MINI Safety Tested at the Nurburgring

Xan Aug 25th, 2006 Link

cooooooooool

XIV Aug 25th, 2006 Link

whoa. the cabin held up ridiculously well.

O(=^=)O Capn Aug 25th, 2006 Link

Whoa! 8 rolls!

no sound?

STG Aug 25th, 2006 Link

Was that the driver they showed out of the car at the very end of the clip? If he was up and walking on the track, I have a new respect for the integrity of the cage!

Nozz Aug 25th, 2006 Link

Daaaaaaammmmmnnnn. Amazing that guy walked away from that.

Liam Aug 25th, 2006 Link

Ouch. Thank goodness for the roll cage!

Brian Aug 25th, 2006 Link

That was quite a dance.

blalor Aug 25th, 2006 Link

Yowza!

Man, how would you like to be the guy who nudged him in the first place? I’d feel about this >

blalor Aug 25th, 2006 Link

Er, that was supposed to say “about this >< big.” Stupid HTML.

Mark Hendrie Aug 25th, 2006 Link

Ouch!

timmee Aug 25th, 2006 Link

Stupid HTML

cremi Aug 25th, 2006 Link

@STG: yes, the person shown at the end of the clip was the driver (Tommy Winkelhock, brother(?) of former F1-Pilot Manfred Winkelhock).
Hi was just slightly injured (broken wishbone).

The crash happend at the “Schwedenkreuz”-section on the Nordschleife, a very fast left hander with a little bump in it which makes the car very light and difficult to handle.

Let´s say beneath the very solid MINI he was very lucky too ;)

gmini Aug 25th, 2006 Link

two people at the end clip, from what I see.

gmini Aug 25th, 2006 Link

Though that second in red is likely track crew. doh.

Jack07734 Aug 25th, 2006 Link

WOW. Thanks for posting this one.

Is there anyway to download the video? I would like to show this one to all of those that tell me the MINI is not safe.

Thanks,
Jack

gmini Aug 25th, 2006 Link

Having rolled in my MINI before - feels like the car rolls just a bit too easily. Safety point. Thank goodness for it’s structure.

Aqualung Aug 25th, 2006 Link

and, he landed right side up! pretty wild…..

Rocco Rocket Aug 25th, 2006 Link

Having rolled in my MINI before - feels like the car rolls just a bit too easily. Safety point. Thank goodness for it’s structure.

Any car will roll if you try hard enough.

I like that the brake light comes on mid-air. Air brakes for “08″?

alpinamike Aug 25th, 2006 Link

You must have been holding on to this for over a week, i saw this a while back, he lived… thank you
youtube!

Avitor Aug 25th, 2006 Link

WTB Bittorrent link for the rest of the race.

Bwana Yak Aug 25th, 2006 Link

Here’s a link to the video if you want to share it with non-believers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSxfP1-8c-M

Mark (Ohio) Aug 25th, 2006 Link

Does anyone know if he also had a full racing harness?

Chad Aug 25th, 2006 Link

So how much does this roll cage thing cost? Or does it mess up your headroom too much?

Bwana Yak Aug 25th, 2006 Link

Anyone know how fast he was going when he hit the wall? The film clip is slowed down so you can’t tell how fast he’s really going until you start counting revolutions in the air.

I’m glad he was able to walk away from it. Kudos to MINI safety engineering!!!

By the way, now we know that the rear hatch acts as a roll arrestor in cases like this. Just something to file away for future reference.

GadgetGav Aug 25th, 2006 Link

@Mark, he must have had a full harness as he had a HANS device on and they only work with a full harness (at the moment - I believe they’re working on other models).

And what’s with the ‘other than a full roll cage’..? Let’s not kid ourselves here. The roll cage, the harness and the HANS are probably what saved this guy’s life. We don’t have any of those things, so it’s not really a demonstration of MINI’s saftey. They are safe cars, don’t get me wrong, but you have to look at gmini’s experience to get a demonstration of that, not this video…

Amazing how many spins it does between bounces once it comes back onto the track..!

David L. Aug 25th, 2006 Link

With a roll cage you will need to wear a helmut every time you drive. on or off the track. If not you could hit your head on the cage.

Mark (Texas) Aug 25th, 2006 Link

Looks like if he had cranked it hard right coming off the wall, steering into the skid like your ’suposed to, instead of away from it, he might just have held on to it.

David Aug 25th, 2006 Link

The video doesn’t show in the page, so I tried youtube.com, but it looks like it is down for the moment…

Aussie Banter MkII - Page 818 - MINI2 Aug 26th, 2006 Link

[...] Dunno if you’ve seen THIS or not, but it’s a perfect example of how a roll cage works! Poor MINI. ‘If you walk up behind a vicious dog … if you talk to the dog on the way up, it won’t be caught by surprise. And it won’t do something unpredictable.’ Sir Jackie Stewart [...]

Theo Aug 26th, 2006 Link

“Looks like if he had cranked it hard right coming off the wall, steering into the skid like your ’suposed to, instead of away from it, he might just have held on to it.”

This technique has a limited effect with racing tires on grass. I learned this in 1993.

Bwana Yak Aug 26th, 2006 Link

Actually, it looks like he was trying to turn into the skid, until the leading wheel popped off. He must have been fighting against a lot of torque until that wheel gave way…

Michael Aug 26th, 2006 Link

This beats Top Gear’s Guiness world record of 6 flips (I think). Someone better email them… :p

KangaMINI Banga-Blogga » Blog Archive » links for 2006-08-26 Aug 28th, 2006 Link

[...] MINI Safety Tested at the Nurburgring Safety tested and rolled like a joint. Crazy crash video of a MINI (tags: MINI safety crash youtube Nurburgring) [...]

roofmaker Aug 29th, 2006 Link

that driver was simply lucky
look closely to the spins - the roof doesnt even touch the ground
if after the big spin that car landed on its roof the driver would have been dead

whiteroofradio.com » Woofcast #90 Sep 5th, 2006 Link

[...] Be sure to check out this MINI rolling at the ‘Ring and the 2007 in motion video over at Motoringfile. More from the week, we discussed competition to the MINI. [...]

MotoringFile » Archive » MINI Challenge at the Nurburgring Jun 12th, 2007 Link

[...] a warm-up act for the 24hrs of Nurburgring. And while this year’s race didn’t offer any death defying crashes (thankfully) it did have great racing. We at MotoringFile would like to congradulate Michael [...]