The Macau Grand Prix’s street circuit is not to blame for a teen driver’s horrific crash on Sunday, her team boss said after the accident raised concerns about safety standards.
Seventeen-year-old Sophia Floersch’s Formula Three car catapulted spectacularly over safety barriers during the race, fracturing the Van Amersfoort Racing driver’s spine and injuring four others.
However, despite the horrifying crash, her team principle refused to blame the historic Macau circuit.
“I don’t think the accident was Macau-related,” Frits van Amersfoort told Autosport.com, saying that it could have happened on other tracks.
“We also race in Pau [in France] and F1 also races on all kinds of street circuits. Macau is a special track, everyone knows that,” Van Amersfoort said. “The contradiction is that everyone knows the dangers, but most drivers also say that Macau is the most beautiful track in the world. That indicates how strange it sometimes is.”
The 6.2km temporary circuit features long straights with speeds of about 275kph, coupled with tight, blind corners.
Three racers have died in Macau in recent years: motorcyclists Daniel Hegarty and Luis Carreira — last year and 2012 respectively — and Hong Kong driver Phillip Yau, also in 2012.
Charlie Whiting, race director for the International Motoring Federation, which is investigating the crash, also defended Macau.
“Macau is not a dangerous circuit,” Whiting said. “In common with all street circuits the incident rate is higher than a normal circuit, but there is no evidence to say that the circuit is dangerous.”
Investigators know the “initial cause” for Floersch’s loss of control, but it is too soon to say what caused the accident, Whiting added.
As with most urban circuits, the roads are narrow and there are few safety exits, leaving little room for error.
“However, where cars do hit the walls it is generally at a very low angle which imparts lower forces into the car and driver,” Whiting said. “The guardrails, crash barriers and debris fences have been systematically upgraded over the past few years with significant improvements in a number of areas.”
Floersch’s car lost wheels after a collision down a high-speed straight and then bounced off a curb, clipping Japanese racer Sho Tsuboi’s vehicle and flying backward into a hut housing media and officials.
The German underwent marathon surgery on Monday, but despite her ordeal, she has said she is determined to race again.
A team statement said her nerve functions are reacting well, and that it took doctors more than nine hours to repair Floersch’s fractured vertebra and remove a bone splinter, which was sitting dangerously close to her spinal cord.
Tainan TSG Hawks slugger Steven Moya, who is leading the CPBL in home runs, has withdrawn from this weekend’s All-Star Game after the unexpected death of his wife. Moya’s wife began feeling severely unwell aboard a plane that landed at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Friday evening. She was rushed to a hospital, but passed away, the Hawks said in a statement yesterday. The franchise is assisting Moya with funeral arrangements and hopes fans who were looking forward to seeing him at the All-Star Game can understand his decision to withdraw. According to Landseed Medical Clinic, whose staff attempted to save Moya’s wife,
Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt yesterday backed Nick Champion de Crespigny to be the team’s “roving scavenger” after handing him a shock debut in the opening Test against the British and Irish Lions Test in Brisbane. Hard man Champion de Crespigny, who spent three seasons at French side Castres before moving to the Western Force this year, is to get his chance tomorrow with first-choice blindside flanker Rob Valetini not fully fit. His elevation is an eye-opener, preferred to Tom Hooper, but Schmidt said he had no doubt about his abilities. “I keep an eye on the Top 14 having coached there many years
ON A KNEE: In the MLB’s equivalent of soccer’s penalty-kicks shoot-out, the game was decided by three batters from each side taking three swings each off coaches Kyle Schwarber was nervous. He had played in Game 7 of the MLB World Series and homered for the US in the World Baseball Classic (WBC), but he had never walked up to the plate in an All-Star Game swing-off. No one had. “That’s kind of like the baseball version of a shoot-out,” Schwarber said after homering on all three of his swings, going down to his left knee on the final one, to overcome a two-homer deficit. That held up when Jonathan Aranda fell short on the American League’s final three swings, giving the National League a 4-3 swing-off win after
NBA team owners on Tuesday authorized league officials to begin an in-depth analysis regarding expansion, but NBA commissioner Adam Silver said there was no timetable for any changes. The NBA board of governors meeting in Las Vegas marked the first time team owners officially discussed expanding the league beyond 30 teams, but Silver said they went no deeper than requesting more research into the possibility. “There is a significant step now in that we’re now engaging in this in-depth analysis,” Silver said. “It’s something we weren’t prepared to do before, but beyond that, it’s really day one of that analysis. In terms