All,
We were at VARAC this weekend running in the Toyo series - not my best effort sadly, and I had to sit out the last race, and watch it from Corner 2 (Mosport). For those of you that have not driven here, you should try to do it - a friend came up with his FF from Michigan and had a silly grin on his face all weekend.....
About 2-3 laps in, two cars come together in the bottom of two - light contact, front wheel on back wheel, one manages to spin and rejoin and the other spins/rolls backwards across the very long apron to the infield wall. I can only assume that he touched the wall, but the car was clearly not so damaged that it couldn't roll very easily. What followed next was bizarre.....
Driver gets out, and walks to his left where there is a break in the wall (where the wall overlaps itself, so you can easily push a car in there out of danger). Unfortunately, the car was not in gear, and it started to roll towards the track - driver manages to get it stopped short of the track, but the whole enchilada was pretty bad. He wheels the car back up to where it was, puts it in gear, and gets behind the wall.
There is a wrecker literally 100 yards down track. Pace car is called out and field slowed. Wrecker doesn't move - we wait quite some time for a flatbed to come, which "covers" the stricken car from traffic (I guess?), a safety truck shows up, a red SUV drives on over, then the wrecker comes counter race, and then the ambulance shows up for the driver. 5 safety vehicles for a FF that rolls and could have been rolled behind the wall in a matter of seconds.
Much discussion takes place, at least a half dozen folks walking around. Well over half the race was under pace car while it got all sorted out.
It never used to be this way. I understand VARAC has a policy of using the bus if you contact a wall - fine. But waiting for 5 safety vehicles seemed - excessive?? The safety truck that showed up was stationed 150 yards before the incident and could have covered the wrecker/personnel. Better yet, the car could have simply been pushed by two folks/marshalls behind the wall in a matter of seconds, and picked up on the cool down lap.
I'm not griping about volunteers doing the job the way they are told to do it - I totally appreciate them for what they do, which enables me to race. I am more wondering why it has got to this? There were a lot of people on a hot track doing not much for a long time, which seems a lot less safe than rolling a car behind a wall quickly....
best,
BT