Bentley in 200mph Crash (Flips/Blowovers)

[rdjones]

This just in from Autosport.com

Bentley suffered a huge crash on Monday night,EXP Speed 8 was airborne in the big shunt. The Bentley was travalling at 200mph as it crashed.

Bentley driver Eric van de Poele has survived a huge 200mph accident during a 24-hour endurance test at Paul Ricard in France.

The Belgian's EXP Speed 8 became airborne at the end of the mile-long Mistral Straight on Monday night as the team carried out its preparations for Le Mans. The car slewed sideways, took off and caught the top of the guard rail before coming to rest upside down against a small outside retaining wall.

Van de Poele walked away from the wreck unaided, was not taken to hospital and continued driving the team's second car on Tuesday morning.

A brake problem is believed to be the reason for the accident, which began at the point on the circuit on which the car hit 200mph. A puncture has been ruled out as the cause.

Van de Poele said: "As soon as I hit the brakes the car went to the left onto the kerbs, went sideways and flew."

But he ruled out the accident as one comparable to those which have affected Porsche, Mercedes and BMW prototypes which flipped in a straight line in the past four years.

This is very sad news. Thank God everyone was OK

[rdjones]

Futher update from DailySportsCar.com

Eric van de Poele had a big one last night........at Signes, the Bentley left the track (at effectively top speed) and went over the barriers......coming to rest upside down on a retaining wall..........Eric is OK but shaken.....................the car is a wreck.

Andy Wallace will run the other chassis - the race one - this afternoon.

Thank heavens our Belgian star is OK. He's back at his hotel, shaken but all right.

We can now add: "That's probably the highest speed accident that anyone could witness," commented Apex Motorsport Team Owner Richard Lloyd.

The car is reported to have left the track at effectively top speed, hit the barrier (and flattened it) while upside down, and finally ended up upside down on a retaining wall. Thank heavens Bentley went for an LM GTP....Tyre failure was definitely not the cause of the accident.

Eric van de Poele is expected to be driving the race chassis this afternoon....

[Nordic]

Could this prompt the team to pull out of LM this year?

[rdjones]

It better not, what else will us Brits have to cheer on to victory ! ! !

[Muzza]

Hello, rdjones.

First of all, I am glad to hear that Van de Poele - a great guy and one of my favorite drivers - is unhurt.

While recognizing that this one was not - as per the available reports - a "blowover" crash, please refresh my memory: you said that "Porsche, Mercedes and BMW prototypes (...) flipped in a straight line in the past four years". I do not remember such a crash with a BMW. Which shunt are you talking about?

Thanks,

Muzza

[Super Tourer]

Great escape by Eric, I'm pleased to say. I must admit since the Le Man's thing and Michele Alboreto's fatal crash, I've been a bit concerned about these car's, the top speeds are incredibly high and when something goes wrong, the driver is a mere passenger in a 200MPH aircraft, just waiting to hit something.

In Eric's case he was lucky and survived, but it could so easily of being another Alboreto tragedy.

We hear a lot about the FIA being concerned with F1 speeds, but I haven't heard them mention Sportscars, which are faster and under more stress in longer races.

[iucrmh]

The BMW flipped at Petit Le Mans with Bill Auberlan at the wheel (in 2000?). THink it was Petit Le Mans, but it was definitely Bill Auberlan.

[Aysedasi]

Originally posted by Super Tourer
when something goes wrong, the driver is a mere passenger in a 200MPH aircraft, just waiting to hit something.

Sportscars have been travelling at this sort of speed for years. Just ask the likes of Win Percy, Jonathan Palmer and more recently the guys at the wheel of the Mercs, Porsche and BMW rd mentioned. If the accident had been at 150 mph, it probably wouldn't have made all that much difference.

[andlowe]

Good to hear Eric vdP is ok and hope the car makes it too!
If my memory serves me correctly he had a big shunt in a Nissan R391 during practice in '99 which put the car and him out of the race.

[Aysedasi]

Originally posted by andlowe
Good to hear Eric vdP is ok and hope the car makes it too!
If my memory serves me correctly he had a big shunt in a Nissan R391 during practice in '99 which put the car and him out of the race.

Quite true. He re-arranged the car, the barriers and himself at Tertre Rouge.

[FG1]

Thank God Eric is fine. I suppose it must reassure the drivers that accidents at that speed can be walked away from. It must have been quite a ride!

FG

[Muzza]

Thanks, iucrmh,

I had forgotten Auberlen's crash.

Flat-bottommed cars are quite pitch-sensitive.

Muzza

[paulzinho]

Wow, great to hear he's OK, but given the speeds involved, the flip and the fact that he walked away unscathed, would the same have been true for an open top car?

[Super Tourer]

Depends, the head is obviously more exposed in an open car - hence Alboreto's tragic death.

[FastJoel31]

Originally posted by iucrmh
The BMW flipped at Petit Le Mans with Bill Auberlan at the wheel (in 2000?). THink it was Petit Le Mans, but it was definitely Bill Auberlan.

That's right, Auberlen flipped the BMW on the back stretch over the first hump after the Rafanelli Lola took the air off the BMW's spoiler.

[Osella]

From Autosport Online:




Bentley in 200mph test crash

EXP Speed 8 gets airborne in big shunt




Bentley suffered a huge crash on Monday night

Bentley driver Eric van de Poele has survived a huge 200mph accident during a 24-hour endurance test at Paul Ricard in France.

The Belgian's EXP Speed 8 became airborne at the end of the mile-long Mistral Straight on Monday night as the team carried out its preparations for Le Mans. The car slewed sideways, took off and caught the top of the guard rail before coming to rest upside down against a small outside retaining wall.

Van de Poele walked away from the wreck unaided, was not taken to hospital and continued driving the team's second car on Tuesday morning.

A brake problem is believed to be the reason for the accident, which began at the point on the circuit on which the car hit 200mph. A puncture has been ruled out as the cause.

Van de Poele said: "As soon as I hit the brakes the car went to the left onto the kerbs, went sideways and flew."

But he ruled out the accident as one comparable to those which have affected Porsche, Mercedes and BMW prototypes which flipped in a straight line in the past four years.



Great to see that it's business as usual and that Eric is still in one piece!

[Aysedasi]

I'll merge this one, Osella as we've already got one started on Eric's shunt.

[choked_wasp]

Originally posted by FastJoel31


That's right, Auberlen flipped the BMW on the back stretch over the first hump after the Rafanelli Lola took the air off the BMW's spoiler.

Or more appropriately, Auberlen took the air off of his splitter after he folowed the Raffenelli Lola over the crest.

Stupid move on Auberlen's part.

[Muzza]

Hello, choked_wasp,

I do not agree to call Auberlen's move stupid. The crest is about 40% down the main straight in Road Atlanta, leading to the best overtaking spot in the circuit. Auberlen was getting ready to overtake the Lola when the car flipped.

The BMWs had been doing that for a while without major scare. Many cars had their noses off ground that weekend (see pictures at Mulsanne Mike's website and other). Actually they still do that today. If you lean close to the outer fence and take a 1/1000th of second shot of most LMPs there, your pictures are going to show that for fractions of a second the front wheels of some cars do not touch the ground.

And I have seen pictures of other cars - as recent as in 2000 - with all four wheels off ground.

So, one cannot call Auberlen's move stupid - the bloke was trying to overtake someone! So, is overtaking stupid? Where else should he have overtaken the Lola? Drumbeck was not stupid in Le Mans. Dalmas was not stupid in Road Atlanta.

The problem is that flat-bottomed cars are too pitch-sensitive (sorry, I am repeating myself). Aerodinamically these cars are run in the limit (see the excellent Mulsanne's Mike website for details, http://www.mulsannescorner.com). If a certain combination of factors - track profile (such as a crest), wind direction and as you said, following another car's tow - is met, voila, there goes a car airborne.

So, are drivers supposed not to overtake? Or are flat-bottom cars not the way to go? Where does the "stupidity" lay on?

Regards,

Muzza

P.S.: maybe FIA officials would respectively say "no" and "yes" to the two questions in my last paragraph.

[Nivola]

Hey super tourer

Motorsport is dangerous!!!!!
but safer then driveing to you local Shops or Work!

The cars are safer then the 1970 and have the same terminal speed. Accidents happen and we should all be glad that Eric walked away from it. Back then you would be looking back in the past not the future.

Bring On Lemans 24Hour 2002

[Dr. Austin]

There has been some recent discussion on another thread about blowovers. These were some of my thoughts that I wrote a few ago on the subject;



And the 1999 car was stupid team management. in retrospect, it is really easy to see just why the cars were flying. Of course, we all have the benifit of hindsight, but Mercedes is supposed to have the best engineers in the world. Why they couldn't see it coming is a complete mystery. I am convinced that they went into the race knowing exactly what the problem was. They had to have. The car had spent thousands of hours in the wind tunnel and there can be little doubt that Mercedes had all the numbers.

Just go down the road and stick your hand out the window,
fingers together, straight and pointed directly into the oncoming air. Then tilt your hand with the fingers up, exposing the bottom of your hand to the oncoming air. Whoooosh! you're an airplane! Now, i am just a schmuck with a couple of year's experience racing R/C airplanes (200+mph toy airplanes! zowie!), but I can see what was going on with that car.

And remember that porsche had experienced a blowover with it's GT-1 at the Petite, just six months or so before. Porsche continued to do Michelin tire tests with the car, but the Petite was the last time we saw the car in public. Porsche had lost plenty of fast flat bottomed cars in the old day. Donohue and Haywood both backflipped 917's at atlanta. They had two 908/2's blow over on the N.ring's elevation changes during their debut weekend. Porsche lost cars in blowovers at hockenhiem and wolfsburg in testing. They lost a 907lh Daytona 68 to a blowover. There were so many blowovers that porsche was forced to abandon their low-drag edict and actually put some downforce in their cars.

So the answer was there for everyone to see nearly thirty years ago. It is much the same as ignooring the leMans 1955 disaster. The signs were all there for Mercedes to see when the weekend began. They merely chose to risk it. there was no way the Mercedes engineers were oblivious to what was going on. Especially after webber set a new Mulsanne altitude record on race morning. They knew what the problem was and they knew how to fix it. But fixing it meant adding downforce, and too much of that would make them uncompetitive with the lightning quick Toyotas and, for awhille, it proved to be a good compromise. the Mercs were in position to challenge the toyotas, maybe even run them into the ground, but they didn't go far enough with the solution.

So, another good lesson to look to the past to prevent tomorrow's disasters. Too bad about the CLR. It sure was one handsome rollerskate.

[Dr. Austin]

So, having said all of that, here is a little more.

You will notice that the problem of blowovers went virtually away for a little while. The FIA slowed the cars, which helped, but we unknowingly addressed the blowover problem by discovering downforce. It worked real good for cornering speeds, but no one put two and two together and solved it.

But before the cars could get that wickedly fast again, we saw the big tunnel grounds effect Group C cars and their 250mph fireworks. There were no blowover problems with those cars because they literally sucked to the track with thousdands of pounds of aerodynamic pressure. Alot of really intense forces working there.

But when the tunnels were banned and the the flat bottomed cars started going really fast, the problem came back. You have what is essentially a flat bottomed airfoil going faster that what is required to produce more lift than the vehicle's weight. All you have to do it tilt the nose up a little (or in aero terms, change the angle of attack)and it is like a big airliner picking it's nose wheel off the ground and leaping into the air. It's a beautiful thing how the physics of it works when it's an airplane, but it is really ugly in a race car.

So the real answer is that all fast cars have to have full ground effects or we will have to shave any meaningful elevation changes off the circuits. That, or we can keep having these entertaining blowovers until we have one like Karl Laine had. He didn't make it. It was in 1971 and no one really knew why it happened at the time. The difference is that now we know why the cars fly and there can be no excuse for it happenining again. These cars have to have ground effects!

[Dan Friel]

Mecerdes phoned a certain Mclaren engineer over the Le Mans weekend.. and didn't believe what he suggested..

Mr Dumbreck.. exit stage left..

[choked_wasp]

Originally posted by Muzza
Hello, choked_wasp,

I do not agree to call Auberlen's move stupid. The crest is about 40% down the main straight in Road Atlanta, leading to the best overtaking spot in the circuit. Auberlen was getting ready to overtake the Lola when the car flipped.

So, one cannot call Auberlen's move stupid - the bloke was trying to overtake someone! So, is overtaking stupid? Where else should he have overtaken the Lola?

So, are drivers supposed not to overtake? Or are flat-bottom cars not the way to go? Where does the "stupidity" lay on?

Regards,

Muzza

Muzza what I meant was that he should have known better. Cars have been flipping there for years and it is a known fact that when trailing another car the downforce is taken off of the splitter. And if the BMW's had been doing that all day, well i hate to say but it was coming to them.

Are drivers not supposed to overtake???? Don't be ridiculous.

I'll still stand by what I said.

Jeff

[Dr. Austin]

According to Bill Aburlin himself, the car in front of him, which was the Olive Garden Lola, moved abruptly over to pass a slower car and right into Auberlin's path, thus taking away his downforce. So, if this is correct, Auberlin did nothing but drive over the hill and got victimized. I will have to search my video collection, but I seem to remember seeing the in car video from auberlin's car and his claim was verified by it.