Oakley Sunglasses Founder in huge Ferrari Crash

[JohnHKart]

Check this thread out on Ferrari Chat about this crash.....

http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=17972

Pretty scary and just plain dumb!!!

John

[Clown]

1 down. Many thousands of those pieces of sheet to go :p

[RacinM3]

Those familiar with that tunnel know that it's a relatively severe slightly downhill left hander with some camber. It's not just a straight tunnel. It would be about a max 110mph corner through that tunnel in my race car, much less 140 on street tires. He didn't have a chance in hell of coming out the other side unscathed. What's weird is he prolly went through it all the time.

[Sean O'Gorman]

Heh, I wonder what the breakdown of forum members is in that forum under the following categories:

1) actual Ferrari owners
2) pretend Ferrari owners (as in they pretend to own a Ferrari, not that they own an MR2 or Fiero ;) )
3) non-Ferrari owners

[pinniped]

Anyone who used to commute that route a few months ago was familiar with the site of my Prelude doing about 90 through there...never tried 110... :eek:

[Winston Wolfe]

Anyone who used to commute that route a few months ago was familiar with the site of my Prelude doing about 90 through there...never tried 110... :eek:

My home is less than 2 miles from that tunnel, and I have been through it almost every work day of my life for the past 5 years.... M3 is correct, it is a slight downhill, sightly decreasing radius left hander, that leads under an overpass for the North bound lanes for the 241 toll road. (For those who have been on this road, you know that it is a 'super speedway' and if you are going less than 75 MPH pretty much any time of day, you are getting passed, or tailgated pretty badly).
Anyway, last week, I noticed that "wreck evidence", and you could tell that someone lost it coming out of, or going through the tunnel. It took down a freeway sized light pole, and then caught fire on the hillisde just after the exit of the tunnel. To hear that the driver has survived is somewhat surprising, especially when you see that a pretty large spot of dry gas was also burned up as well.
I have been through there in various '98-'04 Honda Accord (Coupes and Sedans) on street tires from 65-95 MPH on a pretty regular basis. Also, in an '04 Acura TL with "A-spec" lowering kit & 19in wheels at 105 MPH, and in a friends '00 NSX at 100mph, as well as my own '88 M3 at 100 MPH. To think that this guy who crashed after trying it at 140 MPH.... BTW: who actually came up with that speed anyway ? Based on the recounting of the incident, it doesn't sound like this co-founder of Oakley is in any condition to be bragging to his buddies about how fast he was going! I have seen this \ his car many times along Portola Parkway, which is the road that leads up to the rather ominous looking Oakley HQ.... It is a damn shame that he crashed, and he appears badly hurt, and will have a long recovery time ahead of him.
Going through that corner now will make me think twice about going at it close to 100 MPH again....