MINI Safety Tested at the Nurburgring

Sections: Motorsports | Video Aug 25th, 2006 36 Comments

MINI Video Friday is back in a big way. It took awhile but the craziest MINI crash we’ve ever seen here at MF has finally made it’s way onto YouTube. All you Whiteroofradio listeners may remember me telling Todd about this accident a few months back. It took place at a support race for the 24 hours of the Nurburgring held this past June and the video is taken from the German pre-race coverage. Other than a full roll-cage, this is essentially the same MCS you can buy from a dealer. I won’t give it away, but let’s just say that the MINI held up well.

It’s worth mentioning that the rest of the race was fantastic and is a highly recommended download if you can find it. Mark the 24 Hours of Nurburgring as a must do on the life checklist.

Written By: Gabe

Xan

cooooooooool
XIV

whoa. the cabin held up ridiculously well.
O(=^=)O Capn

Whoa! 8 rolls!

no sound?
STG

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

Daaaaaaammmmmnnnn. Amazing that guy walked away from that.
Liam

Ouch. Thank goodness for the roll cage!
Brian

That was quite a dance.
http://bravo5.org/blog blalor

Yowza!

Man, how would you like to be the guy who nudged him in the first place? I’d feel about this >
http://bravo5.org/blog blalor

Er, that was supposed to say “about this >< big.” Stupid HTML.
http://Motoringfile.com Mark Hendrie

Ouch!
http://mini2.co.za timmee

Stupid HTML
http://www.mini2.info cremi

@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.

LetÃƒâ€šÃ‚Â´s say beneath the very solid MINI he was very lucky too ;)
gmini

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

Though that second in red is likely track crew. doh.
Jack07734

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

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

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

Having rolled in my MINI before – feels like the car rolls just a bit too easily. Safety point. Thank goodness for itÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢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

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

WTB Bittorrent link for the rest of the race.
Bwana Yak

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)

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

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

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

@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..!
http://www.miniyaletown.ca David L.

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)

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

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

“Looks like if he had cranked it hard right coming off the wall, steering into the skid like your ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢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

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

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

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
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