{"id":43799,"date":"2017-09-14T11:31:57","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T18:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=43799"},"modified":"2017-09-14T11:31:57","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T18:31:57","slug":"hellcat-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/hellcat-crash\/","title":{"rendered":"Hellcat Crash"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hellcat
Image courtesy of Los Angeles Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two friends died in a crash last Sunday, Sept. 10, while driving a Dodge Challenger Hellcat on the runway of Central Colorado Regional Airport in Buena Vista. Roger Lichtenberger, 76, and Lynd Fitzgerald, 71, were legally “speed-testing” the 707 HP ’16 Hellcat at over 100 miles per hour when they reached the end of the mile-and-a-half runway, continued for 314 feet, then flew over a ravine and flipped completely around over a second ravine before coming to rest 650 feet from the asphalt’s end, with both men inside dead.<\/p>\n

Police arrived quickly at the scene, but it was already too late to help the two speed enthusiasts.<\/p>\n

“They were just test-driving this car. They went a little too fast. I don’t want to surmise. … They probably got to the end of the runway and, at that speed, didn’t realize they were there so fast. And they lost control. It was just too high a speed and they got to the end of the runway,” said Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze.<\/p>\n

It’s unusual for a tragedy like this to occur in circumstances where all legalities have been observed. Based on the skid marks found at the scene, it’s likely that Fitzgerald, the driver, just waited a second too long before hitting the brakes.<\/p>\n

We here at RacingJunk send our condolences to the friends and relatives of the two men, and hope this atypical crash remains a rare example of its type.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two friends died in a crash last Sunday, Sept. 10, while driving a Dodge Challenger Hellcat on the runway of Central Colorado Regional Airport in Buena Vista.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":43800,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3470],"tags":[4849,412,5482,152,3011,41,2914],"class_list":["post-43799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-avery-finnivan","tag-crash","tag-deaths","tag-dodge","tag-dodge-challenger-hellcat","tag-news","tag-rip"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/la-fi-hy-dodge-hellcat-20150410.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-bor","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43801,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43799\/revisions\/43801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}