Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

in case your didn't see or hear what happened at williams grove tonight...there was a crash during eastern museum of motor racing vintage car track time with one of the sprint cars.  i'm not sure what triggered it since i was posting on social media about wondering why the track time was running so long despite weather being around and the flo replay doesn't catch the whole thing.  what you do see on the replay is the car flipping high above the track headed into turn 3 and landing on its roof.  the driver (unfortunetly i haven't caught his name) came partially out of the car while he was flipping and was motionless when he landed upside down.

if it's true that the emmr vintage car driver was alive on lifelion...then the track safety crew at williams grove saved his life.  we left when the state police came because i thought i had watched somebody get killed again.  last time i saw that scene was when the push truck driver was killed a few years ago.  they were doing cpr on the driver tonight on the race track.  based on that and how far he came out of the car during the wreck...he really has no business being alive and the work of those people made all the difference.  

hopefully he pulls through and...again...those people are life savers.  

Unfortunately it was a wingless car. The driver was taking a lot of punishment. God speed.

It wasn't wingless until the incident happened. 

That was a Nasty Crash. Thank Goodness there was an experientced EMT crew there. It just shows the importance of having capable medicical personnel at a race track. Now that most of us can watch races from all across the country with Dirtvision and FLO, it amazes me how unsafe some of these dirt tracks are? It is one of the first things I notice when I put on a race from a new track. Alot of tracks do not have an Ambulance on site....Safety is also a big concern. Are there proper catch fences, any obsticles a car could hit (like trees outside the track, or tractors in the infield). Cinder Blocks for walls. Fans or pit crews standing inside the pits with no guard rails or fencing. Poor track lighting. etc I could go on and on. We might have seen a miracle last night.

All of the things you're mentioning are true, and you can throw inadequate fire crews in there too.   They only change these things after somebody gets killed.    Devils Bowl used to pit cars just a short distance off of turns 3 and 4 during big shows with no walls, fences or anything else.   They quit doing that eventually, because as anyone with a little bit of common sense would have known it would kill somebody and it did.   

You are damn good at opening your mouth and sticking your foot in there. Congrats.

Well , before you open your mouths, when the camera caught up to the car flipping there was no wing to be seen.  As  always you may say what you want about me but in reality you are no better. In fact, I think your worse. I laugh and go about my day.

What exactly happened that caused him to start flipping? Looking like he may have hopped a wheel of another car. I don't think I've ever seen a EMMR car going fast enough to flip that violently.

Is there any reports on his condition? 

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only thing i've seen on twitter is he's in the icu, has rib fractures, and is expected to make a full recovery.  none of that is confirmed from anything official.

williams grove hasn't posted anything that i've seen.  not even a shout out to the safety team and ems.  par for the course i would say.

i also heard he ran over the right rear of another car which launched him.  we were standing in turn 3 and didn't see it.  the consensus was everybody missed it because we were on our phones, throwing baseball, etc. because the track time had gone so long.  it was the second really long session of the night.  they made an announcement about not having fuel before hot laps could start so they had emmr track time right off the bat.  

just seemed like a freak accident and a combination of less than ideal circumstances.  it didn't seem like anybody was going particularly fast.  you wonder in the future if they need to a. require safety equipment similar to what the current guys are running or b. they basically just parade around.  i don't need to see them at any high speed to be honest.  just cool to have them out there and doesn't seem like a risk worth taking to have them do anything more than parade around.

 Glad the driver will make a full recovery.   It is just amazing that he is going to be OK.     It didn't  look good when the sheets were held up.  And I never seen the police show up for a race crash before in Pennsylvania.  Of course New Jersey because they oversee racing and I was there the night Jason Leffler was killed and the police showed up.

I heard that a car lost power in front of him and that caused him to jump a wheel.   The cars were in a big wod from turn 3 to turn 2.  My buddy just said "it's  getting a little tight out there they better spread out or someone is about to wreck" and bam the guy went flipping.  

If you noticed they bring the cars out in two groups.  Full bodied and then open wheel.  And it can be quite the range of  years of cars from 1920s and 30s all the way to 15 year old sprint cars.  Some guys just putt around and others gas it up a little. I have never seen anyone really fly by other cars , they usually wait for open track and gas it up.

I have friends that have old restored cars, but no one had theirs cars there Friday. One friend has 5 old restored cars with one  being a 1969 Tobias first built sprint car. We ask him why don't you run your cars and he says no so Friday night will for sure end him ever getting his cars out.  My other friend has Keith Kauffman's  first sprint car which he use to bring out and run. He and his son have about 6 or 8 cars and they run theirs.   I  have talked to them about Friday night and see if they change their minds.  But Latimore kept their track time available for Saturday and  Sunday. 

Just praying for the driver and his family and the driver that lost the engine.

God Bless the safety crew and ambulance and Life Lion staff.

I follow Van May on Facebook and he made post about one of his wheels coming off.  It was kinda hard to interpret, but that may have been what Godshall hit causing him to flip. Sounds like he's gonna make a recovery so that's all that matters. As far EMMR track time goes....I don't really watch it too closely when I'm there, but having cars on track with big horsepower/speed differences can definitely cause problems. Especially when failures happen. Could be something to look at so this doesn't happen again. 

The driver that crashed did not run over Van's LR wheel. Van's FB post was written in an effort to have people realize the EMMR cars need to be slowed down before another accident happens.

Assuming he really was in cardiac arrest after the crash, and they got him back, I'm quite confident the cardiac arrest casued the crash, not the crash casued the cardiac arrest.  Anectdotally, in my 27 year career in emergency medicine, the survival rate of traumatic arrests in zero.  Glad to hear he is expected to recover.

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Yeah the wheel coming off Van's car was a few laps earlier. I love seeing the old cars on the track, although some of them aren't real old. I hope this incident doesn't prevent them from being allowed on the track. Most of them just idle around while there's always a few that like to gas it up down the straights. I would guess that after this, the gassers will be told to slow it down and just fall in line. Unfortunate, but best to be safe. Hope Gutshall has a speedy and complete recovery. Glad he's still with us. That one looked really bad. 

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