SpeedVegas, site of deadly crash, featured in new TV series
The $30 million SpeedVegas track south of Las Vegas, including a leader board that shows the lap time and ranking of motorists who drive the 1.5-mile course, is featured prominently in a new television series that debuts Sunday.
“Top Gear America,” a weekly hourlong program that reviews cars and trucks and takes viewers on road adventures with three colorful hosts, airs at 8 p.m. on BBC America.
In the first episode, hosts William Fichtner, Antron Brown and Tom Ford go off-roading in Baja California, review the Ford 150 Raptor and introduce their first celebrity driver on the SpeedVegas track that features 12 turns and a half-mile straightaway.
But the show makes no reference to the controversies that have stuck to SpeedVegas since Feb. 12 when Canadian tourist Craig Sherwood and track driving instructor Gil Ben-Kely died in the fiery crash of a Lamborghini Aventador.
Representatives of the show did not return phone calls or emails inquiring about whether the accident and a subsequent investigation and lawsuit would be referenced in future show episodes.
Auto industry experts interviewed by the Review-Journal in February have said fostering competition by having a leader board in the SpeedVegas track viewing area could foster an unsafe cultural environment.
Ado De Micheli, a co-founder of Dream Racing, a local SpeedVegas competitor, said overemphasizing speed can be dangerous.
“To be fast, to achieve the fastest lap time, you simply need to drive well,” he said in February. “This is our first and last goal, and it is not determined or defined by the top speed achieved at the end of the straight, which speed might push inexperienced drivers to brake past the ideal braking point,” De Micheli said.
In the first episode, Ford explains that if drivers complete laps in a minute and a half they would average 60 mph, but that a professional driving the course in an Acura NSX “could do better.”
During the lap, Ford said, “Our purpose-built track twists and turns for one and a half miles of high-speed, gut-wrenching, tire-shredding happiness.” The professional driver, referred to in the show as “The Stig,” finished the course in 1:07:78, or an average speed of about 73 mph.
“Top Gear” will feature celebrity drivers over the course of the series with former Los Angeles Angels and Texas Rangers pitcher C.J. Wilson completing the course in 1:24:25, or just over 60 mph.
Photos on SpeedVegas’ Instagram account showed customers posing with the car they drove and the highest speed they reached, from 121 to 150 mph.
In future weeks, actors Ryan Eggold and Haley Joel Osment and comedian Russell Peters will be guest drivers. The entire series was taped earlier this year.
SpeedVegas critics have also called the design of the track — referred to in the TV series as the “Top Gear Track” — flawed with two hard turns at the end of a half-mile straightaway and a lack of barriers and “run-off zones” around the periphery.
SpeedVegas operators say the track is safe and made no major modifications to it when it reopened 12 days after the accident.
An investigation by Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration is expected to be completed in August.
Ben-Kely’s estate and heirs filed a lawsuit against the track, its owners, its designer and the car manufacturer in June.
Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.
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