This is a bit heartbreaking. If you suffer from heart problems, are pregnant, or have a weak stomach, by all means look away.
This Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa driver had a bit of an off at Laguna Seca this weekend and put one of the most beautiful cars of all time all the way through the kitty litter and into the tires. It largely looks like body damage, but it’s a chilling sight nonetheless.
I love to see vintage cars driven hard, wheel to wheel; the drivers getting a little competitive. Unfortunately, this is the price we sometimes have to pay for that passion. I don’t know what happened at this race, and I don’t say any of this to place blame on this driver. Aggressive contact and carelessness are terribly rare at vintage events, and I’m assuming that this wasn’t the result of either. I hope he wasn’t injured. It looks like a glancing blow on the tires, so hopefully he’s alright.
I’m looking for a silver lining here; I guess this is good news for restorers.
You can click on any of these photos for larger versions—but I wouldn’t recommend it. Octane had an excellent photographer in the right place at the right time and has the complete sequence of photos that led us here.
Octane has been really on top of Monterey coverage this weekend and I commend them for it. They’re really taking care of the vintage racing junkies that are trapped at home in front of our computers waiting desperately for information from the Historics.
Update: an incredibly comprehensive set of photos of this crash is available at AutoBlog. They report that the driver, David Love, is a long-time Monterey Historics competitor who suffered a brake failure in the corkscrew. David was dazed, but unhurt.
0 replies on “Testa Rossa Mayhem at Monterey”
Ouch, that hurts. But ya know, that car was built to race. I’d much rather see it die or get injured on a track, rather than sit in someone’s collection.
In all honesty, when it was built, the designers and engineers probably didn’t think of it as a rare car. They were probably quite at home with the fact that it would be destroyed one day, so seeing it raced and wrecked is almost natural.
I couldn’t agree more John. I only hope that these types of incidents don’t dissuade the owners of these rare machines from giving these cars a solid workout, and sharing that with the public.
I’d be surprised if Maranello isn’t already planning the restoration work.
I bet the onboard footage from his little Go Pro camera mounted to the roll bar is worth watching! Maybe it will hit YouTube one day. I’ve seen cars much worse off than that be repaired with no problem…merely a flesh wound! 🙂
[…] went out as he rounded Laguna Seca during last year’s Monterey Historics. The car quickly met the wall and suffered an ugly black scar down her passenger […]
[…] the weekend’s successes coincided with the passing of founding CSRG member David Love. His 1957 Ferrari Testa Rossa has been a mainstay of west coast events for decades. The Charity Challenge was no exception. David […]