If Honda’s Marc Marquez is the king of saving near crashes, perhaps Moto3 rider Jakub Kornfeil deserves honorable mention.
Last week at Le Mans, Kornfeil actually jumped a downed motorcycle and landed in the gravel without ever going down. Looks like this kid has a motocross background … stays relaxed and under control. The Instagram video below is proof. Pretty crazy stuff!
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My balls hurt just watching that!
Were it me, all details would have been published the next day in the newspaper…………in the orbituaries. For sure !
oh hell yes, ‘nicely done. Training helps but you can’t teach instincts. My guess would be he didn’t start on street bikes. The jump was cool but landing on racing slicks in gravel at that likely speed and not dropping it is quite a hat trick.
When in doubt.. Throttle out!
Nice! I want that on a bumper sticker!
Great save. Skills and presence of mind.
Thanks MotorcycleDaily! I’d seen the event on the morning news, but no where nearly as clear, nor in slo-mo. Certainly this rider’s ‘save’ is one for the ages.
great save, but hit the thing he was trying to avoid due to target fixation…
Yeah, sure. Quite the armchair MotoGP racer, aren’t you?
Looks to me like decided that he was to the outside of the trajectory of the bike and rider sliding on the ground so he didn’t try to turn inside of the wreckage. You can see a moment of panic when he “jinks” as the Leopard rider goes down. After that he was out of choices.
Kornfeil turned wide attempting to avoid the downed bike immediately IFO Kornfeil. Unfortunately centrifugal force pushed the downed sliding bike outward such that it stayed even on Kornfeil’s new wider line. His only options were to crash or attempt to fly over it, which the latter he successfully managed to do.
IMO your claim is wrong.
Further, IMO one can not suggest Kornfeil could have predicted the downed bike would slide outward to block his new wider line, because that was impossible to predict. There is similar or greater chance the downed bike might have dug in to the ground and flipped several times on its original line, in which case Kornfeil’s choice would have worked out perfectly and he would have sailed by untouched.
Couple of additional things to note;
* he kept his feet on the pegs
* he didn’t grab the brake
* he kept the throttle open (see ‘rooster tail’ when he finally comes down to terra firma),
he’s gone against every instinct that would occur to mere mortals.
Phenomenal.
+1
+1
those three things are what got me through High School!
Dumb luck. Sorry, it had to be said.
Right, anybody can do that — if they have the talent, skill, presence of mind, courage, and confidence. Failing that, it’s a career ending calamity.
The more skillful you are, the luckier you become.
Well put bravo
Dig.
If he just did one thing right, I would agree… but he did several things just right, and kept it on two wheels.
Not luck in this case… that was experience from riding in the dirt (which was where he had to pull off that save!)
Agree.. MX Experience.
No, sorry. It happened too fast. He was just along for the ride. Back in the 70s, I was riding a GL1000 behind a dump truck, and suddenly was confronted by a cinder block that the truck had driven over. Caught me completely off guard … and launched me, just like this poor chap, high into the air. I landed on two wheels and soldiered on. I’d have liked to taken credit, but like this guy, I was just along for the wild ride.
Some guys find traction in the most unusual circumstances. He’d probably make a good trials rider if he ever goes that direction.
It’s not polite to use your buddy for traction.
That is amazeballs!
The only thing better would be if the crashed rider slid back to his bike as it kicked off the tire wall and back in the race…
Amazing presence of mind and reactive skills. I would have been eating gravel.
Coolest save ever.
KEE-rap! R U kidding me? He saved that? Wow, one of the all time best saves, period! What do those bikes have, 3″ of travel? He grabs 3 feet of air, lands in gravel on an angle, and goes on his merry way. Brava!
Awesome!!!!! Surprised it hooked up like it did, looked like when blowing up a berm.
I remember reading how Joel Robert rode over someones bike who had fallen in front of him in mx, and he said the bike made a good ramp. That was over 50 years ago. But with clip ons and landing on gravel! good thing he pinned it.
Sometimes hitting the brakes is the worst thing to do, probably would have just washed him out.. staying on the gas kept him upright and “in control”!