Crashing At The Fastest Part Of The Nordschleife Doesn't Look Like A Whole Lot Of Fun

An incident with a backmarker during the Nurburgring 24 Hours led to Audi driver Dries Vanthoor suffering this scary, high-speed accident at the fastest part of the circuit

Dan Thorn

13 May 2018

Vanthoor was threading his No.8 Audi R8 LMS through some very slow-moving traffic at the end of the 1.3-mile Dottinger Hohe straight when he lightly tagged another car and ran onto the grass. That’s enough of a brown trouser moment right there, but as a result he developed a puncture, causing him to spin and slam into the wall backwards. A less than ideal situation, to put it mildly.

The driver was OK but the car certainly wasn’t as the whole rear end was torn apart, unsurprisingly putting the crew out of the race.

Now, there’s no such thing as a nice place to crash in motorsport, but if there was, it certainly wouldn’t be at the fastest part of one of the most fearsome race tracks in the whole world.