CLOSE CALL ON MOTORHEAD SUNDAY

It's Motorhead Sunday..........One of the perks of my job is getting to work in areas not accessible to the general public. It says "HAZARD" right on my official credential which allows me to go into hazardous zones to get my photos. They don't give such credentials to chimps......those of us who have them are keenly aware of the possibilities working only feet from cars moving at 200mph.
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I've worked here since 1966 and STILL, EVERY TIME I enter the hazardous zone I have an escape plan. I tend to work the inside of curves where the chance for a hit is reduced. I am hyper aware of everything going on around me....and when things happen, and they do, they happen at light speed.
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I recall a head on shot at Turn 7 a few years ago.....I'm focused on a car coming directly at me into a hard right turn in front of me. I watched, at 600mm, the car's left front strut collapse. It tore the entire wheel assembly off and the wheel and tire came directly toward me, through the air, and flew into a tree behind me about 6 feet over my head.
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The car collapsed as well, did a 360° into the gravel trap right in front of me. I swung my 600mm on what I could see of the body and machine gunned a few shots fully expecting to get nothing. WRONG!  I got the most beautiful in focus shot of gravel flying all over the place with two red tail lights glowing from inside the mass of it all. Then I thought about ducking down behind the Jersey Barrier.
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Look at the scene above...see the Throttlestop sign (a local car storage/museum place).  If you look carefully you can see where the crashed car went a bit left (in the foreground) over corrected in the rumble strip, went through the grass and hit the Jersey Barrier right in front of that sign.  One minute before this crash I was standing exactly there by the sign only 2 feet from the track's racing surface. I decided to move to the location from which I made this shot to get a different vantage point....and just as I got there, the car crashed.  Would have been a cool shot had I remained there....but I surely would have dropped down behind the barrier right after I machine gunned the car coming at me (my Nikon Z9 will shoot 20fps full RAW files).  It would have been too close to be in focus at 600mm anyway so why not hit the dirt?
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Just an example of how things can go wrong fast at a race track and how much fun it is to be a small part of it.  BTW....the driver was uninjured and that's always a good thing. Had he been severley injured, you would never have seen this image.
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Best viewed in Large......I'm also going to try to locate a shot of the car before it crashed and I'll add it later as an Extra.  Come back if you want to see it.
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EXTRA...........the Chevy Camaro that crashed.  Little did he know that 2 laps later this beauty would be kissing the wall.