A little over a month after Stephane Ortelli’s horrific crash at Monza another sports car has been destroyed in an accident where the car flipped.
Ex-F1 driver Marc Gene flipped his Peugeot 908 HDi in a practice session for the Le Mans 24 Hours race next week. He suffered a hairline fracture of his toe.
It’s not yet known what caused the crash but it’s clear from the video that the car had flipped into the air in a manner similar to Ortelli’s crash at Monza. The large undersides of sports cars makes this a hazard.
After the crash Gene said:
The truth is that I didn’t think I would survive the accident. This has been, without a doubt, the biggest crash of my career and it was a miracle that I walked away.
Cars flipping has been a problem at Le Mans before. Most famously Mercedes had to withdraw its CLK-GTRs from the 1999 Le Mans 24 Hours after similar accidents befell Mark Webber and Peter Dumbreck.
It first happened to Webber in qualifying at Le Mans and then the same thing happened again in warm up:
And this is Dumbreck’s crash which occured during the race, forcing Mercedes to withdraw. Both drivers were unhurt:
