[Buford61]

Hiroshi Kazato and Seiichi Suzuki were both killed in a fiery pileup on the first lap of the 1974 Fuji Grand Champion Series for sportscars at the first cruve that resembled the banking at Monza. After that the course was modified.

[RealityUnfolding]

One of my all-time favorite threads and I finally get to contribute! I've got some more Alex Zinardi photos and a couple of repeats that are better quality.

I know this is a photo thread but given how gruesome Alex's crash was, I'm popping in two videos. The first is TV coverage of the crash. The crash begins at about 42 seconds in and includes the interview with the track doctor. The second video is a CCTV style footage and shows Alex initially attempting to lift up his (now gone) legs - a video that's new to me and a bit creepy, showing he was awake at least at first. He lifts the bit of bones left with the firesuit just limply hanging off it.

It was posted in 2012 in this thread when he won gold at the London games. I'm here to say, he has just won two more golds and a silver in the 2016 Rio games.

[windowlicker]

There are a few new to the thread photo's in this post from Mark Donohue's fatal crash during morning warm up at the Austrian GP 1975.

Mark crashed when his Penske March 751 suffered a puncture. The car went through several layers of catchfencing and he received a blow to the head. The former CanAm champion was brought round by an injection from an attending doctor and spoke to Emerson Fittipaldi before he was taken to hospital and seemed fine.

Unfortunately the flight to the hospital had increased the pressure on a brain haemorrhage, and Donohue began complaining of an increasingly unbearable headache. He subsequently lapsed into unconsciousness, and an emergency operation to open his skull and release the pressure came too late. By the following Tuesday he was dead.

While it is not certain that a catchfence pole inflicted the fatal injury the death prompted a re-evaluation of the safety device.

Two track marshals were hit by Donohue's car, one sadly dying shortly after.

Jackie Stewart - 'Catchfencing was one of the best safety devices I had the misfortune to experience. In practice at Kyalami I had a brake failure and without the chainlink fencing I would have died. I was doing 176 mph and even the spinning did nothing to wipe off the speed.'

[yelmurcb]

This thread is why I even joined. Racers are my heroes and I have always been interested in the way they died. One to improve safety and two just to know how my heroes went out (people not around racing wouldn't understand).

My favorite form of autosport is American Open wheel. After digging through all of the post and was curious if anyone had anymore pictures or information from the accidents I will list below. Thank you for sharing ahead of time.

1. Tony Renna- I have heard this one was rather grizzly but other than that not much information. It all seems surrounded in an insane amount of secrecy. Does anyone have any solid info on this?

2. Dan Wheldon- We all know what happened and the Las Vegas race was a deathtrap from the word go. What I haven't seen is any pictures closeup or that actually show the damage Dan sustained. With multiple reports (Ashley Judd) saying he was alive then wasn't I am curious to how bad it really was.

3. Justin Wilson- Again I know I can watch the video of it happening almost anywhere. Again no close ups of him being extracted or anything like that. I know this is going to sound strange because I have read the INDYCAR report but I am not sure a nose cone could have killed him are we sure suspension or something else didn't get in the cockpit? This year at the 500 I saw a crew guy carrying a whole nose with wings through the pits one handed they can't be that heavy.

[Buford61]

Everybody who knows about Renna I have talked to says "You don't want to know." Robin Miller wouldn't tell me. I have read part of his body was left impaled on a fence post. But the information blackout even among friends is rather startling.

[jeremycrpntr]

I actually know a guy (I will not mention his name or his normal turn he works for anonymity) that is on IMS Fire/Rescue (not Holmatro team). He was working F/R at the Speedway for the tire testing the day Renna was killed. It happened at the corner he was working. He was one of the first on scene. He has talked to me about it a couple times and went into a few details. I know he had trouble sleeping the next couple weeks.

Regarding Wilson, I want to say a nose cone is approximately 25-30 pounds. Taking that straight to the head at 180-200mph would be fatal 99.99% of the time.

[FivOh]

Concerning Renna, perhaps this is helpful.

https://www.reddit.com/r/INDYCAR/com...what_actually/

[BooyaCS]

From the satellite images of the crash site (aftermath) and some sketchy accounts it was like the Dan Wheldon accident except the cockpit of the car split open and punctured the 4ft catch fence.

With the Smiley accident the cockpit remained in tact (from the images I have seen) on impact. Also the accident looked to occur on the exit of the turn. It may be that he was accelerating when he hit the grass and then got airborne. But without any video evidence it is hard to deduce what actually happened.

The only details from the corner report was that the body looked like it was in an airplane accident.

[Barton Farley]

Has anyone else noticed the lack of info concerning the fatal accident of Allan Simonsen at LeMans a few years ago. Only sketchy speculation and the in car video of the trailing Corvette and a spectator video and that's it.

[yelmurcb]

Been researching the Renna accident more and the lack of news is really interesting. So far all I have found is he may or may not have hit a bird to cause the accident and that the body looked like it had been in an aircraft accident.

Other than that I have found all kinds of speculation (people not being let into the track to see what was going on or people who claim to know but don't have details). I also found a straight up lie from INDYCAR (IRL at the time) that the car didn't get into the stands. Which is very contradictory to the one photo I can find (which I will link). It defiantly appears as if some of the disabled seats in turn three were directly hit by something.