the case on wet grass, means that you can neither accelerate nor decelerate. Or your ability to do so is greatly lessened. Any sensation of acceleration is simply your mind mistaking your being out of control for acceleration.

So the relevance of the grass is that once he went off the track, he lost any possiblity of controlling his car. That is all.

Pity. Here I was looking forward to NASCAR straightaways becoming fairways.

Strike "An absence of"; insert "Substantial reduction in."

Yours,
Philip Cooney

Oh, honey, you were so moving up my crush list until this. You must be a litigator!

:) Kidding! I could never really be so hateful as to call you a litigator!