Drivers who've been thrown from their cars

Originally posted by DennisTobin
There was another major incident at Oran Park many years after the black day when John Marchiori and Ray Heffernan died.....

A impoved production Mini driven by Barry (?) Cousins at a major moment on the "Dog Leg" and at high speed slid sideways into the loose surface of the recently filled dam.

Travelling sideways the wheels dug into the loose surface and the Mini went into a series of barrel rolls. On the first roll the seat mountings broke , (presumably) and cousins was being bounced around inside the car, eventually he was flung half out the right hand rear quarter window.

With every roll he was fed further out, fortunately never being trapped between the car and the ground.
On the last roll he was flung away from the car, landing on his hands and knees, unconsious.
The Mini on its last roll gently settled on top of Barry(?). He was holding the rear of the car of the ground.
He survived, and when I last spoke to this lucky man he was happily married to THE Susan Ransom. The mini did not survive.

The scene I cannot ID is one at a dirt track, about 2 mins into the DVD.

The car goes nose over tail and the poor driver is flung out very high

Yes, Heffernan was totally ejected, Marchiori only partly... enough to do a lot of damage...




There's a series of pics of this in RCN... did he not come out through the door?

His name is Richard, by the way, and I also thought it was a Sports Sedan, but I don't really remember.

This is a hell of a long shot having not seen the DVD, but is the car number 29?

Edited by Russ Snyder, 10 February 2012 - 23:24.

hey E.B.

yes, white 29 on a brown car
horse/dirt track.

In May, 1963, a driver named Chris Airey became virtually the club saloon racing King of Brands Hatch in an unlikely looking Austin A40. That is until he ran out of luck one day, drifted wide onto the grass leaving Bottom Bend and rolled back across the road towards the South Bank. He was part ejected and had the car roll over him, inflicting injuries which he did not survive. DCN

David Alexander was thrown high, wide and handsome from his AC Ace when he rolled it at Riches Corner, I think, Snetterton circa 1962 (pic in 'Autosport')

DCN

Bobby Baird at Snetterton, '52 or '53?

Indeed - poor chap. Happy Hogmanay Ian - I am confident all here wish you well.

DCN

(scags @ Dec 28 2012, 01:30)
Great hearing from you Ian- hope you're well.

(Doug Nye @ Dec 28 2012, 13:59)

Those of us from south of the border will simply nod and assume your friend was plainly another canny Scot...

~but six months later I am still in physio pending ruptured tendon and detached muscle recovery. ~

DCN

Would anyone be able to identify the driver and car in this spectacular example?
 

http://www.pinterest...63236684696131/

Would anyone be able to identify the driver and car in this spectacular example?
 

 

http://www.pinterest...63236684696131/

I don't know, but the look on the other driver's face is almost surreal.  Makes you wonder what his heart rate was - pretty slow, I would venture to suggest.

Early to mid-sixties at Sliverstone, Becketts (probably) and let's hope he hasn't just drop kicked the left rear wheel into the spectator enclosure...

Vic Nauman at Williams Grove, PA - August 24, 1941

Very interesting footage, many thanks! The first ten seconds or so are from the first heat race, won by Dave Randolph in the (Harvey) Kreiser/Hal (#28), a car that was usually driven by Nauman*. The white #29 in this race is fast timer Bill Holland in the (Ralph) Malamud/Miller, apparently retiring on the backstretch (0:28) - he came back to win the consy, and place second in the main event. The second heat race is where the crash happened, with Nauman leading in the (Mark) Light/Miller (#9) from a hard-pressing Joie Chitwood in the silver (Fred) Peters/Offenhauser (#1, the former Briggs Cunningham sprinter). There had been some "bad blood" between those two drivers, after a couple of on-track incidents over the past year or so, especially on the occasion of the next-to-last race here at Williams Grove, a mere six weeks ago. A "grudge match race" a fortnight later failed to settle the tempers, and the result can be seen here in moving pictures. Basically, it spelt the end for Nauman's career although he did come back after the war, but he was no longer a force to be reckoned with. As an aside, I believe the man rushing to the accident scene while taking off his pith helmet (0:50) is Emmett Shelley, director of racing at the Grove and a leading figure behind the speedway's gestation, as refered to in the WGS thread in the Historic Forum!

* Nauman was driving for Mark Light because his fellow townsman had been drafted back in July.

The accident occurred during the running of the 1961 "World Speedcar
Derby" at the Sydney Showground.

The steering box disintegrated, which pitched the car right into
the fence, and a series of roll-overs. Although Peter Cuneen's lap belt
broke, and flung him out of the car, he was still attached by the
shoulder harness.

I have seen film footage of this crash. 

 

 

Here is the film footage of this spectacular crash - fast forward to 1:54

Edited by Graham Clayton, 18 June 2014 - 10:28.

No Ray, he came out through the quarter window and he was not a small man. I had photo`s I had taken of the incident (now in someone else`s hands)
The photo in RCN was of the Mini with Richard still under it, officials running to lift it off.
Same meeting that Brian Foley destroyed the Alfa GT AM (?) he was fortunate to "get out" of that one.

I think you might find Ray's correct Dennis. On page 184 of the 1974 Competition Yearbook there's one picture taken by Bruce Wallace of the Richard Cousins accident at Oran Park.The car is airborne and Cousins is hanging well outside of the drivers side door via the window. If anyone is interested and doesn't breach some kind of copyright, I'll scan it later and post the image. 

I also recall another pic around here of Harry Firth or someone else being partially flung from a rolling MG, though I probably have that confused with something else.

Edited by gtsmunro, 21 June 2014 - 04:35.

I am aware that Masten Gregory was thrown out of cars several times, but he was able to survive all of them.

This may have been mentioned already but the most famous incident with a driver thrown out of a car was Hans Herrmann during the German GP at Avus, Berlin.
He was thrown out of his car when the brakes of his BRM failed, the car was making several salto's in the air, Hans didn't have injuries.

After the awards dinner following the 1996 Monte Carlo Challenge Historic Rally a large group of competitors retired from the Hotel de Paris to Rosie's Bar for refreshments.

At around 3am I was invited to drive a 1929 Chrysler Sport 77 from where it was parked in Casino Square to the rally HQ beach side hotel.  No less than 13 dinner suited competitors chose to avail themselves of the free transport home and climbed aboard said vehicle. Apart from the three of us in the two seater cockpit there were a number on the running boards and several lying across the small boat-shaped luggage compartment. We left the square on the route of the GP circuit and headed downhill.  As we approached Loews Hairpin at what felt like racing speed we passed a police van travelling in the opposite direction who took no notice of us whatsoever despite our clearly inebriated state and spirited progress.

When we got to Portier it became apparent that one of our number had parted company with the vehicle sometime after Loews - he arrived on foot sometime later in a somewhat torn tuxedo.

As this took place on a GP circuit in a competition car does it qualify for the thread?

Edited by ahw911, 28 July 2014 - 07:10.

I have not seen any mention of the time that Tony Brookes had throttle linkage problems with his BRM at the British Grands Prix at Silverstone in 1956, after spending some time in the pits for the linkage to be repaired,, he rejoined the race and as he drifted into Abbey Curve, suddenly realised that a lot more oil and rubber had had been put down, he tried to lift off, but the linkage stuck again and his BRM spun around and hit the banking, and he was thrown out of the car.

In his word's, I was very lucky, the car deposited me nicely on the grass verge rather than the macadam, then the car caught fire

This can be found in his autobiography, Poetry in Motion.

Regards,

Les Dalton.

This is a very strange question perhaps, but...

Doesn't it happen a lot that drivers thrown out of the car lose one shoe mid-air?

I think it happened with Villeneuve, I am certain it happened with several of my friends who had a, erhm, too enthousiastic event while driving a quad. Last weekend I had to look for one size 8 (the friend in need was quite small indeed), in the evening, along the grasse verges of a dirt-track...in the semi-dark. Some nice girl found it and brought it to the bar.

And it happened to me also when car front ended me on my pushbike. I started at this front-bumper, I ended at the rear bumper... minus one shoe.

I think that there's already an old thread in this forum about drivers losing their shoes in accidents.

Edward

Adjust your shoe size!

I have a size of 12... anything smaller and I walk like Quasimodo (or as a running Sutil).

I think that there's already an old thread in this forum about drivers losing their shoes in accidents.

 

Edward

You got to be  f....... kidding me.

Edited by Nemo1965, 28 July 2014 - 19:11.

Do you think it's cobblers?

I don't know that expression? But I do believe there is a thread about the subject, if that is the meat of your question.

I do recall that David White lost a shoe when thrown from the wreck of the Cooper Climax at Phillip Island, in 2012? The least of his worries of course, he did have a few broken toes and a few rib ticklers but a very lucky man none the less after being into the wall heavily and no seat belts or roll cage in the car, one would deduce he was better off out of the car with no shoes at all than being in it when it did its merry dance down the track. A vision I don't want to see again.

I remember reading somewhere that reports of Masten Gregory's "baling out" exploits are, in the words of Mark Twain, "greatly exaggerated".

However, I've found an example of a 'driver thrown from car' incident that peripherally features Gregory:

http://www.speedcafe...ections-part-3/

Ben Pon was thrown out of his Porsche 787 in his only Formula 1 World Championship race - the 1962 Dutch Grand Prix

On the Saturday live streaming from the Goodwood Revival I'm sure I saw the pilote being ejected from single seat Maserati(?) as it spun backwards

into  a tyre wall.It was only a brief shot obviously so as not to cause offence.......can anyone confirm?