[windowlicker]

Antonio Ascari, Alberto's father was a 1920's Grand Prix driver and was killed at the Autodrome de Montlhéry while leading in 1925 driving a Alfa Romeo P2 .

Both Ascari's, father and son died aged 36.

[AlvinKarpis]

Originally Posted by The Dark ↗

Michele Alboreto - killed in Germany, only a single photo of his car which went over the barriers upside down exists. The word is he was decapitated and the damage to the top of the car shows that to be more than plausible.

A single photo is all that there is....

That is unless you are me

And now unless you are a member of DR

[AlvinKarpis]

Here are my best copies of the original single photo of the Michele Alboreto crash that Dark was talking about

[windowlicker]

I think the attached article tells the story...

[The Dark]

Originally Posted by AlvinKarpis ↗

start fresh with one of the worst deaths in racing history, the video and the pics

Ooh, now you got me thinking.... most of what I'd call the "worst deaths" have already been shown/discussed. I'd have had Smiley, Williamson, Pryce, Cevert & Koinigg et al under that criteria.... so who could it be????

Russell Phillips? Chris Bristow? Sebastian Enjolras? Eddie Sachs? Jo Schlesser? Jean-Louis Lafosse? Greg Moore? Jeff Krosnoff? All of them are grim & fatal.

I would offer a suggestion of Tony Renna, but I'm told those pictures are so gruesome, Indianapolis actually destroyed all footage (he had a testing accident - hence little coverage - at the same turn as Smiley,) his accident was apparently pretty much identical except most of the car remained in the fence, some of it went into the seats (which would have caused multiple fatalities had it been on raceday) and some of it went down the track. The report stated the bottom of the car was penetrated by the fence post and Renna was allegedly split apart. Some of him was left hanging in the fence with the cockpit tub.

[The Myth]

Once again, great thread all, The Dark mentioned Russell Phillips crash. Without intending to sound morbid, and not wanting to sound pushy or needy (cos the work you guys go to putting together these posts must be huge) I'd really like to see more than the grainy video of the crash that I have seen. If any of you have pics or better resolution vid of the crash I'd be one eternally greatfull sick puppy :)
Keep up the great work guys, this stuff is absolutely brilliant.

[Norwegian1]

Wasn't Renna driving a Target car? I seem to recall that a lot of the indycar series "flying" accidents has involved Target cars...

[Norwegian1]

I found this quite interesting and chilling case study of some of the best known accidents in f1 and indycar.. It contains a lot of information about what happened under these accidents and why they happened. here is the link :http://www.benchapman.com/project/ronnie1.html

[The Dark]

Originally Posted by Norwegian1 ↗

Wasn't Renna driving a Target car? I seem to recall that a lot of the indycar series "flying" accidents has involved Target cars...

He was indeed driving for the Target Chip Ganassi team.

However it's a bit inaccurate to say a lot of the flying incidents involved that teams cars. Ryan Briscoe is the only other driver to "fly" in one of them, he got lucky as he hit the fence side on, there's a brilliant picture as he hits the fence and you can see it all curled round the chassis about the rip it apart, flames & everything (except the driver) spewing out.

Other big airborne crashes in the Indycar series were of course the sadly fatal one to Dan Wheldon last October, Kenny Brack at Texas, Dario Franchitti did it twice in consecutive weekends at Michegan & Kentucky. A large chunk of the field went up at Atlanta in 2001 - which until Vegas last year was the biggest crash in the series history. Buddy Rice had it happen as well. Oriol Servia had one of the more unusual crashes with spectacular air.

There was Greg Moore, Jeff Krosnoff, Paul Dana & Gonzalo Rodriguez fatal crashes - all got up in the air in a variety of ways.

The basic problem with those cars is they ran some tracks in excess of 225mph average, and often circulated as 1 large pack of cars due to aerodynamic benefits. Now in Nascar when they race at Daytona & Talladega they can have some bumps & bangs and still drive on, but they know "The Big One" is always likely to happen. In Indycar, an open wheel to wheel contact will always see cars fly and at 200+, it's no longer a car, it's an uncontrolled plane. It was frankly a miracle no driver had been killed for so long till Wheldon. It's just a shame that was the last race they had to get through before the car specs changed.

[Norwegian1]

Thanks for clearing that up for me, my memory must be starting to fail me I think

But if I recall correctly Target cars were involved in both the Kenny Brack and Dario Franchitti crashes?