Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

Watch this one if you can on Velocity channel.

It goes through the 60s and 70s when so many drivers will killed in Formula One. The cars had exceeded the tracks and safety was an afterthought. Cockpits were sandwiched between gas tanks that usually exploded in a wreck. There was no armco, few ambulances, no trained safety workers.

Unlike many Americans, instead of being an A.J Foyt fan I was a Jim Clark fan who waited months for a few Grand Prix races to show up on Wide World of Sports. I remember hearing he had been killed in an F2 race and never saw many of the video until tonight.

Never hit stationary objects!

Agree that it was an excellent show. Glad to live in an era when tragedy at the race track is the exception rather than the rule.

That show was difficult to watch. My God the carnage. As far as Jim Clark's accident and his car after the accident, don't know if I ever saw a car tore up more than that except maybe a top fuel dragster at 300mph, but a driver is reasonably safe in a dragster. 187 turns, 14 miles long? In the rain, no guard rails, fans and crews standing next to the track? Crazy days. Yes, thankfully those days are gone. Dan Weldon was an exception to the much safer conditions of today. Didn't Jackie Stewart say he lost 57 driver friends back then, people he knew well.

Lawlessness + liberalism = HELL -  NYC, Detroit, Chicago, 
Seattle, LA  Who the H runs those cities. 

Great show for sure. I didn't know that Jackie Stewart helped form the Grand Prix Drivers Asscociation... gained some respect for him..

Absolutely horrendous wrecks and drivers burning to death AND THE RACE CONTINUES while they try to administer help and put out fires? Wow..

If you have not seen it, please do....

Ask Frank

From your description, it sounds as though you are talking about David Purley trying to save Roger Williamson in the 1973 Dutch Grand Prix while the track marshalls stood and watched. Several years later, Purley lived through a crash at Silverstone (England) in which he sustained an estimated 179.8 g's of force from deceleration. Purley suffered 28 broken bones, and it was generally accepted that the crash was the highest g-forces any driver had ever lived through at the time.

I am trying to remember this correctly, but Purley became either an airplane racer or air show pilot later in life. He was susbsequently killed in a plane crash.

FWIW, and not to be ghoulish, but YouTube is a very good source of footage for most of the fatal F1 crashes of the 1950s-80s.

The linked message board here is also an awesome source when it comes learning what happened in particular F1 crashes over the years. I have learned so much stuff about F1, and many of its fatal crashes just by reading the board here. http://forums.autosport.com/

It was Purley. That part was VERY hard to watch.

Dave Boy

I have recorded this program, but have not watched it yet. I will be sure to soon. Does anyone remember a video series called Havoc from the early 90s? I remember growing up my dad bought a set of those auto racing crash videos, the ones where everyone walks away, but this Havoc video came along with it. It had mostly crashes where the drivers were fine, but it also talked about some crashes where the driver was killed and I remember they talked about and showed the video of Williamson on fire and Purley trying to help. That has always stuck with me. The racers back then were true heros and pioneers.

It looks like the next airing is Sunday March 19 at 10pm Eastern on Velocity.

I'm pretty sure it was Steve Beitler and Mark Kinser who got Wolfie out of the car.

When I was a kid, in the LA area in the '40's and '50's, my dad was heavily involved with midgets and what they called "big cars," later to be called "sprintcars." Fatalities were very common back then. I think I saw something between 10 & 15 midget drivers killed before I was 16!

The cars were nearly indestructible but the drivers had very poor saftey equipment. Many drove in t-shirts, with no gloves, and the helmet was a small leather cap that bearly covered the ears, and MANY of them drove with no seat belt. On dirt, most of the drivers tied a bandana over their mouth. They did all wear goggles, but had now "tear offs". It wasn't unusual to see a driver killed saturday night and someone else would be driving the same car the next week!

Can someone help me with this Velocity Channel? I am in Iowa, with Dish, and it says online and such that it is channel 364. I have the big 250 plan and it isn't even listed on my channel guide, either at 364 or Velocity. Thanks.

My wife told me if I went to one more Sprint Car race 
she would leave me.................I'm sure gonna miss 
that ol' gal. 

One the right hand side you will find a channel finder.http://velocity.discovery.com/videos/

Half the lies they tell about me aren't true. 

Kind of late notice, but this show is on again tonight at 1:00am Eastern (about an hour from now) on Velocity