I rolled over to the 97 Rock cruise night at Holland Speedway last night. As usual they have spectator drags where you race someone for 1 lap around the oval from a standing start. Before you race, they give you a warm up lap to familiarize yourself with the track since the banking usually fucks everybody up. A couple of races were run uneventfully. Then a rotted V6 Dodge Dakota lines up with a I’m guessing late 90’s red Z28 Camaro. They give them the go ahead to do their practice lap. The Dakota takes off at a normal practice lap speed… The Camaro driver felt the need to show the V6 Dakota how much power his car had. He left the line at WOT and did a 200’ burnout into turn 1. The Camaro quickly passed the truck around the rest of turn 1 into turn 2. Apparently by this point the Camaro driver had forgotten this was practice. He gets to the back straight and goes WOT the entire length and buries the car into turn 3. He immediately gets loose upon attempting to turn left. The logical thing to do here is keep the power on and “dirt track” the corner. (I have thousands of racing laps at Holland…I’ve gone around the turn looking at the infield a few times lol). Not this guy…he tries to correct the car by turning right. He overcorrects, the front end bites and points him straight at the wall at the beginning of turn 4. Now he panics. He gasses it and cranks it left again. The whole car is upset and the rear breaks loose again but the entire car is sliding up the banking. Bang. The right rear of the car makes contact with the mangled 50 year old steel turn 4 guardrail. The car made contact with the wall in an angular fashion since it had both forward and lateral momentum. After the momentum of the rear of the car had been stopped, this caused an acceleration in the lateral direction of the front of the vehicle. At least the right front suspension of the car absorbed much of the impact. The friction of the car against the mangled 50 year old steel turn 4 guardrail brought it safely to a stop. The driver, clearly upset, revs the engine repeatedly while manipulating the clutch in an attempt to free the vehicle from the mangled 50 year old steel turn 4 guardrail. He eventually succeeds and limps the car to the infield so all the spectators can see battle damage acquired during his practice lap.
As far as body damage goes, the front bumper, headlights, hood, right front fender, right rear quarter, taillights, and rear bumper are trashed. I don’t know what he broke in the right front suspension, but it was toed out at about a 45* angle. There was also a chunk taken out of the right rear wheel, so something in the rearend is likely damaged as well. I still have no idea why he poured it into turn 3 so hard. I knew the second he entered the turn he wasn’t going to make it. Too bad, the car looked to be in very nice shape.
The best part was IMO, when the driver limps his car to the infield, I comment to my friend sitting next to me “What a dumbfuck…” The chick in front of me turns around all disgusted and yells at me “That’s my husband!!!”. I comment “Sorry, just call 'em like I see 'em”. She walked away all disgusted. lol.
On a sidenote, GTO kid was there last night. Me-“You’re the kid on YouTube!!!” GTO kid-"(laughs)Yeah" Me- “You’re a celebrity!!!” GTO kid - “(laughs again)Yeah, I guess I am” Me- “Not in a good way though”
GTO kid- (looks disgusted, walks away)
lol.
I must have been in a real assholish mood last night or something :gotme:
