How Do We Think This Van Managed To Get Upside-Down In The Goodwood Media Parking Lot?

So far, Goodwood has been a blast and I feel like I’ve seen so many fascinating things. “Fascinating,” by the way, is a wonderfully vague word, and I think the boundaries of that word are vast enough to include such things as varied as the design and engineering glorious madness of the Mercedes-Benz Blue Wonder or the Lexus LFA successor or, yes, even the sight of a Renault Trafic van completely upside-down in the media parking area. It’s that last one I want to talk about now.

This is something we saw yesterday as we were returning to our trusty and deeply homely SsangYong Rodius, which was parked on a grassy hillside in the large field designated for media parking, a convenient walk of an (estimated) billionty kilometers from the main show.

We made our way though the parked cars, many of which were interesting and required stopping at and scrutinizing, like, say, this MGA:

What’s going on with that extra round intake at the front there? Must be something fun under that hood that enjoys gulping air.

Anyway, when we finally made it back to where the Rodius was parked – it’s always easy to find because you just need to listen for the sound of every car around it getting devalued and the sobbing of any children who may have happened to look directly at it – and noticed something mildly unusual:

A Land Rover Defender emergency vehicle! How cool! We certainly don’t have those in the States!

Oh, wait, there’s something else:

Now, I’m not familiar with how everything is done here in the UK, but I’m fairly certain that’s not how you park a van.

Yes, there was a Renault Trafic violating the old CB-era rule of keeping the shiny side up, yet otherwise looking in pretty good shape. All we really know is that this seems to be a 2023 Renault Trafic diesel and no one was hurt. I’m glad to hear no one was hurt for multiple reasons, but at this moment because then I can write about it with less guilt.

What fascinates me here is how this happened? There’s no room to drive crazy fast in this area, so I don’t think this was because of reckless, high-speed driving. There’s no huge skid marks or long gouges in the turf, either.

This part of the field was a pretty noticeable hill, and I suspect that had to be a factor here, though I’m not entirely clear about how. I can imagine doing just the right wrong kind of turn at just the wrong angle and giving it just the wrong amount of brake, throttle, or both, and the tall, top-heavy van just sort of pitching over?

But I’m still not clear at all how one does a low-speed full-van-inversion like this, especially one that seems to have caused pretty minimal damage to the van.

What I’m saying is I’m impressed, and I’d be delighted to hear your speculations about how one accomplishes turning a Trafic into a ɔᴉɟɐɹʇ.