Sepang Test

JPSLotus said:

I can't even imagine what it must feel like to land on your shoulder with that much force. The airbags were probably the single greatest advancement for rider safety thankfully. I wonder if having them would have saved Wayne Rainey from his injury, or if that was a foregone conclusion regardless.

Imagine sliding down the track at 180MPH?

.... that.

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Arrabbiata1 said:

Remember Nakano's Bridgestone failure at Mugello? That was around about the 200mph mark. Like Marquez in 2013, he was very lucky not to have struck the wall. He came to rest right by it.

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Jumkie said:

John Hopkins crash in practice at Assen 2008

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Arrabbiata1 said:

I also recall Matt Mladin had a rear blow out at Road Atlanta which demolished the entire tail section of the bike. He managed to steer it on to the grass and lay it down. Never been able to find the footage though.

EDIT Until now...

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JPSLotus said:

That was a really bad crash. ...., I wish he had never gone to Kawasaki. I feel like he never fulfilled his potential in GP at all.

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Arrabbiata1 said:

I also recall Matt Mladin had a rear blow out at Road Atlanta...

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Jumkie said:

Now this IS a great commercial for the airbag leathers.

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povol said:

I was there, it was one of the best saves I have ever witnessed. If I'm not mistaken, that same weekend a rider named Brian Livengood had a rear tire explode in almost the same place with much worse results. I was standing within 20 feet of both incidents. Mladin was luckier because his tire exploded after the slight kink at the top of the hill and he was more or less straight heading down the hill towards the gravel trap. Livengoods tire exploded in the kink which launched him towards a concrete wall at 180 mph, luckily at enough angle that it allowed him to careen off the wall back into the track. When he bounced back on the track, his body was motionless and I just turned and headed up the hill to our campsite knowing he was dead. He lived but never raced again I think.

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Racer Brian Livengood broke his back in two places when he crashed at Road Atlanta May 16, and he will undergo surgery next Tuesday, May 27, at Grady Hospital in Atlanta.That's the word from Livengood family friend and Roadracing World contributing photographer Vicki Sulpy, who wrote in an e-mail to Roadracingworld.com that Livengood's back injuries were discovered by a CT scan taken yesterday, with results delivered today.

Livengood's crash was set off when the Dunlop radial slick on the rear wheel of his Suzuki GSX-R1000 Superbike failed at an estimated speed of over 160 mph, in the back-straight kink at Road Atlanta. Livengood slid across the racetrack and into a concrete wall. He was originally diagnosed as having a concussion and bruised lungs, and is still on a respirator. Emergency crews performed a tracheotomy at the track to ease his breathing, and the tracheotomy was redone when he arrived at the hospital.

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povol said:

The Europeans always hated tracks in the states. The safety built into the tracks were light years ahead of what was going on here. We used to laugh at Foggy and call him a big ..... when he would whine about Daytona, especially where you left the infield and accelerated up the banking towards a concrete wall. Scott Russell would kid Foggy that the way to be fast in that turnwas to get your rear tire wedged between where the wall and the racetrack came together. Lol

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Keshav said:

I raced RA - once, and that was enough for me. Every time I came out of the tunnel and started down the hill - all I could see was that ....... pit wall, and that was before they had any air fence. Wanted to .... myself.

When I heard about Miguel Duhamel crashing there, totally flipped me out. From RR World.

Duhamel was one of many riders taking part in the two-day (August 7-8), multi-team test at the newly-repaved, 2.5-mile, 12-turn road course at Road Atlanta, in Braselton, Georgia. For most riders it was their first time seeing the new racing surface, which resulted in lap times at the test being as much as two seconds faster than during the 2006 AMA Superbike races.

At approximately 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Duhamel was evaluating new Dunlop tires on his American Honda CBR1000RR Superbike as he approached Turn 12 (the most dangerous turn in AMA road racing if not the world in the opinion of some racers) at 120-130 mph. Duhamel encountered a problem early in the corner that resulted in the rear end of his motorcycle coming around and throwing the French-Canadian off.

"You ever play with those lawn darts when you were a kid? You throw them underhand real fast about three feet off the ground. That's what it looked like," said Al Ludington, Duhamel's long-time Crew Chief, who witnessed the accident. "He drilled straight in. He didn't hit the ground before he went in."

According to Ludington, Duhamel's CBR led him into the miniscule run-off area and hit and displaced the Airfence, resulting in Duhamel heavily impacting hay bales and a tire wall.

"He had just bent it in," continued Ludington, "just went to the throttle and it came unglued at the back. It went right off the racetrack without bouncing. It was pretty horrific to watch."

Ludington was one of the first at the scene. He said Duhamel never lost consciousness and was aware of what happened and what was going on. After reporting that he could feel all of his fingers and toes, Duhamel said he was having trouble breathing and his neck hurt. He was transported by ambulance to North Georgia Medical Center, in Gainesville, Georgia, where he immediately underwent X-rays and CT scans.

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