To have 14 World Rally Championship wins under one’s belt is not an easy feat, but Walter Rohrl is an amazing individual to have grabbed those wins. And it is those amazing skills that have landed him the position of a senior test driver for Porsche road cars and he is famously known for setting fast laptimes with cars like the Carrera GT around circuits like Nurburgring’s Nordschliefe.
However, a recent outing to the Sachsenring circuit in Germany did not go exactly as planned by Rohrl, especially when the car he was driving was Porsche’s current crown jewel; the 918 Spyder. Fitted with the optional Weissach package which basically is the 918 with all its options extras ticked off, Rohrl had driven the car around the circuit a number of times but somehow on that particular lap, things became a bit out of hand.
While exiting the Sachsen Kurve bend, the hypercar’s tail just went wild and sends him into a slide towards the end of the bend. At first, it looked as if the car was going to hit the barriers head first and a massive crash was just seconds away from happening. But this was Rohrl behind the wheel and even if the crash was unavoidable, he will try to get the car into a position that will minimize the damage.
Keeping the slide as long as possible with the aim of slowing down the car, the 918 finally pointed its nose into the right direction just before having its right side sideswiping the circuit’s barriers. Fortunately Rohrl was unhurt from the incident and his driving did manage to save the car from suffering serious damage. He later told AutoBild that there was possibly something on the surface on the specific corner of the circuit which caused the crash because he had been going through the same corner a number of times at full throttle without any problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5fiJIrBz9M
