This is gonna be two weekends I won’t be home to watch NASCAR. I missed last Sunday’s race because I was working a club race at Sears Point and will be at Laguna Seca next weekend for a vintage race weekend (and possibly some rain, yuck).
One of our SCCA flag chiefs works for Sears Point and had some pictures of a brand-new Audi RS4 that had been totaled at the track. Audi has a program where you can pick up your new car at any track where the Jim Russell Racing School runs and take a few laps. The owner of this RS4 drove it into the wall at Turn 11 at around 110mph; he hit hard enough to break two posts on the catch fence, bend several other posts, and flip two sections of K-wall around so hard that they swung around and hit the sections they were attached to. The driver’s okay, but they had to cut the whole left side of the car off to extricate him.
And then on Sunday while I was there, we had a GT2 car hit the wall in T11 only a few feet from where the Audi went in on Thursday. He didn’t move the wall as far, but it did break two posts on the catch fencing (the same two; they had been spot-welded back together). We had to finish the day running the “short” T11 they use for motorcycles and IndyCars.
I gotta tell you, blue-flagging Formula Atlantics from the end of a K-wall just a few feet off the course will really get your blood pumping!
My wife and I really enjoy being very involved in this hobby.