And how can we avoid it?

And why can't I get embedding to work? (I have been taught to fish! Thanks, GB!)

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2007 Speed Yellow Cayman GT 2.7 (retired)
2008 Guards Red Cayman GT 3.4
"Carpe Cayman"

When you embed, make sure you are only embedding the video identifyer, not the entire URL.

I'll leave it alone so you can fix it. Check out this: Club Tutorial - YouTube and Google Videos

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Gator Bite
(View My Articles : Blogs : Car : Profile)

My guess is he got too close to the car in front given the speed, caught the draft, lost front downforce and as the gap opened up he was accelerating back into the airstream and the unloaded front end became airborne as any good airfoil will. It's not a problem we'll have in the Cayman.

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Dan

C'mon Dan, you either are not driving your Cayman hard enough or have not done enough mods

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Brian

I agree. I'm pretty sure that's what happened. I was a Corner Captain at Road Atlanta during the CanAm days. I watched a McLaran do the same thing on the long back straight*. It got behind a Porsche, lost downforce and went airborn. I had to turn the McLaren back over! I can't remember who was driving. George Follmer? I don't think it was Bruce McLaren.

(*At least it was long back straight then. I haven't been to Road Atlanta in quite a few years.)

I was also working corners for SCCA back then, but at East coast tracks. Could have been Peter Revson in the McLaren. Those were the real glory (and sadly, too often gory) days of relatively unrestricted racing.

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Dan

That would be Dennis Hulme.

I remember that Hulme and Revson were both racing that day. (It must have been in '72 or '73. Revson died in '74. Donohue died in ’75. Tragic losses.) I think it was Hulme because Revson stopped his car and got out to help . . . if I remember correctly. (I could be making that up. At 61 you "remember" a lot of things.)

Hulme was in a McLaren behind Donohue who was in a 917-30(?). They came around the hairpin turn - inches apart - and accelerated. The nose of the McLaren caught air and the car started to "take off". It landed up side down and slid down the track for what seemed like 50 yards. It ended up half way between corners. So workers from both corners were sprinting to the wreck. Spectators beat us to the wreck and were starting to make a mess of things.

Anyway, when we got to the car and turned it right side up, Hulme's (or Revson's) face had swollen to the point that you could not remove the helmet. (Of course we wouldn't have removed the helmet anyway but you get the picture.)

There was a picture of the crash on the back page of Road & Track. There I was . . . in the middle of things! I kept the copy for a long time but it was lost over the years.

Normally there wasn’t much action on the backstretch at Road Atlanta. The Atlanta SCCA members put “visitors” on that stretch because they kept the best turns for themselves. That day the backstretch was where the action was.

Along these same type of aero incidents, don't forget the infamous Mercedes CLR at LeMans in 1999.

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Brian

I remember that!

I was looking at the clip of the Porsche again. Was that on the long backstretch? It looks like it is about the same place where the McLaren flipped. (But I haven't been to Road Atlanta for 30 years so who knows. )