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Sad day in Vintage Racing.


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I'm not sure I think this is very sad at all, race cars being raced will always be in danger of crashing and the people that are in to this have wallets to cover repairs to such high-end machinery as this. As long as the drivers are ok, I'm ok with it. I see that the SL is a former wrecked car that has been built up back in the day so in a way this is just history repeating itself.

The Porter Special is an oddball, created by Californian Chuck Porter from a wrecked and burned 300SL Gullwing. Formed to look like a Silver Arrow, Porter named it the SLS -- with the second S standing for “scrap.” It raced throughout the mid- to late 1950s with a variety engines, including, eventually, Buick and Chevy V8s, under its long hood. It is said to be worth $5.9 million; safe to say it’s well worth restoring.

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A similar circumstance of a Jaguar slowing on the track and cutting in front of a hobby racer in an Austin-Healy causing the Healey to swerve in front of a Mercedes 300 SLS was what ending up killing the Mercedes driver and 85 spectators at the 1955 LeMans 24hours, June 11, 1955.

Both this Jag and Merc were rare historic cars and as far as the F1 driver in the Mercedes, never heard of him.

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Some how I seriously doubt an ' amateur ' is the correct terms for either driver. Even though I've never heard of either driver .

But my guts says a true 'amateur' would not be behind the wheel of a multi million dollar historic race car at one of these events..

Either way both will be repaired and race again in the not so distance future . Sounds like both drivers walked away with nothing hurt but pride

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Eh, not like they aren't repairable though, now if they had been buried in a collapsed structure after said structure burned with a lot of heat.......

Or if they were in a museum that just so happened to develop a sink hole in the floor.......

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I used to historic race my ,now sold, 1966 GT 350. At Laguna Seca (I am not going to call it mazda raceway) I was following a fellow GT 350 and his axle came out of the housing with the tire still on, it went over my car and impacted itself into a real nice 289 AC Cobra. Things break,crashes happen. Just part of the sport. I asked a owner of a very expensive 250 Ferrari Lusso,why are you racing a million dollar car? And he said even wrecked, its still a million dollar car so why not have some fun with it. Whole different world. People ask me if my wife gets mad at a 150 dollar kit,and I said no.Because I used to spend around 2 thou just to race my GT 350 for a weekend. Like I said another world.

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