How to feel instantly inferior in your Boxster

[Perfectlap]

well if it makes you feel better I would feel much much safer in our Boxsters than an all carbon fiber tub on the open road. One Rennlister died a year ago in the CGT hitting the wall at Fontana. I'm not sure what the investigation by Porsche yielded, probably not very much because the families of deceased are now or were suing the last time I checked. What struck me at the time of the tragedy was that the CGT was designed to be an LMP racer, not a road car yet the drivers had no chance in a pretty straight forward high speed crash. I'm not a racing car designer but I think I've seen a dozen carbon fiber racing cars desintegrate and yet the driver just walked out with only a scratch.
I never really heard a detailed description of why the car wasn't redesigned once the LMP rules changed, instead Porsche just scrapped the whole racing project and put the cars on the road for $500K. And of course they recently pulled the plug on the Carrera GT altogether.

[ebarker9]

Originally Posted by Perfectlap

well if it makes you feel better I would feel much much safer in our Boxsters than an all carbon fiber tub on the open road. One Rennlister died a year ago in the CGT hitting the wall at Fontana. I'm not sure what the investigation by Porsche yielded, probably not very much because the families of deceased are now or were suing the last time I checked. What struck me at the time of the tragedy was that the CGT was designed to be an LMP racer, not a road car yet the drivers had no chance in a pretty straight forward high speed crash. I'm not a racing car designer but I think I've seen a dozen carbon fiber racing cars desintegrate and yet the driver just walked out with only a scratch.

That crash was at well over 100mph (some reports have it as high as 150mph) into a concrete retaining wall. The shots that I saw of the car showed that it held together extremely well. I can't imagine the result being much different in any other road car. With a full-on race harness and HANS setup, perhaps things would have turned out differently, but even in racing you rarely see a direct impact at speeds that high.