archive.tbk-light.com

August 2008, Bernese Driver Ernst Zahnd sustained fatal injuries during the second practice for the Massongex-Vérossaz hillclimb in Switzerland. After about 40 seconds, on a straight part of the course, Zahnd lost control of his Group E1 Renault Clio, left the road and flipped his car. In spite of immediate medical assistance, Zahnd was declared dead on the spot. The event was cancelled immediately thereafter by the organisators.

http://www.motorsportmemorial.org/focus ... =ct&n=7949
http://www.vs.ch/Public/doc_detail.asp? ... ntID=20519

Fatal? Why? The car is not badly wrecked. People mostly escape without injuries from even more wrecked cars. What a bad luck!

From the looks of it, the front of the car is the only part of the car that's damaged. No telling how fast he was going when he hit. The fact that the front seems to be the only part of the car that is damaged leads me to beleive it was a head on impact, maybe 80-90MPH seeing how long that stretch of road is.

I guess he could have suffered a basilar(sp?) skull fracture in the crash considering it was a frontal impact.

Even for a frontal impact it doesn't look too bad. Those Clios are well prepared from the factory (guessing it's a Cup car)
Is HANS mandatory in the Swiss Championship?
But still, you can't compare a hillclimb with circuit racing, if the car digged into the soft grass you can't imagine what forces a put to the head - even with HANS.

just as a sidenote, I've seen ~30-40% of the Classic Endurance Racing drivers at the Nurburgring driving without HANS

I had decided not to go to this hillclimb event and I am happy I did not go. Very sad accident, and now it put even more stress and crisis over the "motorsport" in Switzerland. It is already quite fragile and now for sure a lot of people will make all what they can to stop ANY kind of race in Switzerland.

Don't forget he was 46 years old so obviously not as fit as a 25 year old man. I think also about a skull fracture but we will know more in few days I think.