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What not to do at a track day

Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 10:45 pm
by PeteK
Unfortunately, this used to be a beautiful 323i. I wasn't there myself, but I'm told the car was out of control at Eastern Creek (in Sydney Australia) in turn 1 which would have been well over 100 mph in this car. The car rolled, but the driver walked away with nothing more than a headache! Luckily, he'd installed a half cage just before this event. Terrible shame as this was a lovely car and really quick. He would regularly beat most of the modern M3s.
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Re: What not to do at a track day

Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 10:52 pm
by Jeroen
Ouch! The guy did a thorough job front to end! But you don't know what happened? Friend of mine did the same with his E21 at Spa in Belgium, when you hit the grass sideways a flip over can happen quite easily and in most cases that's the end for our beloved youngtimers...

Re: What not to do at a track day

Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 10:59 pm
by e21-Mark
Glad the guy was OK. Might make me fit that rear cage myself.

Re: What not to do at a track day

Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2010 12:12 am
by --ALPINA--
I reckon some wings and doors, body filler and a hammer would straighten that car out!!



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Re: What not to do at a track day

Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2010 6:45 am
by garyw51
Was that Craig Nelson's car? If so a lot of money had gone into it.
He also has/had a genuine JPS that he stopped using on track days after another shunt. He rebuilt that car and it was a credit to him. Don't think he will rebuild the blue car. A very lucky boy!

Re: What not to do at a track day

Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 9:53 am
by tommi_e21
atleast he can reuse the petrol filler flap

Re: What not to do at a track day

Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 6:03 pm
by JTY
That's not a rear half cage, that's a full cage rear to front... Considerable damage even than, wow.

Re: What not to do at a track day

Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 7:07 pm
by BMW-POWER
now thats called a banana around here :o

without the cage the car now wouldn't even look like a E21 i think... :?

Re: What not to do at a track day

Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 9:22 pm
by 323baur
He is very lucky with the rollbar!
Otherwise he would be very dead!

Re: What not to do at a track day

Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 11:02 pm
by PeteK
JTY is right, it is a full cage. It looked like a half cage because the passenger side pillar was down so low. I checked the other photo and it has just "pulled" the roof edge down over the cage bar! You can actually see it sticking up through the sun roof in this photo.

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I asked the guys who were there and they said the back end got away in the fast (160 km/h) first corner and slid off the track. The tyres dug into the grass and it rolled 5 times before before coming to rest against the wall!