The Nissan DeltaWing's testing session at Road Atlanta for the 15th Annual Petit Le Mans event was brought to an abrupt halt following a major collision with a GTC-class Porsche.
The crash occurred on the exit of turn 10b when the Porsche bounced off the curb and collided heavily with the DeltaWing's left-back wheel. The impact measured a whopping 7G on Nissan's telemetry system, sending the Porsche into a spin and the DeltaWing over onto its roll bar; whereupon it skidded along the track before hitting the barrier and flipping back onto its wheels.
The driver, Gunnar Jeanette, was taken immediately to the track medical centre, but was released soon afterwards having suffered no injuries. "The most important thing is that Gunnar is OK after a very nasty accident," commented Dan Brown at Nissan. "We'd rather not do it again but we've certainly shown the concept works and it is very safe."
Prior to the accident, the DeltaWing was sitting in sixth place on the grid, just four tenths of a second behind the fastest P2 car. The Nissan team had also set the fastest lap time of 1 minute, 13.686 seconds for the 4.1-kilometre Road Atlanta circuit.
Following the crash, the DeltaWing crew immediately started work to repair the car, with Jeanette commenting that the car was stripped down "remarkably quickly".
Incredibly, the car went on to finish the 1,609-kilometre race in fifth place overall - despite starting at the back of the 42-car strong grid.