Please be safe and aware of the risks of going to the track...
 

Nothing you can do will fully remove the risk of injury or death, but at least at the track you can minimize it.

Sad to hear of a fatality from this past weekend.

http://www.trackhq.com/forums/f303/f...onwillow-8951/

RIP

Incredibly sad to hear.

Very sad indeed. I'll be thinking of it this coming Saturday at the PDC at Buttonwillow - no doubt it will be discussed at the driver's meeting as well. Here's a link to more info on what happened: http://www.trackhq.com/forums/f303/f...onwillow-8951/

Nobody knows exactly what happened. I've been getting stories on observations and personal accounts of what was heard or potentially seen. More importantly, it is a reminder that driving at the track is inherently dangerous. You can have all the safety equipment in the world and still die. Here is a simple side loaded crash that you would expect to survive from with all the proper safety equipment, yet a multi-champ Macau GP driver still died:

http://espn.go.com/rpm/story/_/id/86...macau-gp-crash

It is very important that the car is well maintained, inspected, and tuned with the proper equipment (even if it's just a couple of safety parts). It is also equally important for the driver to always keep safety in the back of his/her mind. This is depressing as Ivo and Renner Motorsport was a good part to the track community.

Very sad and sobering, especially thinking about the family he leaves behind. :(

Here comes the gf... telling me to never race the frs.

RIP. Heard it was a E46 m3

So sad.

Wow, I'm blown away there is nothing in front of a concrete barrier? No tires? No Gravel? Nothing? I'm not usually the sort to over-react; I dont want to require cages for HPDE and stuff. But I'm not sure how I feel about being able to directly hit concrete like that.

Edit: you can see a tire wall in the pics? Just sounds like it went very badly :-(

There are about 3-layers of protection at each flag tower.

One account of what happened:
http://www.trackhq.com/forums/f303/f...51/index3.html

Based on that statement, it looks like driver error. Even so, it's a rude reminder that we need to be responsible for our actions to reduce the risk as much as possible, however, the risk is always still present. :(

In my brief reading it seems the car had a full cage, harnesses, etc but the driver and passenger were not wearing HNR devices perhaps. The driver of the car was quite experienced from what I can tell as well. Still loose on what information is actually available

This stuff is really serious guys...don't skimp on safety...it can happen anytime, anywhere...my car just got a 4 point weld in roll bar mainly for the point of being able to use my HANS...proper harnesses and HNR devices are the tools that we have at our disposal that should not be overlooked if you plan on running your car on the track. It all comes with danger, heck driving to work and back comes with danger but there are certain things that we can do to mitigate risk...Spend the money on Safety first.

Even if they were equipped with the HANS, they don't have Halo seats to contain them for side impact. :(

This sucks. Sounds like this driver had quite the positive impact on the racing community and will be missed.

I had just signed up for the 19th at this track hours before the articles and posts started popping up. Since this will be with SV, I figured it a good opportunity to bring the gf along as a passenger (she's curious where all my money goes), but she made me promise that we'll be safe (actual words were more along the lines of I won't kill her...) I don't really want to tell her about this incident right away, but I'm sure it will be brought up by someone at some point during the day...

Yes, that seems to be another point someone made in regards to this accident.

And that is why my car got a Recaro Halo seat put into it as well.

These situations are awful but it gives us time to talk about the issues and concerns at hand...it is easy to be passionate about safety now after hearing of the incident but 2 weeks from now this will float out of everyone's mind and they will go back to business as usual until something happens again...don't put off getting the safety up to snuff if you plan on tracking your car.

If you go off, go off straight and don't save it. A lot of the incidences that happen at Buttonwillow can be mitigated with proper driver responsibility.