What it's like to hit a wall at 180 kmph?

In race 2 of the Yokohama ADVAN V8 Utes at the Clipsal 500 Adelaide, the opening round of the championship, Grant Johnson's Grove Fruit Juice Holden clipped the Armco fencing on entry to the infamous Turn 8 which speared the Holden into the outside wall at full speed. Johnson went into the turn at 180km an hour pushing the concrete wall back a metre. Here's how Grant describes the accident.

I definitely felt like a passenger in my own car, I had enough time to say to myself that this was going to hurt... I wasn't wrong.

The biggest feeling was getting all the air sucked out of you after the first initial hit.

Like a huge bear hug or tackle, instant no air, then the car hit the wall a couple of times, hit the initial wall and then hit two or three times after that, coz it broke the front suspension the car was driving over the suspension and was bouncing down the road.

I closed my eyes every time I hit the wall, coz of the pain. In the first impact the seat moved onto the roll cage and that's why it broke my rib. Every time it hit the wall again it was jarring that rib.

I saw the A pillar, the front of the door bend in, and saw all the glass fragments flying through the air, the cracks in the windscreen going in slow motion through the glass. It was pretty cool actually. But that's the only part that was.

All I was worried about was trying to stay away from the other utes that were coming following at high speed. I didn't want to clean up someone else.

I don't think I had any steering. When I stopped and all the cars went past and it seemed to go quiet even though the engine was revving flat out. The accelerator was stuck on the floor, on full throttle. Luckily the gearbox must have jumped out of gear or something was broken in the drivetrain.

The brake calliper broke off the rear and was three hundred metres down the road. Thank goodness something broke or nothing would have stopped me from hurtling into the other cars and causing a crash.

Dorian, the timer for the car which is usually bolted to the floor, ripped out and was sitting in its box 350 m from the corner

The rib still hurts and I'm having trouble sleeping

We had a test day at Wakefield recently and getting in the car again I felt just like Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights when i first pulled out, I was going so slow but felt fast, I couldn't shake the feeling that it just wasn't right, I might as well have been physically having to push my foot down with my hands, and was saying to the crew gee the cars loud its this and its that, they all just laughed at me. After a couple of laps, I was back to myself and getting on the pace. I'm looking forward to Winton this weekend.