My favorite.

Imagine the feeling of launching forward, then.........up?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5hc4ZJS0zs

Audi R10 Monza

Saw this one in person.
F1 Montreal Kubica

This one is kinda funny. I know Adrian (guy in first place) and this was when he was round 16 years old. Watch the guy who almost gets through then a tire bounces out of nowhere and hits his front wing and takes him out. This is a bunch of kids ages 16 to 21.
Formula Mazda crash

Kubica at Montreal was intense, saw it live on Speed.






 

I think one of the most strange &  tragic probably never made it on video..Shelly Howard..top alcohol racer kills herself and her son during a practice run..Imagine the Garlits blowover in the previous post except she came back to the finish line dead/unconscious with the dragster floored and aimed at her own son.


"On the first Saturday in April, Michelle "Shelly" Howard, a 59-year-old registered nurse and mother of three who had been drag-racing for 27 years, took her Top Alcohol Dragster for a 10 p.m. practice run at Tulsa Raceway Park as part of a late-night event. Howard, the wife of a Tulsa physician, had huge experience—she'd won the Division 4 title twice and was a three-time national event winner. Top Alcohol is just one notch below drag racing's ferocious 8000-hp Top Fuel class, where these rails rip to 100 mph in less than a second and at least one has turned the quarter-mile at 335 mph in 4.4 seconds.

Howard got off to a good start, but what happened next will have drag-racing people shaking their heads in disbelief for years to come. About halfway down the quarter-mile course, the nose of her dragster got airborne, lifted straight up into what is called a "blowover wheelstand," and while continuing to roar down the track standing on its tail, turned 180 degrees and came down with tremendous force, now facing the starting line. It is likely Howard was knocked unconscious.

Although the dragster was pointed toward the start line and the wheels were spinning in that direction, the tremendous momentum continued to send it backward, toward the finish line, which it passed, astonishingly, at 115 mph with a time of 6.633 seconds. This rearward travel finally ended about 1500 feet past the finish line, with Howard unconscious and the dragster's throttle still at full tilt. Then the rear wheels sent the dragster headed back toward the start line, careening off the spectator and tower lanes as it gained speed, and crossing the line where it had started the race just seconds earlier, at perhaps 250 mph.

Adding an element of tragic, numbing shock, Howard's husband, Paul, was watching all of this, helplessly, from the stands, while their son, Brian, 36, was in the back of their chase vehicle about 125 feet behind the start line. The dragster next plunged into the chase vehicle, killing mother and son instantly. The force of this bizarre collision sent the dragster and chase vehicle 225 feet through a rear burnout wall and into an open field and stream, according to a report posted on the Internet.

Besides her husband, Shelly Howard is survived by two daughters."

That crash John Force had a couple of years ago was pretty brutal.

Rusty Wallace's Talladega crash in '93 was pretty wild.

Scott Riggs took a wild ride at Talladega in '05. This one was righ in front of us. My wife screamed like a girl!

And Michael McDowell's crash during qualifying in Texas. Listen to the sound of the impact at 1:55 in the clip!

Hixson Motorsports is an ARCA team who's shop is just a mile and a half from my house in Soddy Daisy TN. Eric Martin was one of their drivers, and was killed during a practice session at Charlotte on October 9th, 2002. His last words on his radio were "I can't breathe..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nlytg1bYI0  ––carl edwards crash

Alex Zanardi Crash

Michael Waltrip, Bristol Tn 1990





 
 

Worked with him during his time at Ganassi. Horrible day but his recovery is a wonderful story and something that should be told to everyone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phf_sLQ000I
Wreck is about 1:28 in.

Katherine Legge Elkhart Lake crash

Rally unquestionably has the best crashes.
see example

I was there in the Tri-Oval tower

Ricky Craven flip at Talladega 1996

Geoff Bodine Truck Crash

Bobby Allison 1987

Phil Parsons 1983

Ricky Rudd 1984

Richard Petty 1988

Jimmy Horton over the wall

Tetsuya Ota driving a Ferrari 355 in Japan's GT series. And yes, he lived through it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA1v1JdjBpA

Travis Pastrana rally wreck. Watch carefully and you can see his arm go out of the window a few times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Js_BYaU80w&feature=related

Scary wreck with Tommi Makinen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXj-T8AOYuk

And the big one. 1955 LeMans. A Mercedes clips a pole and splits, sending it's engine through the grandstand. Killing 80 some people. This crash is what got motorsport banned in a few countries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFoaFRG1rqo&feature=related

Gordon Smiley - 1982 - 200 MPH head on into the wall. Not for the squeamish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDSR6lHCcDg&feature=fvw

track doctor said his brains were all over the track

Where the car drives into the barn, then another one hits it again, haha.

ETA: the crash at 2:32 is insane.

There's too many crazy and insane crashes in that video to comment, like all the spectators nearly getting hit 2/3 of the way through.

Another one of our drivers, this time it's Memo Gidley at Elkhart Lake.

And another one of ours, Ryan Briscoe at Chicagoland.

Gerhard Berger Tamburello

Yet another with our own Tomas Scheckter with our former driver Kenny Brack.

I have a story about this one.

Gerhard drove for us at McLaren the next season. He was on the front row at Imola the year following this crash and as I put the front wing on his car on the grid he signalled me over. I leaned into the cockpit and he said "Watch what you are doing with that wing, remember what happened here last year" as he laughed out loud. Let me tell you, sometimes you have to wonder at the sanity of some of these guys...

Here is Arie Luyendyk at Fontana driving for us as a sub for the injured Zanardi.

That was an incredible spin. With those centrifugal forces, a crash cage is useless.  Did the other driver survive?

The car didn't even hit anything!  What caused it to split?  Just a sympathetic vibration with the tires' bounce vs. the vehicle's natural frequency, magnifying to the point of structural failure?

And he still ran a 4.65.  

Basically.   8000 horsepower will break just about anything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1VIzm3rwkw

Wow, that's cool.

I have been to the Senna memorial at the old Tamburello several times.






 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tl-6oqN0i4

Greg Moore Fatal Crash at 1999 CART FedEx Championship at the California Speedway

Page one tag for later

This one has a unique Aussie flavour!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kjmgjxqb2I&feature=related

Yes, an extremely difficult day for a lot of people. I worked with him from '88 - '91 at McLaren and it hit of us all hard. A very bad weekend at Imola and one I'll never forget.

Rolands death, Rubens big crash where he nearly suffocated while unconscious. Lamy and Lehto crash at the start and spectators are injured, Alboreto loses a wheel while coming down pit lane and takes out mechanics from Ferrari and Lotus and finally Senna's death made it a really sucky place to be...

Another one that is hard for me to watch. "I'll see you at the finish boys".  I teared up just seeing it again...

He had been showing me some "interesting" pictures he had on his laptop at the airport on the way there, such a great character, a fun young man.

Bruce Allen crash.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MueA9hmXDCU

Damn.  I never knew that even close to that many people had ever been killed in a race.  That sounds more like the recent SU-27 airshow disaster!

But I have to say . . . Indiana Jones FTW!

fail! here it is in HD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTNuMlFMln8&hd=1

Bruce Allen and Kenny Karetzky


Scott Kalitta's Crash at E-town

yea, racing is entertainment but, it is dangerous and these guys get hurt or die doing what they love.

RIP Scott Kalitta and Eric Medlin

The guy that was spinning  ike a top survived and came back a few years later to race again at Indy.

 

Along with Senna's accident, I saw that one live.  

The Greg Moore accident always bothers me.  He really shouldn't have been in that car.

I don't know if there is a vid of it, but when I was a teenager, mid 90's...  Went with the family over to Indy to the RCA dome to watch the sprints race.

During the feature there was a wreck in the corner and one of the front left tires came flying off and struck a guy standing in the turn.  Damn near knocked his head

off and died pretty much instantly!  Really messed up to watch in person...



Though, did get to eat dinner with Jeff Gordon at Denny's afterwards!

Usually in a Top Fuel failure like that, it's a blower detonating.