You don't have to be going 240 mph to leave the ballpark.

[downtowndeco]

Huge Shunt at MR2 race Brands Hatch - Biggest Crash From Best View 17/04/2011 - HD - YouTube

Thank goodness no spectators were in this area.

We need to do whatever we can to prevent this from happening in Indycar, and if that means keeping the speeds down a few ticks I'm OK with that.

[00steven]

I know everyone says that it will never happen, but my biggest fear is an Indycar flipping over the fence. It wouldn't happen like this, but an Indycar could clear a fence rather than blowing right through it. It looked to me the fence was rather week in this particular crash.

[SarahFan]

Did the car take out / go thru a section of catch fence? It's looks like that section didn't have any?

[fan-veteran]

There was a GAP in the fence!!! One of the cars was restricted as it should.

[Anubis]

Scary crash indeed. Had that not been a club event, I dread to think what would've happened, as that area of the track would've been full of people milling about. Seem to have been a few "over the fence" incidents of late. Someone had the mother and father of accidents at the top of Eau Rogue recently, but I can't remember who. Not sure if it's a serious problem or just one of those things where we get clusters of incidents. Can remember enough "out of the ballpark" accidents in years gone by.

ETA - found the Spa one, it was Joey Foster Speed Euroseries 2011 Spa-Francorchamps Joey Foster massive crash during testing - YouTube

[Andrewmcm]

Put all the spectators on the inside of the corners. Crap view I know, but then this argument is redundant. Placing people on the outside of corners (and close to the action) is asking for trouble.

[NickFalzone]

Truly a miracle that no one was standing in the car's path. One of the worst non-fatal wrecks I've ever seen.

[Dr. Krogshöj]

We need to do whatever we can to prevent this from happening in Indycar, and if that means keeping the speeds down a few ticks I'm OK with that.

Or, just don't leave a gap in the catchfence. Sometimes I feel track safety could improve a lot at many circuits. For example, concrete barriers without catchfences pose an incredible danger for drivers' heads. It's a miracle E.J. Viso wasn't seriously injured at the Magny-Cours GP2 race in 2007, like the poor Marco Campos, who was killed at the same track. The pitlane entries at some tracks, like Interlagos, are outright frightening as well. At Montreal, Robert Kubica had his big crash because someone had the idea to set up the concrete wall almost perpendicular to the direction of the cars. I know these are F1 examples, but I think track safety is a bigger issue nowadays than car safety or speeds.

[Anubis]

Trouble is, a lot of these dangers aren't obvious until someone has the accident. I think we're in a situation now where track safety is, on the whole, pretty good, which tends to magnify the severity of these sorts of incidents. Plenty of cars have gone off at Paddock Hill over the years, often very spectacularly (Jos Sterkens' rallycross crash for example), it's just that this incident combined a lot of freak events to make the car end up where it did. I think perhaps more attention should be given to just how easily the barrier launched the car in the first place. Yes, the gap in the fence needs to be addressed as well (for debris retention if nothing else), but without the barrier failing to contain the car, the gap in the fence isn't an issue. Well, ok, it IS an issue, but not the primary one, if you know what I mean. The fact the car was flying through the air in the first place is the first problem to look at IMO. Even with fences, freak accidents can still occur - I'm reminded of Keith Odor putting it over the fence at Old Hairpin in the TOCA Shootout, and more recently Kelvin Burt going out of the track in a Porsche race at Thruxton.

[call_me_andrew]

There was a GAP in the fence!!! One of the cars was restricted as it should.

Exactly! He didn't go over the fence or through the fence, he went around the fence.

I had been doing some research for a future blog about the possible dangers of an IndyCar race at Talladega. I found that an IndyCar going 300 mph (which we all know isn't happening) into a catch fence (with a very fat driver) has less momentum than an empty stock car at 200 mph. However, I would still be a little reluctant to sit in the lower tier.