Another Example of The Dangers in Motorsport

Motorsport will always be dangerous, no matter what anyone says that it might not be, and a recent spate of accidents would agree with this fact.  The latest escapade took place at the familiar Kent circuit, Brands Hatch on Sunday afternoon.

Francisco Carvalho was competing in the second of the day’s races in the SEAT Eurocup Series, a support event for the main action, the FIA World Touring Car Championship.  On the 7^th lap out of sixteen, Carvalho was in a dice for sixth place, when he had contact with another car.  His vehicle smashed into a guardrail barrier and then somersaulted into the air.  Terrifyingly, it continued rolling, and looped over the barrier.  It headed for a group of track marshals and photographers, who had to scurry all of a sudden for their lives.  Carvalho’s car landed in a crumbled heap, yards away from a safety truck.  The race was stopped, but amazingly, Carvalho escaped unharmed from the shunt, with later tests diagnosing a minor gash to his right knee!  Luckily, none of the safety marshals and track officials was struck by the car, or by flying debris and once the shock was absorbed, helped Carvalho away from his wreck and into the back of an ambulance. 

It is nearly a year since Ferrari driver Felipe Massa was struck on the head by a flying spring from another car during qualifying for last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix.  At Brands exactly a year ago, a loose wheel from another car struck F2 racer Henry Surtees on the head, killing him.  Of late, Mike Conway walked away with a broken leg, after a terrifying shunt in the closing stages of the Indy 500.  Mark Webber emerged unhurt from a 196mph somersault at last month’s European Grand Prix and Nigel Mansell took a nasty bang to his head, when a tyre exploded at last month’s Le Mans 24 Hours.

We must be thankful that no-one got hurt again, and it is a testament to how strong and brittle these machines are nowadays and the safety elements that have taken place since Ayrton Senna’s tragic death at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.  Francisco Carvalho and many of the marshals at Brands Hatch can count themselves lucky and so can motorsport, for a spate of recent shunts which have seen little damage to the pilots involved.