[Buford61]

Lou Webb was killed in the 1940 Syracuse NY Indy Car race. The car was just left on the track and racing continued. That is 1946 Indy 500 winner Geroge Robson going by. He was tdie later that year in a crash at Lakewood in Atlanta.

[Buford61]

On the first lap of the Grenzlandringrennen, 3rd round of the 1952 West Germany F.2 Championship, held in the oval circuit of Grenzlandring, at Wegberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany, driver Helmut Niedermayr lost control of his Veritas Reif Meteor and went straight into the crowd. Fourteen spectators were killed and 30 injured.

[AlvinKarpis]

I’m back gentlemen

[christmascandy1]

i for one dont like racing ...been once hated it wont go back..but your pics in detail r the best i have ever seen..and i can tell u put alot of work into it...Thanks they really r detailed and i for one didnt know any of the drivers...but rip and hope they didnt feel a thing!

[Norwegian1]

Originally Posted by AlvinKarpis ↗

I’m back gentlemen

Good to have you back again

[K53]

Drive fast
Die fast

[Buford61]

The later to be famous Mickey Thompson killed 4 spectators in the 1953 Mexican Road race.

[The Dark]

holy crap at that Macau crash.... luckiest escape I can recall for a long time.

[Bortron]

I've only just started ploughing through this thread, and thank you to everyone who's contributed so far. I've learned a lot about crashes I thought I knew all about, and learned about some I'd never even seen or heard of.

I figured I wouldn't be able to contribute anything new, but then I realised I had witnessed a scary crash myself, at only the second motorsport event I'd been to. There were no serious injuries or fatalities, but there easily could have been.

In the British Touring Car Championship in 1999, qualifying day at Oulton Park was damp. Russell Spence approached Lodge corner, went straight over the apex without slowing down, and was launched over the gravel trap by the kerb. He hit the tyre barrier so hard that his Renault Laguna was deflected up and over the catch fence into a spectator area.

As it was qualifying day, the area was pretty thinly populated, so the only injuries were a marshall behind the barrier who suffered extensive bruising, and a spectator who broke an arm jumping out of the way. Spence was unharmed.

I was sitting in the stand that's visible in the video, and we were all convinced that there had been fatalities. If it had happened on race day, it's almost certain there would have been. The next day, the stand and burger vans had all been moved as far back as they'd go, and spectators were kept out of the area where the car landed. The whole run-off area was extended over the next few years.

[Bortron]

And, following on from the above post, there was unfortunately a fatal crash at the same meeting the next day. Neil Shanahan died when his Formula Ford car went off just past Knickerbrook (the corner where Derek Warwick's younger brother Paul had been killed years earlier), and his front wheel struck him on the head. He was only 19.

I've seen images of his car on a flatbed after the race online, but I can no longer find them - if any of the experts here have seen them, let me know! I walked past the car in the paddock afterwards, and it really didn't look badly damaged at all. He was just horribly unlucky. Thankfully, I didn't see the crash as I was around the other side of the circuit.