Video: Watch this 19-year-old F2 racer dramatically save his own bacon in the wet

Filed under: Motorsports, Performance, Etc., Europe, Safety, Videos

Dino Zamparelli has mad skills behind the wheel of his FIA Formula 2 machine, and he managed to show just how good - or how crazy he is - on Belgium's legendary Spa circuit.

As the track filled with rain mist from cars in front him, Zamparelli, 19, sped toward a group of cars clustered together at 150 mph. The racer narrowly misses a slowing car that appears at the last second from out of the mist, deftly swerves out of the way on to the grass, passes two more and then cleanly brings his car under control back on the slick track.

Amazing.

Of course, not all of the Youtube specators were as impressed, pointing out that Zamparelli may have also missed a yellow flag, telling everyone to slow down. Zamparelli defends himself in the comment thread on YouTube:

"Actually just to clarify - we had already passed the incident that caused the? yellow flags and for the? safety car boards to come out. If you look at the car ahead, he was actually pulling away from me up eau rouge, because we were trying to catch up to the safety car. Someone then slowed down on the straight line after eau rouge and that caused everyone to bunch up...so my reactions were not to a yellow flag situation, but to another incident which had just occurred"

However, the one comment seemed to sum up the whole breathtaking experience:

"Almost died, gained 3 or? 4 places in the race. Standard."

Scroll down to check out the near crash from Zamparelli's point of view.

Continue reading Watch this 19-year-old F2 racer dramatically save his own bacon in the wet

Watch this 19-year-old F2 racer dramatically save his own bacon in the wet originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 05 Jul 2012 14:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Video: Racer crosses infield to intentionally wreck another competitor, fight ensues

Filed under: Etc., Safety, Videos

If you've never been to a local circle track race, you're missing what could very well be the cheapest and most thrilling form of entertainment on the planet. The cars aren't particularly fast nor the drivers necessarily the world's most skilled, but what the machinery and manpower lack in finesse, they more than make up for in heart. With real wheel-to-wheel action combined with local egos larger than the tracks themselves, something is terribly wrong if the night doesn't end in hand-to-hand combat. It's the hockey of motorsports.

Typically, the fisticuffs are confined to the pits and paddock, safe from prying eyes of the vast majority of the crowd. But spectators in Jeffersonville, Indiana recently got a show when one racer tore off across the infield of the Sportsdome Speedway to blindside another competitor at race speed. Fortunately, "race speed" in this instance is somewhere in the neighborhood of 45 mph and it doesn't appear anyone was hurt from the actual crash.

But that's not where the blood-boiling ended: both machines came to a stop, both drivers jumped from their cockpits and began beating the life out of each other before other racers and officials came to intervene. You can't make this stuff up. Check out the grainy video for yourself.

Continue reading Racer crosses infield to intentionally wreck another competitor, fight ensues

Racer crosses infield to intentionally wreck another competitor, fight ensues originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 11 Jun 2012 19:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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