I was on youtube and stumbled upon Judd videos, me being curious I start typing in Georg Plasa because I knew he drove one of those cars, I couldn't help but type in accident because I know he died last year in his Judd E82.. I loved the car, the sound and whatnot. But this sinking feeling of he's alive and now he's gone is just odd, .
Same goes for the Gilles, Ayrton, Roland Ratzenburger, etc. The videos are creepy.
And then the video surfaced. It wasn't posted until just earlier this year..
I watched a track marshall get killed on tv in the 1st or 2nd Vancouver Indy. This was back in 92' or so. Then on Halloween 1999, Greg Moore died in a horrendous crash at the Marlboro 500
As a fellow fan of Georg Plasa, when I stumbled upon the video.. I was a little iffy to play it, but when I did.. I noticed, something just failed on his car.
No pics or vid but I saw a gridline crash at the start of a CCS race at Daytona years back where a rider hit a marshall who didn't get out of the way before the lights went on. The rider died.
I was watching that race on TV live when that happened. I was almost sick to my stomach. I knew immediately he was hurt real real bad. The worst is watching Edwards and Rossi react afterwards. At that point, you knew the score. So sad
The video of Ratzenberger is one of the creepiest I have seen, the way his head just drops is very eery, more so than seeing Villeneuve fly across the track.
I've seen all the crashes before besides Georg's and that one is awful because it is so vivid and because the throttle had to stick. If he messed that corner up that bad, there's no way he would've had the ride in the first place. Also, like Dale Sr's death, the first person on the scene went from "let me check on this guy" to "holy eff, get someone here now"
edit: like Dale Sr., it also looks like he ripped through his belts
One day I was bored and decided I wanted to learn more on F1 history, so I took a list of all the deaths in Formula 1 racing.
I'll tell you one thing, makes you have a whole other perpective on Motorsports in general. I took the time to find a video of every crash(the one available) and see it and the motive for death etc etc.
There are some pretty famous one like Tom Pryce. However, a REALLY common one was accidents like Francois Cevert, where the driver would hit a guardrail head on and the car would go under it and the driver be decapitated completly.
Francois Cevert was a upcoming talent, a hit, considered the prettiest man on earth at the time, etc etc etc......one mistake and boom, dead, right there, decapitated like the piece of useless meat we all are. So much lost.
Jackie Stewart arrived at the scene, he just turned back around crying because it was a horrible scene, so did other drivers.
Riccardo Paletti was also a real sad one, guy was a rookie, his first starting race, crashes at the start, was ok in the car...Professor Watkins walked over to him and the car caught on fire. He survived the crash and died because of the fire.
I remember this one in 1999, because I grew up only 20 miles from Laguna Seca and would go there frequently to watch racing. I remember seeing his crash on the local news that evening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19Fl1e79O1Y
Gonzalo Rodriguez crashed at the top of the corkscrew, not sure whether it was mechanical or if he simply didn't brake soon enough.
First one that comes to mind is Henry Surtees. Such a bizzare accident and it looks like the tire just misses him, but in fact it landed right on his head. What this young man's career would've been... http://youtu.be/0eHU5Bqe_4Q
Then there is the Shoya Tomizawa accident. This is very hard to watch, no gore, but very disturbing. He suffered severe stomach trauma. http://youtu.be/Q3PoUd3vT0s
So in September of 1999 I rally with some buddies to Laguna Seca to catch CART. We show up at the track and were confused by total inactivity when there should have been a practice going on. Word soon filtered through that Gonzo had a bad and possibly fatal accident at the corkscrew. We couldn't believe it....first Krosnoff just a couple years back and now Gonzo. Greg Moore followed a scant 6 weeks afterwards. Awful.
I always wished I'd printed a copy of the practice session times when Gonzalo Rodriguez left us. He was turning heroic times in a bad Lola chassis that team Penske simply didn't have a handle on...way ahead of what Little Al was doing with it. What a shame, Gonzo had the potential to be a great one.
Edit - This was the incident that prompted Stefan Johanssen to quit CART at the end of that year.
I was at Fontana for this, and despite an entire grandstand full of people the accident was shielded from view by the backstretch wall and motorhomes. The crowd was really rocking, this race was the championship showdown between Juan Montoya and Dario. After the wreck all we knew is that Greg Moore had stacked it in turn two, no news after that. I thought it was weird that the track screens didn't replay the wreck....they just kept showing an in-car feed from Mikey's car.
Anyway, after a while they fired up the copter, wheeled Greg into it and took off. At that point, the seriousness of it set in a little but we were all still assuming he was probably dinged up pretty good but still alive.
Then, in the middle of the race the flag was lowered to half mast and the whole place just deflated.
JD Mc Duffies' death was the worst one that I've seen live, it was extremely violent. It caused significant changes to the track to slow the cars down to a somewhat sane speed.
From wiki:
McDuffie was involved in an accident on the fifth lap of the 1991 Budweiser At The Glen race at Watkins Glen International. On the straight between the Esses and the Loop-Chute, at 170 mph, McDuffie and Jimmy Means touched wheels. McDuffie's driver's side outer tie rod end dropped from the front wheel spindle, which caused him to lose control of the position of the right side tire/wheel. Further, the impact caused the front wheel assembly to completely fall off the car, starting a chain reaction that resulted in all of McDuffie's brakes failing.
This one doesn't involve death, but is equally disturbing.
Tetsuya Ota's crash and fire at Fuji Speedway 1998.
WARNING!!! not for the faint of heart Starts with the rescue. Crash seen at 2:35.
Every time I see that impact it amazes me how in the world someone could survive it, let alone that fire.
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