Taken by a buddy next to me at the start of Sat's Grand Am race at Barber. 200 lens, 18mp - I think

 

He's still well within the white lines.

 

*

 

I do not track race but damn this shi seems to happen a lot on lap one.

 

The guy driving the black car is a good childhood friend of mine. Looks like he finished the race:

 

So did the white stang leave some rubber on his helmet? Glad he wasn't hurt and finished - we were remarking about the absense of a drivers door

I love how they mid-apex out at 10 off the curbing and slide out

 

I work for the team of the 6 car. She got it handed to her pretty bad.

 

Gladiators on crack. That's how I would describe the Continental Tire race.

I was watching from the Billy's tent over by 8 and 9. I loved watching many of the cars run off the curb on 9 and drift the car out. It was really funny to watch the #6 car drive by and be able to see the driver handling the car.

 

Barber Grand Am in car

 

white car srsly looks like a race car my cousin owns.

 

Ouchies. I'm sure that's not fun strapped to the chassis on race suspension.

That second flip looked avoidable, although the blue car looked to turn into the black car to avoid the white car that lost the hood. I think.

 

Thanks for the in-car link! Crazy

 

lol, small world. Tim and I went to high school together.

 

I need to log caliper temp, lol.

It looks like a lot of people lost their ---- that day.

 

I don't see how people could afford that. It's expensive enough to field a car without damage. Coming home and telling the wife you need to drop another $10K in repairs has to make for some single race car drivers. Or is this series high enough level that it's all sponsored?

 

Rumor has it that when a certain someone wrecked a Camaro and totalled it, Dad cut a check and they built a new one so he didn't miss the next race. This is rumor of course.

 

VTEC just kicked in YO.

 

Pockets

They are deep, yo.

 

For a driver who is buying a seat with a pre-established team, a weekend in a car like that is typically $25k. 10 weekends a year. Your average 2-car ALMS GT team (Porsche GT3RSR, etc) is a $10m/yr affair.

$10k for damage isn't even a blip on the radar.

 

One of the Socal track rats has a story about talking with an engineer for an F1 team. He asked the engineer about the team's budget - specifically, how the team decided whether or not a development road or a specific part was worth the cost.

The engineer, clearly confused, paused for a moment, then replied: "You don't understand - we don't even think like that. If there's a possible benefit in a part, we build and test a prototype. The cost of that part is not a factor in any way."

If you ever wondered how F1 teams have 9-figure budgets, now you know.