All of us must remember the old stop, drop and roll phrase that teaches kids what to do if they find themselves suddenly on fire. It was a tag line burned into our minds from a young age partly from fear but mostly from repetition and because its quite catchy.
It turns out that it’s not just Kiwis that stop, drop and roll Brazilian race car drivers are well versed in the technique as well. Just ask Tuka Rocha a keen driver in the Brazilian Stock Car Championship who found himself with a scorching problem. Rocha’s race car, a Chevy that’s oddly sponsored by Hyundai, became ablaze mid-race and turned into a uncontrollable fireball. Like anyone would, Rocha wanted out bad, so in desperation he kicked open the door and threw himself out. Rocha kept performed a few rolls and becomes overwhelmed with joy after his near-death experience, he celebrates for a moment before falling to the ground and needing attention.
Rocha turned out to have no serious injuries and is now on his way to internet stardom, as for his Chevy race car, that’s not so healthy. Check out the video below.
When it comes to the top echelons of endurance racing Audi rules the roost, so long as its cars can stay on the track. At last weekend’s Le Mans 24 hour endurance race the Audi LMP cars were firm favourites – but it all didn’t go to plan.
After dominating qualifying to put two Audi R18 TDIs in pole and second spot on the grid, Audi was looking flash. But just one hour into the race, two-time winning driver Allan McNish found himself in all sorts of strife and completely smashed his pretty prototype racer. McNish was trying to work his way round his teammate when he encountered traffic and got connected with a GTE Class Ferrari 458 Italia. McNish and his Audi crossed rapidly through the sand trap and hit the barrier at a high speed, the R18 disintegrated sending carbonfibre, metal and tyres everywhere. Photographers and marshals scattered to get out of the way of the debris and amazingly no one was hurt – not even McNish who walked away.
McNish’s racing day was over, but Audi did still go on to take Le Mans victory through Andre Lotterer in the #2 R18 TDI.
The WRC Rally of Finland is well known for it’s fast stages and big air jumps but naturally with this sort of carry-on always comes an element of danger. This year’s unlucky victim was local lad Mikko Hirvonen who had a bruising crash while driving the Ford Focus WRC. Hirvonen lost control of his Ford Focus WRC in the third special stage at Urria after a jump and rolled a number of times. his focus WRC was completely destroyed, but luckily, Hirvonen and his co-pilot received no major injuries. According to Hirvonen it wasn’t his fault and he suspects the reason for crash was that the steering system on his Ford broke on landing after the jump.
Watch Hirvonen’s crash below. The clip shows the event from both on-board cameras and exterior ones. Read the rest of this entry »
The recently held Rally of NZ was an awesome event, there was a special stage held in Auckland’s Domain, and some close racing on beautiful kiwi roads. One incident that wasn’t so beautiful was the vicious but perfectly-timed brown-eye pulled by one local spectator. The helpless victim of this nasty crime was NZ driver Mark Tapper and his WRC Mitsubishi Evo rally car. Neither will be the same again.
Tapper who was seriously distracted lost control of his Evo, hit the barrier and ended up on the roof. The drivers comments immediately after the crash are crazy funny but not suitable for work. You can see the white bottom that kicked it all off 33 seconds into the clip.
It’s pretty ‘stink’ what happened to Tapper, but you absolutely must check out the video by clicking the link below.
On this show, Father’s Day Drags: Over 5000 people attended the annual fathers day Drags for V8 Street machines at Fram Autolite Dragway Meremere on of course Father’s Day. The top 8 American and Aussie Street registered V8s went through eliminations into the top 8 shootout. Wayne Grimmer turned up with his new 73 Barracuda as did Bruce Cox (71 Camaro), Reece Fish (56 Chev Bel Air) and Ian Rainbow in the latest issue’s cover car 50 Chev Coupe. The Aussie shootout featured Kelvin Blacks 93 Commodore, Aaron Jenkins 72 Monaro and Damon Birchs 80 Ford Falcon ute. Aussie Muscle Car Masters: From Eastern Creek in Sydney its Australias biggest muscle car event. The Kiwi CMC cars were there to compete in 4 races plus the end of event Trans Tasman Muscle car Challenge. After a disastrous crash in race 2 which took out 3 of the Kiwi muscle cars it was back to the track for race 3. Plus we look at some of the legend Aussie Touring cars of yesteryear that paved the way for the V8 Supercars that run today.
