Nissan Takes Out Kangaroo at Bathurst 1000

The poor kangaroo is about the only thing Nissan vehicles took out this weekend at the classic V8 Supercars event held in Australia.  The return of Nissan to the series has not been nearly as successful as original hopes had been with both two car teams struggling to break into the top ten, let alone podium or winning positions.

So as the season winds down and the V8 Supercars attacked their most famous track for 1000 kilometers and 161 laps, its only fitting that their season will be best known for an incident that occured early in the race and had no impact on the eventual outcome.

Twenty laps into the event the #7 Altima of David Russell hit a track hopping kangaroo.  The impact occured at 160 kph.  The driver had zero chance of avoiding the hit according to reports and no video has been released of the impact.  The kangaroo reportedly survived the impact and hopped away.  An image of the results can be seen here as well as video of a kangaroo on the track during the race...just no video of the accident itself.

This is not the first time this has happened at the Bathurst 1000 as back in 2004 a near identical incident took place in nearly the same spot.  Drivers were told before the event that fences surrounding the track had been raised and culling efforts in the local area had taken place to help prevent such impacts.  Guess that needs a bit more work...