This guy forgot rule #1, don't get hit by a family sedan.

I know, Jalopnik is about the most worthless site around......but I have been watching this from the shoforum side since the weekend. 944 vs gen2 sho carnage from Chumpcar

http://jalopnik.com/what-i-learned-from-the-most-disappointing-race-weekend-569589595

More info here. http://forum.chumpcar.com/index.php?/topic/7973-june-2122-tws-habanero-hoon/

Pics.

And......the obligatory "What hit it" picture.

Dented the fenders, trashed their tow hook....and well, not much else.

Evidently they even drove the car home. Still waiting on the gopro footage from the sho or porsche.

The Porsche had a E36 M3ty seat mount that should not have passed tech and their door bars are fine, so only the shell of the door was wrecked - not that bad really. other than the seat.

They could have put the door bars a lot farther outboard

My friend has a sho that he's used at the local enduro, and survived 5 events there. 1/4 mile track, 100+ cars, for 100 laps or so. They end up being 3 wide covering most of the track, looks like full contact LA rush hour. If your car dies, it stays in place. That car has been through hell and back and is still usable.

Feel bad for the 944 folks. I spent a most of the year getting my first hillclimb subie ready to race, only to toss it over the bank on it's roof on the third practice run of it's first event.

In reply to tuna55:

Yea, I felt that looked rather Odd on the seat......Doesn't help when the sheet metal is torn inboard of where it bent the cage on the pass side either.

In reply to sachilles:

I rebuilt a still road going '95 mtx for a friend after he smoked a deer with it. It didn't look like alot of damage, but getting everything to line back up sucked in a big way.

did they have that seat mounted with a couple of zip ties and a few self tapping screws, or were they relying on the tension of the harness to hold it in place?

The driver of the Porsche posts on another forum I'm active on posted more pics and said the frame was banana shaped now

tuna55 wrote: The Porsche had a E36 M3ty seat mount that should not have passed tech and their door bars are fine, so only the shell of the door was wrecked - not that bad really. other than the seat. They could have put the door bars a lot farther outboard

if you read the comments section where the author is having a conversation with everyone, he said that the seat is still bolted securely to the floor at all four mount bolts, and it was the floor itself that twisted (causing the seat to lean sideways like that). He says there is zero chance the shell can be used again for anything, as the entire unibody/floorpan is deformed.

Having seen what happened to a 2002 at the recent Lemons race (hit a wall front corner, and the entire transmission tunnel forward of the shifter moved about 6" to the left) I can see that happening in a hard side-impact.

There's some interesting stuff in that Jalopnik article. She's learning the right stuff.

The Targa tech inspectors know me by name, because I ask questions. Lots of questions. I'm apparently the first person to ask if there's a required length for the tow strap in the car. Why? Because I want to be able to sail through scrutineering by addressing everything ahead of time. And I do sail through. The last thing I want to do is spend the day before the race frantically trying to make my car legal.

Pit organization. Definitely one that's overlooked. At my first Thunderhill race with the 949 team and overlooking the chaos as we unloaded, I decided I would be the guy who knew where everything was. Drawers in toolboxes were labeled so that everyone knew where to find a certain tool - and where it had to go when everything was being picked up. For last year's race, we had a "librarian" who was in charge of the spare parts. Organization makes everything work so much better when it's hour 18 and a car just pulled in with a broken subframe. It's a team mentality, after things calm down you'll see people gathering and organizing tools for the next inevitable mayhem. Instill that mentality and you'll beat a lot of other teams simply by having colocated excrement.

Disappointing for sure though. I'd hate to have a car go out so early.

irish44j wrote:

tuna55 wrote: The Porsche had a E36 M3ty seat mount that should not have passed tech and their door bars are fine, so only the shell of the door was wrecked - not that bad really. other than the seat. They could have put the door bars a lot farther outboard

if you read the comments section where the author is having a conversation with everyone, he said that the seat is still bolted securely to the floor at all four mount bolts, and it was the floor itself that twisted (causing the seat to lean sideways like that). He says there is zero chance the shell can be used again for anything, as the entire unibody/floorpan is deformed. Having seen what happened to a 2002 at the recent Lemons race (hit a wall front corner, and the entire transmission tunnel forward of the shifter moved about 6" to the left) I can see that happening in a hard side-impact.

Well I stand corrected then, but it's odd that all of that damage happened without even contacting the door bar. One wonders if a properly located bar might have saved the chassis then.

In reply to tuna55:

I'm pretty sure that it bent the door bar tuna...... Look at the floorboard at the right front of the cage.....

tuna55 wrote: The Porsche had a E36 M3ty seat mount that should not have passed tech and their door bars are fine, so only the shell of the door was wrecked - not that bad really. other than the seat. They could have put the door bars a lot farther outboard

The seat mount or the seat brace? I can't see the mount too well, but that brace will pass tech on a spec Miata seat. Its required on those seats.

In reply to Slippery:

It looks like the brace moved thanks to said 6G hit.....

6Gs.. that is a lot of momentium

yamaha wrote: In reply to tuna55: I'm pretty sure that it bent the door bar tuna...... Look at the floorboard at the right front of the cage.....

This ^^^^^ It pulled the door bars in with it.

a simple cross brace from the corner to the main hoop might have prevented some of the carnage. Otherwise, that tunnel sure did move a lot.
I do note that the hoop and down tubes were mounted just on plates welded in the corners without any further support or bracing.

for comparison's sake, here's the 2002 from Lemons and its tunnel

^ that thing is toast

they spent the rest of the day stripping every useful part, badge, wheels, brakes, suspension, and everything else off of it, and then put the shell on a trailer and towed it away.....

trying to figure out.. how did they get so punted by the SHO? Did they get sideways?

mad_machine wrote: trying to figure out.. how did they get so punted by the SHO? Did they get sideways?

That seems more likely than the SHO coming in at 90 degrees to the direction of traffic, unless they've started doing figure-8 racing...

On the other board the driver said he hit a slick spot on the track (coolant?) and spun and the who tagged him mid spin

so only the shell of the door was wrecked

I know this has already been addressed in a roundabout way, but: The roll cage really doesnt change much as far as wrecking a car. It is there purely for driver protection and does very little to prevent damage that 'totals' the car (from an effort-required-to-fix standpoint, not money). If you think about where cages mount, anything that gets far enough to involve the cage pretty much means the car isnt worth fixing. This MAY change on full tube-frame cars, but on a unibody with a cage added, it's pretty much guaranteed.

The seat moving is a VERY BAD THING. The collapse of the car is a good thing, as it lessens the impact felt by the driver.

As to the seat being properly mounted, I'd probably not be real ready to accept the word of the person who used muffler clamps for the backbrace mount.

Streetwiseguy wrote: As to the seat being properly mounted, I'd probably not be real ready to accept the word of the person who used muffler clamps for the backbrace mount.

Whether you like the "muffler clamps" or not, they are approved by all the major sanctioning bodies.

http://www.motorsportheaven.com/IOPort-Seat-Back-Brace_p_472.html

I personally have a Recaro that is FIA approved on my track car, but if the seat is not FIA approved or out of date, then you need one of those.

I am amazed no one has seen one of those braces before ....

IDK, we have one on our Lemons/Chump e30...