Home / Motorsport News /
What the #*$!: “Attempted Manslaughter in Megane Trophy”
Dutch racing driver Bas Schothorst is considering to sue a fellow driver for an attempted manslaughter. Schothorst was racing this Saturday in the Eurocup Megane Trophy at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona and was chased and finally t-boned by a teammate of his main rival for the championship he told to newspaper De Telegraaf.
The driver in question, Navajo from Oregon Team 3, was immediately suspended for life after the race by Renault Motorsport for all their brand related classes. The organizers are pushing to get this ban adopted by the FIA.
This is already the second hideous incident committed by a racing driver as we reported about this motorbiking nutcase a month ago.
Share this Post
Tags
Related Posts
About the author
- R3E: BMW 320 Gr 5 Released
- Webber Prepared For Monaco GP
- Assetto Corsa: Interview with Marco Massarutto
- Assetto Corsa: Ferrari 599XX Evo Revealed
- Lotus Confident That Raikkonen Stays
- F1 Owners Vote To Keep Ecclestone
- 2013 F1 Monaco Grand Prix
- 2013 Le Mans 24 Hours Entry List
- Lowe And Hamilton Reunited At Mercedes
- Reiza Racing Club This Week / 21
41 Comments
That’s a dumb thing to do in sim racing, but I never thought anyone would be boneheaded enough to try it in real life racing… let alone an official Renault championship! :thumbsdown:
lol, jeez what a idiot, some1 like that should not be allowed to race again, playing with some1′s life, i’d hate to see him in open wheelers.
wtf is going on in this world!
Absolute insanity. I couldnt belive what i was reading, and seeing the vid, it churned my stomache!
Looks just like a public Megane Trophy race on rFactor, except that here, real life health was on the line. I hope the FIA bans that idiot for life.
I agree, he should get a lifetime ban.
I think there is justice in this, in as much as it’s a swift end to the guy’s career. He’s in a position millions of people would love to be in. You’d think being one of the fortunate few, he’d value it enough not to fuck about.
Is there really any such thing as attempted manslaughter though? I know I’m being pedantic, but if I recall correctly, manslaughter is accidental killing. But we all seem to agree that’s not an accident.
The crowd completely see it coming:
- Go straight to him, come on!
- Yessss!
- Come on!
- Yes he took revenge! Revenge! Revenge!
I guess the other car took him out before or something like that.
Doesn’t make it right though.
FIA should uphold the ban for sure imo.
Either way thats a momment of frustration i belive and again same :poop: on the track like in motorbiking epilespy atetmpt momment few weeks back.Doesnt matter what happend before this,thats not the way to respound.
"Attempted manslaughter" is maybe a bit of an exaggeration. The cars aren’t that fast at that part of the track and what he did really wasn’t that dangerous. Sure, if someone did that to me in a simracing game I’d be mad too, and obviously more so in real life, but come on. Sure, it’s stupid, but in a pretty hilarious way. The crowd seems to agree
If the FIA ban him, I’m sure they’ll have a place for the guy in NASCAR :p
Intentionally ramming someone out of track should get you a ban. As easy as that, it doesn’t matter they don’t go that fast.
Because if you allow it at a certain speed, what about 1kph faster? Or 2? And suddenly someone is on his way to the walls, just fast enough to get injured.
Also, the crowd is definitely saying he got revenge. They were also encouraging him to skip the chicane to catch the other driver (not sure, the audio isn’t that good). I wonder what happened earlier, but it’s no excuse for this kind of behaviour.
That was funny!
Schumaker and Monaco or Schumaker and Melbourne spring to mind
With all respect, but no – this isn’t funny at all.
He is risking another driver’s health on purpose, and that is a kind of behavior which should immediately end your career as a race driver.
I hope this nutcase never gets to drive a racing car, ever again. Even if he was accidentally spun from 1st to last. That’s just unacceptable.
Who gave that guy a drivers license ? (I know we are supossed to talk about racing license but you know what I mean.)
Just to make this clear, I didn’t say it should be allowed just because it’s at low speed. But there’s a difference between bumping someone in the rear at 80km/h and ramming them with 250km/h in a braking zone.
Sure, what this guy did was dumb and illegal and he deserved to be banned for it, but I don’t think he endangered anyone’s life.
And for that reason, in my opinion it’s okay to think this is funny :p
The other driver deserved it he’d already taken out two of the other guys team mates in one foul swoop into turn 1
I am thinking of not-so-few legends of F1 that would be much less known if such life bans would have been issued sparingly.
I have mixed feelings. On one hand, yeah, you behave like an idiot, go home and don’t come back. On the other hand, the vast majority of the penal systems are supposed to work towards rehabilitation, so even if you kill somebody you may be free one day if you show that you have learned from your mistake. Having committed a good part of your life to a driving career and getting banned for life without chance of coming back for crash without much risk or consequences seems a bit disproportionate.
(If we open the attempted manslaughter pandora’s box… soccer is going to be interesting, and much cleaner).
BTW, am I the only one that for a moment though there were radio control cars? They camera with people on the foreground makes them look tiny (watch without sound).
Haha by looking at the video in a small window in combination with the strange sounding engine you might think that indeed
BAN NAVAJO NOOB CRASHER
I was expecting a T-bone at speed, like the crash Adrian Newey became embroiled in when racing Ginetta G50s at Snetterton in 2010. From what I could see in the video above, this looked like little more than a TPAC (as UK police call it). This whole incident seemed pretty tame in terms of danger although wholly reprehensible from a racecraft point of view. Seems Navajo needs to grow up a bit.
I did first think the chasing driver might be a Spaniard given the hot-blooded way in which he scampered across the chicane to catch up… I wasn’t far off, he’s Italian!
Different angles (from TV coverage) of a few incidents including Navajo’s crash: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2Bpoa0x3NE
I can’t believe his actual name is "Old Navajo". What were his parents thinking?
When I saw the topic title I was expecting the ‘victim’ having his car smashed to smithereens. Whilst I don’t condone what Navajo did, it was more like a PIT manoeuvre than a T-Bone. I seems the victim, after spinning, was able to continue, whilst Navajo ended up beached in the gravel.
Would be interesting to see the incidents that this one was supposed to be in retaliation to.
Rob,
Not correct. If you watch the clip Christopher has posted, you’ll see it wasn’t Schothorst that was involved in the Turn 1 incident, but seemingly his team-mate, as you can see that Schothorst has red trim on his rear wing and the car involved at Turn 1 had lime green/yellow trim.
even though its bang on, this clip doesnt tell the full story, this is a revenge attack from bein taken out deliberately into t1 lap 1 by either him or his teammate
His team-mate took out the two Oregon-cars which had qualed 1 and 2, and therefor made sure that Schothorst won the champ. Then Oregon used their influence on the second Oregon-team (or what it is) to try to take out Schothorst, so he didn’t win the champ. after all.
I think both tactics are as bad as they can be, and a series organizer with balls would’ve dq’d both teams from the champs.
Oh well, the best way to do this is like Audi did in DTM 07 at the same track, but Oregon doesn’t control half of the cars.
That’s why there are penalties such as Stop & Go, Drive throughs and even black flags. If the marshals didn’t consider he deserved a penalty for that incident, we can’t afford, nor allow, nor encourage that every race driver out there becomes his own sheriff on-track to bestow justice upon those undeserving.
Also consider, how much strong mental resolve and concentration professional racing demands. In other words, if not banned, I wonder how other drivers concentration would be affected by being on the same track with someone who obviously does not have control over his emotions. Racing demands 100% concentration, and knowing what this clown is capable of, should he have a bad day, can definately make another driver a bit apprehensive, to say the least.
If his emotions can invoke behavior that can cause him to jepordise his own safety, he damn sure won’t care about other’s safety.
now i see how real sim the "rfactor" is.
Well he did slow down a bit before punting him but still wrong.
this is not the world I live in (I hope). the complete story of teams taking each other out is just way beyond belief, what a lowdown league, one should reconsider the whole format if you have "teams" involved who do that kind of stuff. It is not sport by a long shot and should not be sponsored by one of Europe’s largest brands in cars.
Thanks for racing, we hope to never see you again. Ever
that is class A :poop: right there
While I agree, the problem here is, that this was between the Oregon and the VDS team.
While the Oregon drivers (O1 and O2) didn’t do anything wrong, one of the VDS driver (V4) did blatantly take out O1 and O2. And by doing that, ensuring that V3 would win the champ.
Penalizing "V4" would not do anything at all regarding the championship – which Oregon lost to V3, because of V4′s driving.
The only way was to use the "second Oregon team" (SO) to take out V3.
Not saying it was right. But this couldn’t end right, no matter what was happening.
What an idiot.
I don’t care what the preceeding circumstances are…You never do this on track.
He does deserve to be banned…from ALL motorsports.
:whistling: :roflmao:
:O_o: 
:redface: :redface: 
:devilish: :laugh: :coffee: 
:roflmao:
That isn’t a ban. That’s like NASCAR in Europe in a nutshell. He knew exactly how it was gonna turn out and knew he wasn’t going to hurt him in anyway. Give him a quick suspension and send him back out there.
Don;t care what the driver in the blue car did, it doesn’t excuse for awful disgusting and insaintly dangerous driving like the car in the yellow and green car. cutting a corner just to take out another driver.
I finished watching the summary of the world series weekend and what has been posted here isn’t entirely true.
This incident happened in the first of two races. The championship leader (one of the Oregon cars) was stuck in the grid with a broken clutch. Those drivers envolved in the first corner incident didn’t have anything to do with the championship battle (apart from being their teammates). Later in the race happened the incident seen in this video.
In the end (after the second race) it was the Oregon driver (the one that didn’t start the first race) that won the championship.
So, this manouver is completly inexcusable by any means!
Hope I was clear enough for everyone understand what really happened.
what server was this? :O_o:
:thumbsdown:
Here is a link to the guys info page on the Renault site.
http://www.worldseriesbyrenault.fr/cz/teams_drivers/drivers/Pages/NAVAJO.aspx
My favourite driver, Senna, tried to "kill" Martin Brundle several times. Tried Prost once.
Gilles, my second favourite driver has a list too.
Simoncelli, my favourite…
The list goes on and on.