The FWD Honda Civic crash which occurred towards the end of the Pikes Peak hillclimb saw Will Au-Yeung miraculously walk away relatively unscathed. The car on the other hand was not so lucky.
Pikes Peak isn’t a hillclimb event to be taken lightly, the sub 20 km route tippy-toes along the southern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in North America. There are expectedly many sheer drops flanking some of the 156 corners of the notorious event which climbs 1 440 metres from start to finish.
Coupling the pending danger with dense fog, enough to make tourists shy away from traversing the roads at anything more than a crawl, makes it an even more difficult course to conquer. Fortunately, contenders in the event are built differently and try their hand at it anyways. Considering the founding few races actually included portions of unpaved roads, some may even consider it to be a little bit easier than before but with some seriously quick machines attempting their best time, it is also a recipe for disaster.
This is what Tsukuba FF Record Holder Will Au-Yeung found out during the event that had his purpose built Vibrant Performance Time Attack Honda Civic take to the sandy bits and then proceed to barrel roll in a theatrical video embedded below. Not only do cameras mounted inside and outside the FWD Honda Civic allow us to see that the car was fortunate to come to a rest on the road and not pirouette off of the adjacent embankment which presumably has a sharp gradient but also that Au-Yeung managed to unbuckle himself and walk away from the wreckage.
The ACUITY Instruments team, who shared the video on YouTube share their gratitude to Sparco for their safety gear and the staff for their swift response to the scene of the accident, one that we think could have ended much worse. Read more about the Volkswagen ID R Pikes Peak record which still stands today.
