One corner; that’s how long these Nissan Micras lasted on the circuit before caroming all over the place.
The beauty of motorsport is its unforeseen nature, although crashing right in the first turn of the race can be frustrating for the participants.
The event took place during Nissan’s brilliant Canadian Micra Cup racing series, at Calabogie Motorsports Park, where factory-prepped, race-superminis shine on the track, competing for the fun of it. Usually, nobody expects too much drama from a cluster of identically small vehicles racing each other, but this time, right after the rolling start, everything turned to chaos due to a contact at the front of the pack.
Brian Makse, at the wheel of Guelph & Waterloo Nissan car No. 13, recorded everything from his dash-cam; not only that, but the man also managed to get away from the pile-up without a scratch to his car, although it wasn’t easy:
“I see cars barrel rolling down the right side of the track and at this point, I’m overwhelmed and preparing for impact. I’m on the brake just hoping I can clear some of these cars. In the back of my mind I’m thinking “Ah, man, I do not need to crash a brand new race car today!” It’s one of those situations where it’s impossible to consciously think through a solution. My years of concentrating on processing visual inputs is undoubtedly what got me through the crash. Every car I avoided was still moving at the time, and my brake and steering inputs were purely instinctive”, said Makse.
Fortunately, no driver was injured during the occurrence, thanks to the vehicles’ FIA safety compliance.