When your view suddenly gets obscured by your own hood at speed on a race track, and you lose control of the car, oh hon. Prepare thyself. Clench thy buttocks. This one may smart a bit.
Shortly before Long Beach’s Porschepocalypse, John Edwards lost a right front wheel in the No. 100 GTLM-class BMW Team RLL M6. Losing a wheel isn’t always a simple loss of control you can safely giggle over. In this case, the broken wheel popped up and knocked the hood loose, and the hood eventually ripped itself off as Edwards’ car went into a spin.
You can see the exterior view of Edwards’ big ride in this highlight video.
I can’t blame Edwards for walking away from this one with a distinct air of “nope, I’m done.” When you go for a ride like that, everyone’s deeply grateful that you are, in fact, walking away from it.
The No. 100 was toast, and sadly retired from the race. As several other racers in the WeatherTech Sports Car Championship found out tonight, nothing’s worse than making it most of the way only to have a problem in the last ten minutes.