Jeff Clinton of Archangel killed

[Liz]

From www.dailysportscar.com

Very Bad News From Homestead
Friday 1 March


Greg Aleck passes on the terrible news that, all unofficial at the moment, a driver of the #21 Archangel Lola was killed at Homestead this afternoon. Jeff Tillman and Jeff Clinton were entered in this car.

It has been confirmed - it was Jeff Clinton in the car.

The Lola apparently spun approaching Turn 1, went backwards, lifted off and landed upside down in the gravel trap.

Sincere condolences to Michael Johnson, the whole Archangel team, and of course to Jeff Clinton's family and friends.

[Aysedasi]

Terrible news. I extend my own condolences as well.

[FastJoel31]

Bad news.

[Speedworx]

Jeff Clinton, 38, lost control and spun his SRPII class Lola-Nissan B2K/40 open-top prototype in Turn One on the Florida oval, which is being used in conjunction with the road course for the Grand-Am event. The car went backwards into the outside wall, before it became airborn and barrel-rolled into a gravel trap

Amatuer racer Clinton, a father of two from St.Louis, began his motorsport career in 1986. In 2000 he won the SCCA Sports 2000 championship, before he moved up into Grand-Am with Archangel last year, finishing second in class at Phoenix.

source: www.autosport.com

[Liz]

Ovals will kill you. Very, very sad.

[Speedworx]

I have not quite worked out whether he was on the oval or the road course. Which ever way it is, its very sad.

[EERO]

This is very sad news. It has to cast a pall over the whole weekend, Liz.

Of course it made it into the Boston Globe as it was racing news that involved a fatality.

[Liz]

We got a picture of the car coming back on the breakdown truck, and one of the mechanics overcome with emotion....

He went off at a corner called the NASCAR/IRL turn, which led me to believe it was on the oval, but I am not familiar with the Homestead road track.

Incidentally, the AP article refers to Grand Am as "A Lower Level Racing Series".

[Speedworx]

Race Track Fatality

MIAMI, Fla. (March 01, 2002) -- The Rolex Sports Car Series held practice sessions at Homestead-Miami Speedway today for Saturday's Nextel 250. A fatality occurred during the second practice session, and track officials issued the following statement:

"Grand American Road Racing driver Jeff Clinton, age 38 from St. Louis, Mo., suffered fatal injuries in a single-car accident during Friday's practice at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The SportsRacing Prototype II car lost control entering turn one of the road course resulting in the fatal accident. There will be a further investigation by the Grand American Road Racing Association and Miami-Dade County officials."

Clinton was a driver in the #21 Budweiser/GreyEagle.com Nissan-powered Lola of Archangel Motorsport Services. The team officially withdrew its second entry, the #22 711.tv Nissan Lola, from the race.

Qualifying for the Nextel 250 was canceled, and the field will be gridded by points, in accordance with the Grand American Rulebook.

Taken from http://www.grand-am.com/news2.cfm?id=43

[Speedworx]

So it was on the road course as I thought it was.

I remember one of the Zakspeed Porsche cars flipping/rolling over during the 1998 FIA GT meeting. Seems cars flip over easily at Homestead. Maybe they should try and do something to stop it.

[Lee Janotta]

I'd say not racing at Homested, but that's just me.

Stupid International Speedway Corp.

[jimclark]

So much conjecture regarding the fault yet no one knows the facts nor seems to want to make the effort to find them.

Where on the track did it occur? So much conjecture but no one took the time to go to the site and look at the map. So much for blaming the roval. http://www.grand-am.com/tracks/hms_nu.html

Why is everyone so eager to find fault? Racing is dangerous, allways has been, and to be what it should be, always will. High speeds and sudden stops do not agree with the human body. No one should get hurt? Easily done....we can have driverless cars that are radio controlled. Is that what we want?

Stop with the liability **** and get on with it or find something more tame.....

[Morris 1100]

Like the ESPN page that said they didn't know if he was wearing a helmet restraint.
Like it would have helped.

[Dr. Austin]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Liz

"Ovals will kill you."


An absolute total misrepresentation of the facts.

The guy is killed on a road course, in the infield, but all we get from our "press official" is "ovals will kill you."

The accident happened on the road course's first turn, not the oval. Any excuse to take a cheap shot at oval racing, right?

[The Beer Baron]

Originally posted by Liz
Ovals will kill you. Very, very sad.

And Road Courses, very sad indeed

[Dr. Austin]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by


"So much conjecture regarding the fault yet no one knows the facts nor seems to want to make the effort to find them."

why bother when oval racing makes such a convieniant target for a road racing death?




"Racing is dangerous, always has been, and to be what it should be, always will."

Amen, brother. No one ever wants to see someone get hurt, but racing is THE extreme sport. In spite of our best efforts, people get hurt and worse. We still love the sport too much to stop, no matter how much it hurts.



"No one should get hurt? Easily done....we can have driverless cars that are radio controlled. Is that what we want?"

Even then, someone could electrocute themselves with the battery charger. You can drown in a bath tub. You can choke to death on your own saliva.

Everything can kill you. Something definately will. Most likely before you are ready.

Don't live and you will never have to worry about dying.



"Stop with the liability ****"

If we continue to apportion blame everytime someone drives off the road all by themselves and gets killed, the lawyers will just eat us alive.


"and get on with it or find something more tame....."

Or lame.

[Liz]

Okay, so I was mistaken about where he was killed. He's not any less dead, is he?

It's a natural human desire to find some reason why a person was killed -- those of us who are not from a culture where we simply shrug and say "Things Happen" and move on, anyway. Not only to try to put a name to what killed someone, but to try to find a way to fix what it was so the following guys will be more safe.

Leaving aside the distinctly snide tone taken by both Jimclark and Dr. Austin, the improvements in safety which we have today came from people who constantly analyzed accidents and fatalities to see if something could have been done -- not for the purpose of filing a lawsuit, or jeering at the track, or morbid curiosity, but for the purpose of perhaps saving the next life or ameliorating the injuries of the next guy. Everyone knows that racing is dangerous. But if the correct answer to a fatality is to shrug your shoulders and move on, why not go back to the days when they all raced in jeans and short sleeved shirts and nobody wore helmets? Why bother with safety at all? Safety is for sissies, right? What's a few dead or maimed drivers in the scheme of things? There are always plenty more where those came from, and all we can do is put a car number on our jackets and wave a flag, and then shrug it off and move on.

That is all sarcasm, by the way -- my personal viewpoint is that although we cannot make racing 100% safe, we have a duty to the pilots to make it as safe as we can. If there's a fault in the track, or in the car, or in the driving style, or in the way all these things interact, they should be fixed. And you don't prevent the next death by jeering at the people who want to ask questions about what caused that fatality.

Of course I am assuming that everyone agrees that fatalities should be prevented if possible. No matter what some announcers seem to think, very few people I know go to the track hoping to see someone killed.

[Dr. Austin]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Liz

" but to try to find a way to fix what it was so the following guys will be more safe."

You do everything posssible to insure a safe race, but there is always going to be an element of risk, unless you want to slow the cars to 12mph or take the drivers out. The only thing we want to see less than a fatality is the total emasculation of the sport.

According to people who were there,(grisly details unnecessary)he would have been alot better off in a coupe. As long as they are going to insist that the cars are roadsters, this sort of accident is going to be possible. Next year's GrandAm cars will be coupes. The ACO is going to hang with the ugly, dangerous roadsters. Two guys in two years is not a good average. Put the roofs back on if you want safer cars.


"leaving aside the distinctly snide tone taken by both Jimclark and Dr. Austin,"

Oh, no. I was snide because you saw the death of a human being as an opportunity to get across your distain for oval racing. It was a really cheap and dispicable trick. I expect more from our "press officer."

You could have had a couple of allies on this had you not resorted to using this as another way of expressing your hatred for the IRL. It doesn't belong on the sportscar forum and it certainly doesn't belong on a thread about a fatality. Instead of respecting the man, you chose to attack oval racing, which had nothing to do with it.

Jim is more than capable of defending his argument, and I will let him decide if you are worthy of his response.




"the improvements in safety which we have today came from people who constantly analyzed accidents and fatalities to see if something could have been done -- not for the purpose of filing a lawsuit, or jeering at the track..."

Who was the first to say "ovals will kill you?" You were the very first to jeer the track. You know, we could agree on the safety issue, but you can't resist a cheap shot. You cloak yourself in the safety argument, then you try to blame the oval.

[Dr. Austin]

duplicate post, sorry

[The Beer Baron]

Originally posted by Dr. Austin
duplicate post, sorry

Austin is man eneough to admit his failings, unlike some



Now, i have a full container of C4, stand back , mmm smells like hotdogs

[Liz]

I wasn't jeering at ovals and I said nothing about the IRL.

I thought he was killed on the oval, and I consider ovals dangerous.

I have nothing to say about the IRL, now or either for good or for ill. For me they have ceased to exist.

As for putting tops on cars (to which I have no objection), I have noted that the vast majority of racers killed in the last year have been in NASCAR, which not only have tops but are the moral equivalent of armored tanks. What are they doing about safety? Very little.

[jimclark]

not to belabor this point...having addressed it before...but I never intend to offend anyone by my posting. Admittedly, I have strong opinions about the sport that I am passionate about (yeah, even NASCAR...well...almost) so I might appear to be a bit brash. Unintentional, I guarantee.
Might I add, however, I have a very strong feeling, (enough so, that I'd be quite willing to wager a substantial amount) even without real statsistics to go by, just my years of following racing,that ovals prolly have a lower ratio of fatalities per manmile traveled than road racing. Again no basis of fact, just gut instinct.

Hopin' to see and meet ya's at Sebring.

[cybersdorf]

Just a late update on this sad story - someone posted a news report about the result of the unfortunate Mr. Clinton's authopsy on the DSC forum; it says that his head was "severed at the base of the skull". Apparently, the roll over structure collapsed - or, "broke away" - on impact.

Which isn't what it should do. Are roll hoops crash tested at all these days?

[Muzza]

Hello, cybersdorf,

Indeed, the day after Jeff Clinton's accident there were already reports that the roll bar collapsed and that Clinton's head had been severed in the accident.

I share your awe about the roll bar failure. And what makes it even more concerning is the fact that actually the car did NOT crash roll bar-first against the wall (as it happened in Greg Moore's accident in Fontana in 1999).

According to what I gather - and I kindly ask the other members to complete or correct this - Clinton's Lola completely missed the braking point for the entry of the road track built inside the Homestead oval. Instead of slowing down and turning left, the car just went straight.
Severe braking failure, throttle locked in full - these are only hypothesis and nobody is sure of what happened, but a driver error is quite unlikely.

The car spun and crashed back first into the outer wall of Homestead oval turn one. The impact was very strong and threw the Lola on the air, flipping and somersaulting it. The car ended upside down in the gravel trap between the oval and the road track.

The roll bar collapsed during one of the saults and sadly Clinton was fatally injured.

The accident reminded me of the still recent death of the lovely Michele Alboreto. Alboreto's shunt was also a high speed barrel roll where the driver was killed when the roll bar collapsed. I remember that at the time several "experts" were fast to criticize Audi for fitting the R8 sportscars with single-seater styled roll bars, which have been branded unsafe by many.

Sportscars fans know that one of the main technical differences between the AMLS and the Grand Am rules is the fact that the latter demands "double hoop" roll bars, while the first accepts single-seater-like roll bars. Well, the race in Homestead was a Grand Am event, and Clinton's Lola WAS fitted with a double-hoop.

So there are not one, but TWO factors that make me worry:

1.) roll cage was NOT hit in the initial impact, where most of the crash energy is either dissipated or absorbed by the car (and the driver). It crashed during one of the saults or upon landing (like Pedro Paulo Diniz's accident in the 1999 German GP);

2.) it was a DOUBLE HOOP-style roll cage (supposed to be safer).

Although it is obviously impossible to make racing cars completely safe, the fact that we have had two sportscar deaths related to roll bar collapse in the last twelve months is quite concerning. Roll bars are safety devices and must be designed to maintain physical integrity even when submitted to extreme efforts.

An important aspect that remains to be verified is whether the roll bar of Alboreto's and Clinton's cars suffered multiple or single impacts. Structural elements able to resist to a single impact CAN fail progressively or catastrophycally when submitted to repeated shocks. This CAN occur even if the subsequent impacts are of lesser strenght than the first. Composite materials CAN be succeptible to these sort of failure - and usually do NOT fail progressively in these events.

For these reasons, I suggest that the roll bar tests should not only analyse its shock resistance and absorption characteristics under a single impact, but rather MULTIPLE ones.

Finally, I also would like to remember the horrific accident that Philipe Streiff suffered in Jacarepagua in 1989, when the roll bar of his AGS-Ford collapsed during a multiple barrel roll in the Suspiro turn. Sadly Streiff is today paralysed chest-down in consequence of this accident. The AGS roll bar was actually a sub-structure attached to the car tub, and was completely separated from the car upon impact.

Muzza

[Fab]

Just a question to specialists (I'm not) of safety questions : Thierry Boutsen still suffer of his wreck in the GT1 in 1999... he said last year taht he couldn't drive a normal car more than 45'...

The GT1 was a top-roofed car... it didn't help in this case ? Or, at the contrary, was he saved by his car (in other terms, couldn't it be worse in a open car) ?

Those questions of safety come back often in the debates... and not only for pilots : for marshalls (lot of them killed or suffered severe injuries at Le mans), and sometime in the public...

That why we are farer and farer from the track : for us, and also for having less obstacles when the cars go out...

Sorry that my english is not subtile enough to express accurate meanings, but I'm sure you'll understand...