Tim Bell Huge Crash 2014 Continental Tire Sportscar Challange at COTA
 

Whoa. Glad he's ok. Great driving to get the car sideways at the last minute.

oh man that's sad to watch, poor car

:roflpuke: what the **** is wrong with me, i'm glad Tim Bell is ok
smh
people > things

Definitely, and good thing car didnt turn over when going sideways, that wouldve been worse :shakes head:

I am confused as to what happened exactly that threw him off course??

Thank goodness for the slow down off shoot area and the well designed crash
impact barriers.. Hope that driver is fine.....


:tup:

Brake failure is what I read in an article I saw on this elsewhere.

Yep, he posted it on FB too. Said that he's really sore, but ok.

That really was some amazing driving

Wild 370Z crach at COTA
 

This has me thinking my car needs more safety gear in it!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJqNqxAG9qg

This freaked me out so bad I couldn't spell crash!

Holy shît!

Holy ****. I hope he is ok. That's good the car didn't flip and start rolling. The wall bumpers absorbed a lot of the high speed impact.

He walked away with only a headache! He tried to get it to go in backwards but couldn't get the car to rotate. He went off the track at 154 and said he scrubbed off 20 mph by sticking it in 3rd.


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This was one bad crash to see it in person. I was just glad he was able to walk away from this. :tup:

:eek:

Glad to hear he walked away from it ok.

Once I get pictures down loaded, I will post a couple of pictures of the crash. I didn't have the right lens on at the time, but like some have already posted it was a scary crash and to see it happen, like we have all said, glad he is OK.

Ice mode? I have never gotten it, so I don't know if it was that or something else.

The drivers comment from facebook:

"Tim Bell ... We think the ABS went into a default mode when it lost the rear brakes the turn before. The pedal went rock hard and the data shows no sign or brake pressure to any of the brakes... It was a complete brake failure unfortunately. But the good thing is the safety barrier worked and our other safety equipment performed perfectly and I walked away"

This is why I decided to get the cage, seats, harnesses and HANS. At high speed in a stock car, it would really suck hitting that wall.

That's what it sounds like to me, I would like to know if the race car has the factory ABS. Safety equipment has just moved to the top of my mod list.


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:eek: Don't know what to say. Crap, that was frightening. :eek: Glad to hear that he walked away from it. :)

I don't know, but I doubt they're on the factory ABS. I think the critical part of that message, that I don't fully understand, is "when it lost the rear brakes the turn before". It's hard to know what happened at T12 without knowing whatever he's referring to from T11.

Yup! Especially when you're not even making the big bucks, it's not worth ending up in the hospital (or worse) over some cheap track thrills at a DE. If you're doing a lot of trackdays and getting up there on carrying speed, you really need a cage, good harnesses, and some kind of neck protection. Also don't forget that basic maintenance is an important safety upgrade. Keep that brake fluid fresh and check all wear items, etc!

I re-watched Tim's wreck video like 20 times in a row. Me and my car have spent about 5 track-days going through that exact same braking zone over and over (but ~20mph slower and far less traffic to deal with). It's a pretty heavy braking zone, and suddenly not having brakes there would be scary as hell. He handled it way better than I would have.

I'm really glad he walked away from that pretty much unscathed. Good thing CotA has nice crash barriers.

Would be interesting to hear why he lost rears. MC failure ? Or did calipers and pads get overheated? In pictures looks like gold brembo calipers from 350z.

Great that he is ok !!! I would be still cleaning my shorts out still !

:iagree: good thing the tire barriers held the car in place and absorbed the impact.

I am no track car guy so I seriously cannot speak with knowledge here but do you guys not run some sort of independent e brake? blew a break line in our family owned cummins once and my first instinct was to float the e brake to get the truck home. while I don't expect it would have slowed the car fully from 130-0 I guess anything slower coming into that barrier would have been better. On a real note though if this is indeed the factory brake system this makes what; the second? high speed brake failure occurrence on a nismo?

He said they do not have a parking brake on the cars.

Nothing like total brake failure to ruin your day.
 

Another 370Z related post I saw today. He was flying!

The crash is at 0:24

I didnt see it in the pics and vid section. My bad.

Not really relevant to this race car losing its brakes. However I have always been suspect to whether that CD crash was pad related. I think it was ice mode.

I have dealt with brake fade with street pads and haven't ever lost braking capability completely. Calipers and pads on NISMO are pretty stout. NISMO with firmer suspension, stickier tires etc is more vulnerable to ice mode. I almost crashed first time I had ice mode in my nismo too. Scary as hell!

The bell racing issue was something differnt I suspect.

If this is a factory Nismo RC then it is fitted with MotorSport ABS controller from Bosch.

The Daytona Couple that runs in the 12-hour Enduro here in Australia also has this and is fitted with full suite of Motec electronics and they had an ABS problem at the Bathurst 12-hour in Feb and the recommendation was to use the Motec logger which monitors pressure in the primary brake circuit and if the pressure goes above 1600psi (which is sufficient input pressure to cause a wheel lock and trigger the ABS), then the Motec PDU cuts power to the ABS which disables it and lets full-pressure thru to the caliper(s).

If this is a 370Z RC based on a road car, and it has the OEM ABS then this could be an "ice-mode" condition - only the car owners will know the detail.

RB

Rumor has it that they picked up old AM performance cars which had Motorsport's grade abs systems. I highly doubt any grand am cars are using stock abs. If they are its a recipe for disaster .

Damn so he must've hit that wall at over 90 mph even after scrubbing some speed by downshifting and going through the gravel trap sideways.. Nice driving and lucky to walk away with just a headache and a ruined set of underpants.

He was going over 130, I want to say 134 at time of impact

134 is what he said.


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"I had smelled the brake pads the turn before the crash, and wanted to make sure the brakes were there. The first couple felt weird so I pumped a couple more times and they felt solid, but unfortunately they were to hard went I went to the brakes. The pedal was stiff as a rock and didn't slow the car down very much. Looking at the data the rear circuit in the ABS didn't work at all the turn before, which is why I smelled the brakes. Normally when there is a brake issue the pedal goes soft, but I had never had a dead heard pedal that didn't move before. Then during the crash the data shows the front right brake come on at 200psi then the left brake at 200psi, then all 4 go off which is why I sailed off course. Luckily COTA has the high-impact safety walls and the impact wasn't a dead stop. Can't thank the safety workers enough!"

Crazy.

You can see him pounding on that brake pedal way way before the turn. He even tested it (so it seems) about 2/3rds of the way through the straight.

Hard hit. Glad He's ok.

GOOD GOD that is crazy!!!

Huge testament to the safety equipment in both the car and on the track. Absolutely incredible that he walked away from that.

I also have to applaud the guy for how he handled it. Some people might have used 20 other cars to help slow them down...