For those of you that have never been to El Mirage, it's super wide and 5 miles long and you would think it's impossible to hit anything.
The rules made this accident possible.
The lake bed is 5 miles long, the racing area is shorter. The rest of the lake bed is open to the public.
Going past the end of the course or "out the back door" is very dangerous to the public and several racers have done that.
SCTA responded with severe penalties for doing that. It was the correct thing to do. Going straight is burned in as a no-no.
The far left side of the race course is the return road. Race vehicles have to be towed or trailered.
If you sit near the area of the accident to watch the races you see everybody slows down and make a 180 arc so the vehicle is pointing down the return road. There are always a couple of vehicles preparing to tow. Some make that turn pretty fast and braking hard while turning on slippery dirt is much harder than doing it in a straight line.
Once you start that arc everything in front of you is race vehicles, tow vehicles, and a little further a solid line of spectator cars.
This might be the first one, it won't be the last.
