Watch Jeremy Foley's incredible crash at Pikes Peak

garagegeeks · Aug 13, 2012

Filed under: Motorsports, Sedan, Performance, Safety, Videos, Mitsubishi, Racing

It's easy to forget just how dangerous the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb can be. Those who take to the mountain do so with the knowledge that any wrong turn could send them, their car and their co-driver down a rocky embankment at speed.

Jeremy Foley recently found that out first hand at around Mile 16 when his Mitsubishi Evolution 8 stepped off course. The car proceeded to somersault end over end down the side of the mountain, sheering off body panels and spitting parts along the way. From the look of things in the video below, the machine rolled at least seven times before coming to a stop right side up.

Both Foley and his co-driver were air-lifted to a local hospital, but have since been released. Early reports suggest Foley escaped the calamity with a broken leg. This was his first time at Pikes Peak. If ever there were an advertisement for building a proper cage, this is it. Check out the video of the crash below.Continue reading Watch Jeremy Foley's incredible crash at Pikes Peak

Watch Jeremy Foley's incredible crash at Pikes Peak originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 13 Aug 2012 09:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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escort1991 · Aug 13, 2012

Oh dang!!! That's intense.

jjfromdlh · Aug 13, 2012

Oh man, thankful they're both ok!

cmspaz · Aug 15, 2012

The Devil's Playground is no joke, and that corner's scary as shit.

I've not been a fan of Evolution Dynamics, nor have I been impressed with their tuning or mechanical work... But holy shit did they figure out how to build a cage. Color me impressed.

Derrian · Aug 15, 2012

I posted the vid on Facebook, but here it is again. I totally agree with Spaz's comment on roll cages. It probably saved their lives.

[video=youtube;zEUrEPPABbY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEUrEPPABbY[/video]

cmspaz · Aug 16, 2012

Picked this up off MitsuStyle from a guys who's been to a few of our meets, and knows his shit.

Tachyon said: ↑

Jesus Harold Christ!

Just read the build thread for the car over at evomn: What the fuck is the tech at PPIHC thinking!

I am not flaming the cage designer, he build a good cage (albeit to the baaaare minimum of a very shitty and obsolete rule book) to a clients specifications.

But who green lights a cage design like this for a rally, let alone high-speed hill-climb event?

I don't even know where to start... Convex NASCAR style ladder bars? No vertical A-pillar support? Let alone the missing diagonals for roof collapse, rear X bar biased towards the driver side, and lack gussets for side impact tube puncture. This was *at best* a single occupancy cage, meant for light door-to-door club racing.

After looking at the deformation photos the only reason the co-driver even survived was because he seal came unbolted (you heard it right, bolted in, not welded) and his helmet survived the battering that multiple rock intrusions applied to his his head.

PPIHC really needs to get their act together, and hopefully this will wake them up before their criminal negligence sets the sport back 10 years.
Click to expand...

Tachyon said: ↑

The construction differs between road racing rally. In road racing you have to be concerned about intrusion from another car, and absorbing that energy. The forces are typically applied at obtuse angles with room to dissipate such as sliding along the wall. Additionally there is 1 occupant so the cages can be strength biased towards a single focal point - above the driver's head.

In rally, you don't have the danger of another car plowing into you, but there are other extreme dangers, such as hitting immovable objects a right angles -and as you've now seen, sailing off cliffs. In addition equal protection needs to be provided to 2 occupants.

For FIA construction, the cage has evolved into similar to a geodesic dome or eggshell design:

This is designed to maintain shape while rolling down a mountain, and works quite well as illustrated in the last few years of the WRC.

Here's 2 photos of Latvala's off in Portugal 2009 - closest modern example that comes to mind. In this crash he flew off a cliff, rolled 17 times over a total distance of 450 feet.

Passenger's side:

Driver's side:

Notice how the cage still has the same unified shape and has not deformed. Furthermore, they protective sheet metal remained in tact and they were not bouncing their heads off rocks all the way down the hill.

Let contrast this to this a cage in question.

Flattened. Due to lack of multi-diagnoals. Think what happens to a square cardboard box if you apply side load while pressing down -it folds.

Dat intrusion.

But here's what really made my blood run cold this afternoon:

This was the co-driver's helmet. These guys were a few degrees from going home in body bags. The fact they survived was sheer luck.

What I really want to drive home here is that the governing body that is running the PPIHC need to unfrack their program and adopt today's safety protocols.

1. Don't let amateurs out in a 500HP unrestricted turbo car - the run is nearly 100% tarmac now and is very dangerous.

2. Require the correct safety gear for the application, before you get your ass litigated back to the 1970's.
Click to expand...

And that about sums everything up.

cmspaz · Aug 17, 2012

Also, on-car:
[video=youtube;QDPKu4ydWLc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDPKu4ydWLc[/video]

Classic Evo understeer, though it doesn't help that the corner tightens and he didn't enter it with that in mind.

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