Here's An LMP1 Car Back-Flipping Just After Eau Rouge
The Eau Rouge/Raidillon complex at Spa-Francorchamps (Eau Rouge is the kink at the bottom, Raidillon is the steep uphill bit) is one of motorsport’s scariest corner pairings. If something goes wrong here, it’s probably going to be a big one, and it’s definitely not somewhere you’d want to have a Mercedes CLR-style back-flip.
That’s what happened to Matevos Isaakyan at last weekend’s 6 Hours of Spa though - after straying into the runoff area, the front-end of his SMP Racing BR1 lifted, triggering a terrifying airborne moment. TV cameras hmissed the incident, but this scary fan-shot footage has since emerged on YouTube.
Fortunately, Isaakyan escaped injury. The race was won by Fernando Alonso meanwhile, on his World Endurance Championship debut.
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
How can tv cameras miss something at eau rouge ? 🤔
Wait Alonso won…. Oh it’s WEC. Not F1.
Nearly 20 years of progress and they still haven’t figured it out…
In a kind of sort, yes.
Before they did frontflips, now it’s backflip time !
Best marketing ever
I see they’ve taken a lesson from AMG from about 20 years ago
Nothing about Fittipaldi’s crash on the same spot a week ago? This may be more spectacular but Fittipaldi’s really shows the progress in racecar safety (though he got badly injured)
Dont forget one of the fords did the same thing, not sure how or why but if the engine was in the front i dont think the driver wouldve been so lucky
Flux capacitor didnt engage fully..
Webber can do this better
time for another LMP1 tribute car.
Alonso wins on his debut, goddamn that guy is good.
And this also goes to show how safe these cars are now. Must have been a pretty bumpy landing.
Not denying his talent as be is no doubt one of the greatest racing drivers ever . This wasn’t really his most impressive performance. He was the slowest of the 4 toyota drivers in qualy but inherited pole due to sister toyota being disqualified (for a non performance affecting issue ) plus the sister toyota not only got disqualified but had to start 1 lap down due to the penalty. The sister #7 car still cane back on the lead lap and then was helped by the safety car allowing it to catch right up to the #8 towards the end both of them were running together with conway in the #7 having clearly better pace than alonso in the #8 but toyota froze the order in the #8’s favour . After the race conway said the #7 was faster than the #8 especially when it was hooked up but team orders prevented them from overtaking the sister car . Plus the non hybrid lmp1s were so slow they were not even a factor .
He did the Webber flip!!!!