Fatality at Lime Rock

[Frank Beck]

Very tragic.
Lee Duran crashed his pre war MG at the Lime Rock Historics yesterday.

Prayers and condolences to his family and friends.

[Biancaneve]

... Rip ...

[Chuck Miller]

Very sad........ RIP

Thanks for posting Frank..........

[Jim Garfield]

Yeah, it kind of took the wind out of everyone's sails at the track yesterday. My son and I left early while the track was closed for the State Police accident investigation. Very sad, but on the other hand he was 74 and doing what he loved, there are worse ways to go. Chuck's photo shows what did him in, they towed the car past us on the way to the impound garage, the roll bar was straight and intact, but very gouged on top.

[Frank Beck]

I can't imagine "airing out" one of those.

Dangerous back in their day and no amount of safety gear today will change that.

[MalteseFalcon]

Rest in Peace, condolences to his Family.

[t6dpilot]

Very sad and condolences to the family.

Frank, nail... on... head. Having raced a roll bar-less Bugatti Type 51, I can tell you that after my last event at Road America, I came home thinking about entering corner 5 at over 100mph. No protection. Get a wheel off, brake cable breaks (yes, cable brakes...), anything goes wrong, I am going to be in a world of hurt. So, retired that car from competitive racing for the very reason that this thread was started.

Again, condolences to his family.

[Richardnew]

This is a significant problem in vintage racing. We know what is safe and we know what is historically correct. The two don't converge very often. I don't want to see an MG-TC with a roll cage. Then again I don't want people who drive and MG to die. Back in the day it was very common for people to die racing. Dan Gurney feels he retired too young but he simply couldn't take going to funerals every week.

I did an article for Vintage Motorsport magazine a couple of years back on seat safety. We know what constitutes a safe seat. Indy Car, F1 and NASCAR all use state of the art technology when designing a seat. These high tech seats won't even fit in your average vintage car. We won't even talk about how one might look in a Mclaren M8A.

This is a problem that's not going to go away. There are no easy answers here.

Richard Newton

[Macroni]

very sad.... agree w/ Jim.

[Strato 102]

A friend of mine lives in the same neighborhood in Lyme, Ct. He would say from time to time, "I'll have to take you by to see Lee, he's the nicest guy and has really cool projects going all the time". One of the good guys. A loss.