In the closing stages of Saturday’s round of the Tudor United SportsCar Championship, the Chevrolet Sports Car Classic at Belle Isle in Detroit, MI, a track worker sustained serious injuries whilst attending to a crashed GT Daytona car.
The #58 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT America of Jan Heylen had crashed into the wall at turn 1, and track workers were trying to clear up the car. With rain beginning to fall on Detroit, the track became very slippery, and unfortunately one of the many cars to slide out of control at turn 1 was the #007 TRG-AMR Aston Martin Vantage, being piloted by James Davison. He lost control of his GTD car, and slid at speed into one of the recovery vehicles.
As the race ended, two additional cars were collected in the pile up, but luckily all drivers escaped unharmed.
However, the same couldn’t be said for one of the workers who was in the safety truck. IMSA have stated that the unidentified male has broken ribs, a collapsed lung, as well as injuries to his spleen and kidney. A statement from IMSA said:
An additional track worker was admitted to the track medical centre but was released soon after.
It is incidents like these that remind us of the immediate dangers that come from motorsport. It could be argued that this particular crash could have been avoided by ending the race under caution, but others would claim that it was unavoidable.
