I saw both Austin races and I also had the closest to personal harm event I've seen in 40 years of motorsport, including competing, though ignoring falling over and breaking my leg at Dony. On the Friday during the testing one of the sports cars lost it at the fastest part of the circuit, right in front of my wife and I. It hit the tyre wall at I estimate 140mph and bit and worse, tyres went everywhere. My wife and I were the 2 people in the place where the crap erupted and I ended up, by no more than instinct smashing my wife out of the way who went flying and then, god knows why, trying to swat the closest tyre out of the way. This was maybe 3 seconds end to end. My wife had a panic attack, I had to deal with that and people came running over to help us. It was nasty and luckily they had changes the fencing since I was last there, a 2nd layer of fence was in place now and ironically I had been moaning about it, saying it meant you couldn't get as close. If that fence had not been there we could have both been injured as 3 tyres from the tyre wall and some body work landed in that section.
I will upload a picture I took when I have time, but I was worried for a split second the car was coming over that wall. I have said many times on this forum that a big one is going to happen there one day. This one wasn't it thankfully, but it is only a matter of time. Some of those cars are really going, circa 170mph and the opportunity for a big one, with the total lack of fencing is apparent.
