Standing starts is not the answer.... trust me and Bill Fickling.
If anyone has a recording of the Toyota Atlantic Pro series race, Saturday, Laguna Seca 1992 they can watch me get pinched into the wall buy another car that bounced off his row mate as they both dived for the same real estate. I had broken a CV joint on the first lap of quaifying and had to start way in the back and when the car in front moved right it left an opening between him and the pit wall.... would have been a nice clean line but for the guy to the right and a row ahead deciding to move left turning the car in front hard left and we both went hard into the wall. I had not shifted to 2nd yet so we were only moving 50mph max but the impact took the left rear corner off intact with axle flailing and it flew within a foot of Bill's head as he was standing at the pit wall looking up to the front of the grid where his car was gridded. He never even knew how close it came to hitting him until the TV broadcast showed the start looking back at the field from the start line tower.
In my pro series career we had major start line pile ups several times a season... possibly as much as 25% of the road race starts. Stalled cars or broken drive train on the starts probably accounted for at least half of the disasters so you can't blame it all on the drivers. Shortly after I retired in 1994 they abandoned the standing starts and the primary reason was that the delays caused by the messed up starts kept screwing up the time slot allocated for the Atlantic race at the big events that usually featured four major races during the weekend plus a host of other activities.
As exciting as they were for the drivers and the spectators, I would recommend against bringing them back for the present form of FA racing.
Great to see the big field at RA and good to see no one was hurt in that freak accident.
Last time I saw anything like that was PLTA Pro Series at Nazareth when Burt Hart got upside down and slid along the wall just past start/finish.... he doged the bullet too.
Steve O'Hara
THAT is how you can get hurt in an open cockpit race car. That kind of accident, where something (like a wall) can intrude into the space occupied by the driver, is always terrifying. Over the years a lot of folks have been killed that way... and the only real solution is to put a cage on the cars (like sprinters)... and I don't think many people really want that.
Happy you're okay, Doug... an doan' worry, you've now got the one that was gonna bite you behind you.
The who-duun-what-to-whom question? A no-fault racing accident. People race. Tightly. And sometime they hit each other if someone just burps.
