Two Tesla Model 3s entered in this year’s Pikes Peak International Hill Climb have crashed off the course. Neither driver was injured.
Both cars were products of Tesla tuner Unplugged Performance of Hawthorne, California, located just across the alley from Tesla and SpaceX.
Rookie Pikes Peak Hill Climber Josh Allen, who once worked at AC Propulsion, the company that built the precursor to the original Tesla Roadster, and who has been a track-day racer for many years, went off the course past the picnic grounds on a left-hander. He managed to avoid contact with any trees but it's not clear if he was not injured. Some reports said no, others said he had broken bones. Allen had just set a lap record for Teslas weeks before at Buttonwillow race track in California.
This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
Veteran racer Randy Pobst was the other Tesla pilot to go off.
“In racing, the highs are high, and the lows are low,” said Pobst, on his YouTube video channel. “The car was faultless yesterday, I don’t think I’ve ever driven a better-handling car. The trick here is the car had been so great yesterday, fantastic, perfect, but this was the first run on the notoriously bumpy top section (of Pikes Peak), I’ve driven it in a street car, I drove it the last two years (in the race) … friends who ran yesterday told me they were getting airborne in a couple places … I really don’t have any excuses…”
Pobst was not driving at max speed at the time of the crash, he said.
“I ran a pace where I felt like I could keep it in control.”
Pobst had hit 113 mph on the straight approaching the turn, got on the brakes and was going about 68 mph when the car hit the frost heave and went off course. Luckily that section had runoff room, albeit over a drainage ditch.
“I’m not real sure what happened,” Pobst concluded in the video.
This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
The impact of the crash popped off the Unplugged Performance aerodynamic bodywork, including the big rear wing, and bent the aluminum frame of the car. The Unplugged team is working hard to get the car in shape to run this Sunday, Aug. 30.
“We would like to run on Sunday and we are trying our best to find a way to repair the car,” said Unplugged’s founder, Ben Schaffer, when we reached him at Pikes Peak. “The damage is extremely severe. At the moment we are trying to find the best way to rapidly get A LOT of replacement parts. That in itself is daunting given the extent of damage. Simultaneously, we need to find a way to straighten the frame fast as a precursor to even getting new front and rear subframe.”
In the meantime, practice and qualifying continue at The Race to the Clouds.
This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io
"peak" - Google News
August 28, 2020 at 02:34AM
https://ift.tt/2EoZkCM
Video: Two Teslas Crash at Pikes Peak, Drivers OK - Autoweek
"peak" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2KZvTqs
https://ift.tt/2Ywz40B
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Video: Two Teslas Crash at Pikes Peak, Drivers OK - Autoweek"
Post a Comment