Honda Insight 180mph crash!

One hell of a scary video. Honda Insight crashes at El Mirage at 180mph, but apparantly the driver is OK with only minor injuries or I would not post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McJJeukIWSA#t=44

So what do you think? Aero? Short wheelbase? or both?

Pretty wild crash.

The driver was hospitalized with a collapsed lung plus some other injuries. Got released a few days ago.

http://www.scta-bni.org/health-welfare.html

Surprised to see him moving around after the crash.

I notice it sounds like the engine lets up a little bit before the car starts sliding - I don't know whether it was engine trouble or the driver lifting off the throttle, but assuming the car's FWD, that could have caused it.

You have to remember that in landspeed racing, downforce and lift are equally bad in terms of performance...neutral aero is good aero. If that means you're skimming along on skinnies in a light car with nutty power, so be it. In fact they'd be better off adding weight than downforce.

Sometimes things just get a bit out of control. Driving on a low friction surface like that takes a certain touch. The car will move around all on its own, and you are generally better off to let it find its own way, since you may cause more trouble than you solve...but sometimes it needed to get caught a while ago, too.

That was a pretty stout cage. That car was shedding a lot of parts as it was tumbling, but the middle of the car looks pretty darn intact.

Berkley.

My first thought was how did an insight get up to 180? It didn't sound like a hybrid.

The moment you go

The slow motion video really emphasizes how long the car rolled. It's hard to tell it the car was already turning when he lifted. Either way he owes the cage builder a beer

Wow. That is a lot of G's being pulled in that tumble!

unk577 wrote: The slow motion video really emphasizes how long the car rolled. It's hard to tell it the car was already turning when he lifted. Either way he owes the cage builder a beer

It was already sideways when he lifted, but if you listen carefully you can hear the engine note change a bit before it's clearly rotating.

Chances are the Insight's aero is not so good for top speed racing. A lot of those shapes put the center of pressure pretty far forward. You want to get it as far behind the center of gravity as you can - think of a lawn dart. The center of pressure on one of these is on the tail fins, and the weight is in the metal in the nose, so the air holds the tail behind it. There's a lot of cars out there that manage to do almost the reverse.

Glad to hear the driver survived and is out of the hospital. The Hondata crew do a lot to help out at the SCTA events.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson: Man I can't believe he walked away that was wicked

GameboyRMH wrote:

unk577 wrote: The slow motion video really emphasizes how long the car rolled. It's hard to tell it the car was already turning when he lifted. Either way he owes the cage builder a beer

It was already sideways when he lifted, but if you listen carefully you can hear the engine note change a bit before it's clearly rotating.

Nope, VTEC kicked in.

Flight Service wrote:

GameboyRMH wrote:

unk577 wrote: The slow motion video really emphasizes how long the car rolled. It's hard to tell it the car was already turning when he lifted. Either way he owes the cage builder a beer

It was already sideways when he lifted, but if you listen carefully you can hear the engine note change a bit before it's clearly rotating.

Nope, VTEC kicked in, yo

FTFY

GameboyRMH wrote: It was already sideways when he lifted, but if you listen carefully you can hear the engine note change a bit before it's clearly rotating.

I think the note change is just the Doppler shift. You hear it right as the car makes the transition of approaching the camera to exiting past the camera.

Mr_Estrotica wrote:

Flight Service wrote:

GameboyRMH wrote:

unk577 wrote: The slow motion video really emphasizes how long the car rolled. It's hard to tell it the car was already turning when he lifted. Either way he owes the cage builder a beer

It was already sideways when he lifted, but if you listen carefully you can hear the engine note change a bit before it's clearly rotating.

Nope, VTEC kicked in, yo

FTFY

my bad. LOL

Pretty good response time for the safety truck, given the distances involved. Agree that the cage builder (s) deserve a (case of) beer.

Here's a vid of the same car from inside, without the unfortunate ending. I find it interesting how second gear is much longer than the others.

By the way, the driver is Brian Gillespie from Hasport. They're old friends of ours. Glad to see he's okay.

Here's a post-crash interview: http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2013/11/22/newday-gillespie-race-car-crash-interview.cnn.html

When a FWD car gets sideways, do not lift, get on the throttle. Anyway, I was not there so I can't guess what happen. Aero does strange things at high speeds. Just glad that it was only the car that suffered damage.

Well, it's nice to know that if i ever want to push my Insight to 180mph, Autopower can build me a cage to survive rolling on the solt flats (not sure you could survive that anywhere else).

Gameboy and Matt's points about neutral aero and center of pressure are interesting. Hopefully Hasport can recover the in-car vid and give their best informed opinion on how it happened.

Something I've always wondered...is it the high G's of the roll that you need to worry about, or the impacts? The transition to the rolling looks pretty violent.

Well, those two are really the same thing. I think the human body can handle up to a 35g impact without dying, and some parts of the body are far less sensitive than others. So that's kind of a lowest-common-denominator number and probably mostly talking about the brain.

I dont think ive ever heard of someone being spun to death in a wreck although im sure a certain number of negative Gs would burst vessels in the brain and cause a lethal aneurysm. I think those g-forces from spinning/cartwheeling/rolling are much lower than the actual impacts with ground/barrier/other vehicles etc.

cwaters wrote: Pretty good response time for the safety truck, given the distances involved.

I thought this as well. Massive props to the safety crew there. Wow.

Amazing how fast it all went down. Just a few seconds from fine to absolute disaster.

Agreed, the cage builder deserves some serious credit here. Amazing that the driver only sustained somewhat minor injuries.

In reply to iceracer:

At those speeds, power will not help you any.