Satoshi Motoyama

The DeltaWing car I mentioned here last year made it to Le Mans last weekend. It didn’t go too smoothly. About 6 hours into the race, a Toyota TS030 shunted it into a guardrail.

One of the interesting traditions of Le Mans is that a driver can’t get any assistance with the car while it is on the track. They have to make it back to the pits on their own before they can get any help. As a result of this, there’ve been lots of heroic scenes over the years of drivers trying to get their car back on the course so they can limp around to the pits.

Satoshi Motoyama, the driver of the DeltaWing at the time of the crash, gave it a good try. He plugged away at it for close to 2 hours before finally giving up.

Here’s a great video showing some of his efforts.