5 replies to this topic

[AustinF1]

Robby Gordon hits spectator during Baja 500 http://www.motorspor...uring-baja-500/

 

Frankly, the way the fans run out into the road and give so litle room in general, I'm surprised this doesn't happen every year in that race.

[kvyatfan]

Yeah, I don't see why the spectators are drinking beer and running across and standing in the middle of the track. Terrible because he may never walk again, but that's the risk when you play chicken with racing trucks.

[loki]

It's not unusual for a spectator to be hit by a race vehicle during a Baja desert endurance race.  Happens almost every race. SCORE alone has four events down there this year.  Typically a car crashes and takes out spectators or something that the car hit takes them out, as in the other incident where a buggy took out a pole and that hit the crowd.  This gets more ink because it's Gordon and it was basically for the lead of the race.   On that part of the course there were two racing lines in the dirt. The spectators were set up in the middle of the two lines and the one guy panicked and ran into the racing line. Gordon stopped and his helo landed and assisted in getting medical aid.   Typically what happens down there when something like this occurs is that the local authorities take the driver and co-driver into custody, or at least detain them until things are sorted.  That happened to the buggy, and they let them go at the scene and AFAIK no local authorities even showed up at the site where Gordon hit the guy.  According to some of the racers and crews at the 500 the guy will be OK.  Busted up but OK.

 

There was another incident in the race with Apdlay (the guy Gordon was racing when he hit the spectator) where he punted a civilian pickup truck off the course causing it to roll.  Fortunately it appears no one was hurt in that one.

[whitewaterMkII]

Off road racing is hairball, always has been, always will be. To spectators and racers alike, see Dakar, year in, year out.

Raced quite a bit in Baja in another life, and part of the deal there was spectators getting out the shovels and creating their own jumps on course, not to mention an occasional phone pole laying in the road. All the pre running in the world will not alert teams to the road hazards, and the spectators of course gravitate to the harshest jumps to see the race. If you saw a crowd in the middle of nowhere, that was a sign to watch out. This is nothing new, in fact a few years ago not more that 50 miles from me there was an off road race accident that killed 8 people here in SoCal. Although the race permits from the Federal Bureau of Land Management were granted providing spectators must be 50 feet away from the course, it's impossible to enforce. This is the result.

https://www.youtube....h?v=gOelQunYzEI

All that being said, my heart goes out to all involved.

[Peter0Scandlyn]

Don't the admission tickets have the old 'motor racing is dangerous' printed on them? 

[loki]

The Cal 200 deaths were rough.  It did bring some change though to the BLM in how they manage the races.  For example at the Mint 400 if you get out on course they'll make you get out of the restricted area with the BLM rangers. The promoter has been good about getting a few viewing areas and most seem to be more heads up.  That hasn't transfered down to Baja though.  Traps still happen though there are locals and others that are on the lookout for them.  Down there it's still pretty wild but there are more and more Baja locals looking to reign in the racing and clamp down on it.