DeltaWing assaulted in Braselton
The Nissan DeltaWing was only 4/10ths of a second slower than the fastest P2 car in sixth place on the timesheet in this afternoon's session. Unfortunately during the session Jeannette was passing a GTC class Porsche when he was struck violently in the left rear wheel.
The massive impact was measured at 7Gs on the team's telemetry system. Video footage from the Nissan-powered Conquest Racing P2 car of Martin Plowman showed the Porsche bouncing off the exit curb at turn 10b and smashing into the Nissan DeltaWing as Jeannette was going by.
The car scraped down the road on its roll hoops before suffering a heavy impact with the wall and landing back on its wheels.
Jeannette was transferred to the track medical center but was soon released with no injuries suffered.
The crew immediately began work on repairing the damage with a target on having the car return to the track tomorrow.
Prior to the impact, the Nissan DeltaWing had set a fastest time of 1 minute, 13.686 seconds for the 2.54 Road Atlanta circuit.
Practice continues tomorrow at 10:15am with an additional session at 3:20pm and a night session from 7:00pm to 9:00pm.
GUNNAR JEANNETTE
“Not the best of practice sessions, unfortunately.
“Everything was going well… I followed a GTC car through [turns] 10a and 10b and I had a run on him exiting the corner before the bridge and pulled almost completely past.
"He cut over to take the apex and made heavy contact with the left-rear of our car that sent me for a bit of a ride.
"Luckily, the guys built a very strong car.
"While the damage looks to be bad in photographs, the car took the impact quite well. We have all the spare parts to fix it and we have an excellent crew that got to work straight away and had the car stripped down remarkably quickly."