mikegarrison

Mark, it's also important to point out that when you were doing HPDEs in your S2000 there was no cage, no window net, no belts, etc. impeding your exit. Most times you had the top down and could have just climbed over the door if necessary. Plus, race cars simply are not as safe as street cars for fire. This is shown by relative rates per hour of operation that race cars catch fire versus street cars.

So you were, in a sense, balancing your risks. Now that you drive a race car your risks have changed. Some of them have increased, some of them have decreased. So your safety gear has changed too.

CozMotorsports

Some pretty piss poor response time and actions by the emergency crew.

f20kills

What I dont understand is how the car "came apart" so easy and how he isnt held in his seat any more.
He (body) is all over the place!!

jguerdat

Just what I was thinking. They fought the whole friggin' fire with fire bottles? Where was a truck or hose? Although I'm no firefighter, Navy training had me sweeping the base of the flames to separate the fuel from the fire - these guys seem to be be pointing into the flames, which is less effective.

TubeDriver

The more I look at this the sicker I feel.


I would not assume that in an incident you will have a fire truck on the spot immediately. At most of the DEs I go to, we have EMT and wreckers but not fire trucks. If you are on fire and trapped in a car, by the time a Fire vehicle gets out of the paddock area and drives to your car I imagine you are pretty much toast.


Nomex suit will provide a couple seconds of protection (the idea being that this is the time needed to get out of the vehicle).


A fire suppression system might buy you a lot more time, it does looks like the Lambo's fire system broke free during the impact (not hard to believe seeing as how a good potion of the drivetrain broke free as well).

mikegarrison

Yup.

Most DEs I've been to don't even have that many firebottles distributed around the entire track.

And they did have a firetruck in the incident on the video. Got there pretty fast, too. Only a couple minutes after the wreck. But a couple minutes is enough.

124Spider

I think the thing to keep in mind here is that he really balled up his car, apparently crushing his legs in the initial crash.

While it's easy to scratch your head at the Keystone Kops-like response of the fire folks, it's also true that he was in a bad way before the car came to a stop.

At neither DEs nor club racing is there any high-level fire system. The corner workers have fire bottles, and the cars have whatever they have (or don't have). I have a fire system in my car, and I wear Nomex underwear and a Nomex suit. But if I'm trapped in the car for more than a few seconds, I'm toast.

Richard EVO

Except at Spring Mtn. Motorsports Ranch in Pahrump, NV. They don't have corner workers. They have an automated light system for signaling drivers about cautions, etc. So nobody to go running out with a fire bottle.

mikegarrison

Who turns on and off the lights?

CozMotorsports

Mitch does from his laptop in the tower. It's actually a very cool system that Mitch took me through the operation of for a weekend I was in the tower helping out as a spotter.

However, there are emergency crews stationed that respond when needed that are pretty quick. Seen that happen as well.