Anybody on this forum going to the Jaguar Dealers sponsored track day, this Friday, East of Indio, Calif.?

 

From that view, looks likes a very safe track, with a LOT of run off!

 

Depends on what you call safe. Most tracks are safe if the driver is safe. FWIW, this was a little over a year ago:

Chelsea Vu killed in Chuckwalla Valley Raceway crash | The Desert Sun | desertsun.com

Actually, tracks with closer barriers are more safe as the car usually doesn't have much distance to travel to hit them (so the impact is usually more planned from a track safety perspective). In the more open tracks, sometimes you get cars losing it in places you never thought one could and hit things you never thought were possible.

 

True. The beauty of Chuckwalla however is that there is nothing to hit. Except for on the front straightway, separating the Track from Pit Road, there are no barricades anywhere around the rest of the track. If you lose control and run off the track, you are then sliding on a flat and endless wash of hard desert sand.

The one and only place the incident in the linked article could have occurred, would be if the driver misjudged the entrance to Pit Road and hit the one wall on the entire track, right at the point where the wall begins.

 

The driver hit a barrier which was protecting a flag station. Stuff happens which was the point. Just because there are (apparently) wide open areas, that doesn't mean you relax your posture at the track. Treat every track the same.