Allan Simonsen - Killed at Le Mans

Allan Simonsen dies after crashing in fourth lap at Le Mans - Autoblog

Looks like the car just went straight into the wall, please be advised that there is footage of the crash in the link above.

A sad day.

Watched the race on the live stream....from the perspectives of the vette's onboard stream it didn't look to be a bad wreck until I realized that the Aston was RHD.

Last time there was a death in the race itself was 87 IIRC.

car was too intact. not enough energy burn-off.

If that tree wasn't there and and they utilized a tire wall as they should in any high speed corner it would have been different so lets hope they make some changes as a result of this.

Also, it's a good time to remember that motorsports are dangerous and for the ones of us that do race here whether it be track days, drag racing, even auto-x or just screwing around on the street it should be a wake-up call to be smarter and safer. I see guys fudging stuff just to get through tech and not thinking they need the proper safety gear. If you can't afford what it takes to have a well functioning car and the proper safety equipment you shouldn't be racing.

Honestly I didn't even think about the fact that it was RHD. I've seen harder hits that people walk away from fine so I thought nothing of it at the time, just assumed it was one of those cases where it looked worse than it was.

So that's 3 fatalities in the last few days in racing, 2 of which were caused by accidents. There was another crash much later during LeMans that looked positively brutal, I was surprised the driver had no injuries at all from it.

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Originally Posted by sergechronos

Honestly I didn't even think about the fact that it was RHD. I've seen harder hits that people walk away from fine so I thought nothing of it at the time, just assumed it was one of those cases where it looked worse than it was.

So that's 3 fatalities in the last few days in racing, 2 of which were caused by accidents. There was another crash much later during LeMans that looked positively brutal, I was surprised the driver had no injuries at all from it.

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Honestly it was so bad because there was no give with that tree. Tire barriers obviously give a ton, armco even does, hell, if you hit a concrete barrier hard enough it'll give some. Trees do not. He essentially went 100mph to 0 in an instant. Safety has come a long ways in racing which is why you see spectacular crashes (Audi last year) and they walk away. When you give no room for give you end up with a tragedy like this.

BTW any one watching the video, the crash doesn't happen untill 9min in.

RIP

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Originally Posted by Maximal

Honestly it was so bad because there was no give with that tree. Tire barriers obviously give a ton, armco even does, hell, if you hit a concrete barrier hard enough it'll give some. Trees do not. He essentially went 100mph to 0 in an instant. Safety has come a long ways in racing which is why you see spectacular crashes (Audi last year) and they walk away. When you give no room for give you end up with a tragedy like this.

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These guys run full cages right? Including across the door area? Not that it would have changed things here. Just noticed on the video that there is a part where a track person is in the passenger side (driver side for us US folks) and doesn't seem to be a bar there. Not sure if they cut it out or it's just my imagination.

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Originally Posted by sergechronos

Honestly I didn't even think about the fact that it was RHD. I've seen harder hits that people walk away from fine so I thought nothing of it at the time, just assumed it was one of those cases where it looked worse than it was.

So that's 3 fatalities in the last few days in racing, 2 of which were caused by accidents. There was another crash much later during LeMans that looked positively brutal, I was surprised the driver had no injuries at all from it.

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the proverbial rule of thumb for car accidents is that the more violent the crash, the better off the driver probably is. that's because the car in a violent crash tends to expend all of the inertia of the crash into disintegrating. look at Sr.'s crash--doesn't really look like much of anything.

not to say this is always the case, or a hard-and-fast rule...but chances are that if the car flips 9 times, the driver walks away (assuming proper safety gear).

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Originally Posted by sergechronos

These guys run full cages right? Including across the door area? Not that it would have changed things here. Just noticed on the video that there is a part where a track person is in the passenger side (driver side for us US folks) and doesn't seem to be a bar there. Not sure if they cut it out or it's just my imagination.

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they could have caged the car so much that the damage would literally buff out. they could have put so many restraints in the car that his body wouldn't have shifted in the seat a inch. he still would probably have died. the inertia of your internal organs getting slammed from 200-0 in a split second can and will rip apart your insides.

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Originally Posted by IPD

the proverbial rule of thumb for car accidents is that the more violent the crash, the better off the driver probably is. that's because the car in a violent crash tends to expend all of the inertia of the crash into disintegrating. look at Sr.'s crash--doesn't really look like much of anything.

not to say this is always the case, or a hard-and-fast rule...but chances are that if the car flips 9 times, the driver walks away (assuming proper safety gear).

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Indeed, which is how things like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...Xfm1Z5kI#at=15

Can happen and the driver is just fine (well, not perfectly fine but he is alive) with nothing more than factory seat belts and airbags.

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Originally Posted by IPD

they could have caged the car so much that the damage would literally buff out. they could have put so many restraints in the car that his body wouldn't have shifted in the seat a inch. he still would probably have died. the inertia of your internal organs getting slammed from 200-0 in a split second can and will rip apart your insides.

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Absolutely right, just curious if they fully cage the car or not. Had been thinking about that the other day, namely why some racing bodies require full cage with door bars and some don't.

car is FIA spec full cage. there is NO roadracing sanctioning bodies that allow anything but.

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Originally Posted by sergechronos

Indeed, which is how things like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NqtXfm1Z5kI#at=15

Can happen and the driver is just fine (well, not perfectly fine but he is alive) with nothing more than factory seat belts and airbags.

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To be fair he wasn't doing anywhere close to 200mph. I get your point though.