I have repaired three bodywork parts for this R8 LMP GT3 race car, which is supported by local race shop AR Motorsports. Being a race car, it is almost guaranteed that contact will be made between two or more cars at some point in its career. In order to keep this page from becoming too large, I've highlighted only the repairs to the passenger door below.

This was my first time seeing the damage to the door. The outer skin was being pushed out of place by the interior cross frame that was itself pushed out of alignment. There was an actual hole also at the top edge of the door. I carefully peeled away the decorative vinyl to see the extent of the damage underneath.

These are the splits in the door, fully revealed after removing the decorative vinyl. The carbon was torn completely apart.

I cleaned up the edges of the splits to get everything to lie back where it should go, as best as possible.

From the inside of the door, you can see that part of the cross frame has become separated from the door skin, including tearing some of the carbon along with it. Before doing any other repairs, I used structural adhesive for composites to bond the cross frame back in place.

After the structural adhesive had cured, I went about repairing the splits in the carbon. I added three layers of carbon to the inside of the door, to every crack I could access in this manner. I laid more carbon over the cross frame as well, as additional insurance that it would not come off again.

A large portion of the cracks were beneath the cross frame, to repair them in the same manner would require removing the frame altogether... and I did not want to risk further damage to the door. Since the outer skin was now stabilized by being reattached to the cross frame, I filled in the cracks from the visible side with a mixture of resin and powdered graphite to glue them shut again. Once sanded, this mixture has a similar color as the carbon.