Having walked away from one of the highest impact accidents in recent rallying Jack Monkhouse is looking at the positives despite watching his Nissan Silvia burn to the ground.
“It’s a bit of a disappointing end but very thankful that we’re both perfectly fine,” said Jack, who came out of the accident with a stiff neck and a slight burn to his ankle, while co-driver Darren Masters suffered a headache after a suspected minor concussion.
Monkhouse paid tribute to the strength of the Silvia, including the Bond Roll Bars cage and Velo seats. “The cars a car, it’s a financial loss but it did a perfect job and looked after us. It’s amazing to think how strong the car was in the accident, it’s a testament to the Bond cage and the Velo seats.”
“Basically it’s the ‘Brendo Crest’, that’s what we call it. It’s a sixth gear crest, caution nine left over crest jump, you have to stay out wide and turn early to turn before the corner so you don’t hit the bank and there was just a big rock in there we obviously didn’t see.”
“It’s basically hit the rock and jumped and landed on the driver’s door, on it’s side, and hit the first tree head on but on its side, so the passengers headlight is actually up six foot in the tree. And the cars rolled and spun and reversed into Brendo’s tree at a massive rate of knots.”
“We spun and ended up upside down, we got out fairly quickly and it was filling up with fuel. I reached in and turned the battery off and it was up (in flames). There was nothing you could do, there was no point grabbing the extinguishers, it was all over,” said a clearly devastated Monkhouse shortly after the crash during the second Heat of Scouts Rally SA, Monkhouse’s home event.
“It’s unfortunate because we weren’t here to win the rally, just enjoy it. The idea was to do a couple of rallies in the Silvia and then sell it for a house deposit. So that’s not going to happen now. It’s just a monetary thing, a cars a car.”
“We were having such fun and there was nothing to gain by doing anything, and I didn’t think we were doing anything bad, we’d had no moments during the stage, and it’s just unfortunate but very fortunate.”
“It’s a pretty horrible feeling to roll and see the trees as you’re rolling. You just don’t know what’s going to happen. If a tree hits the roof, that’s the worst possible scenario out there, but we avoided that and the car has done a superb job taking the force.”
Rally.com.au made a follow up call to Jack today to see if four days of reflection had changed his attitude towards the accident and the fiery loss of his car.
“I watched our 2012 in-car from that stage last night, just to see if I’d done something different. We lost the in-car footage from this year in the fire, but the accident is still incredibly fresh in my mind. When I watch the footage it did make me stop for a moment and think that I’ll never drive that car again,” Jack said.
“That moment of impact was the most terrifying thing for me, thinking about barreling into those trees. I’ve been around rallying in South Australia for a while, I’ve seen the damage those gum trees can do!”
“The impact into the tree, we basically went from 170km/h to zero in about 10 metres. The car went in backwards and that’s probably the weakest point of the car, its just sheet metal, there’s no engine to stop anything. I reckon we shortened the car by about 2 metres, and yet the strength of the car meant we could still open the doors as soon as it came to a stop.”
“The spare wheel and the rear diff went straight through the fuel tank, that’s what caused the fire. The impact basically just burst the tank open. I tried to set off the fire bomb but it didn’t do a thing, by that stage I knew it was too late to do anything about the fire.”
So what does the future hold for Jack? “Nothing now,” he simply replied. “A few die hard rally guys have started a thing on Facebook, so we’ll see. There are probably a few bits off the car that I could auction off, who wouldn’t want to own a piece of burnt bumper.”
Photo courtesy of Ryan Schembri
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