Cameraman unharmed as car vaults barrier in BTCC smash

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A cameraman had a lucky escape at the start of a British Touring Car Championship race at Snetterton yesterday when a car cartwheeled over the barriers and knocked over the platform he was stood on.

It was an eventful weekend for the BTCC as two of their three races were red-flagged due to crashes.

Elsewhere the Spa-Francorchamps weather stayed true to form for the Spa 24 Hours and European Formula Three support races. There was rain at Pocono too, meaning NASCAR’s race had to be postponed until later today. Better conditions greeted IndyCar at Mid-Ohio and the World Rally Championship in Finland.

British Touring Car Championship

Races 16-18 of 30: Snetterton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj9i93DSfjw

Reigning champion Gordon Shedden took his first pole for three years as the BTCC returned to action following a six-week break. However Colin Turkington muscled him aside in race one and took his third victory of the season. Mat Jackson completed the podium as front-left punctures struck three competitors at the demanding Snetterton track.

The carnage began in race two (first video). Jackson fired past Shedden and Turkington on the opening lap, but mayhem ensured on the Bentley Straight as Dan Welch and Ollie Jackson tangled, spun in front of the pack and triggered multiple crashes as oncoming cars were blinded by dust.

With debris littering the circuit the race was stopped. This was bad news for Jackson whose hard work had been undone, but he impressively repeated his passes to take the lead when the action resumed.

More drama awaiting at the beginning of race three. Alex Martin and Mark Howard tangled at the start leaving Hunter Abbott with nowhere to go. The Chevrolet Cruze was launched into a camera platform which collapsed, taking the poor camera operator with it. Fortunately all were unhurt, but another lengthy red flag meant another truncated race.

Pole sitter and championship leader Sam Tordoff’s car broke down before the restart could take place, leaving Tom Ingram to lead the field. However a poor start handed the lead to Jason Plato, who in turn was soon dispatched by Rob Collard. Shedden was on the attack, however, and after hauling in Collard made a last-lap lunge to claim a much-deserved win. Collard nonetheless took the championship lead, while Rob Austin finished a popular third.

European Formula 3

Races 19-21 of 30: Spa-Francorchamps

Dire conditions in race one on Friday saw a lengthy Safety Car period after which Lance Stroll converted pole position into his seventh win of the year. Max Gunther and Ben Barnicoat followed behind in thick spray.

In a far more temperate conditions on Saturday, George Russell took victory in race two after a short battle with Joel Eriksson before running away to a seven second lead. Mikkel Jensen finished off the podium, while Gunther could only manage seventh in a race where Stroll failed to score. A notable performance from Anthoine Hubert meant he took an impressive fourth place.

In the final race it was Eriksson’s time to shine, taking his first win in Formula Three ahead of Russell. The Hitech driver had started from pole position again but got away slowly and had to fight back through the field to salvage third behind Hubert. He passed Stroll on the way, but the Williams junior driver retains a 61-point championship lead with nine races remaining.

World Rally Championship

Round 8 of 14: Finland

The World Rally Championship’s rows over running order show no signs of going away. Kris Meeke took his second victory of the season at the Rally Finland – albeit once more aided by an advantageous road position – with team mate Craig Breen who was also running low down the order, joining Meeke on the podium in third. In between the two Citroen’s was the usual sight of a VW, but this was the one driven by Jari-Matti Latvala as champion Sebastien Ogier finished just twenty-fourth after losing sixteen minutes on day one by getting stuck in a ditch.

As usual, Finland was far from incident free. Yazeed Al Rajhi achieved the impressive feat of completing a stage upside down (above left) while Lorenzo Bertelli was a spectacular victim of the famous Ouninpohja stage on Saturday morning, with Eric Camili joining him on the sidelines one stage later (above right). It was also a rollercoaster rally for Ott Tanak – who was so cruelly robbed of a win last time out. Fighting for the lead with Meeke on Friday morning, a spin and damage lost him fifty seconds, while a puncture in the afternoon cost him another half a minute. He fought back to bring himself into podium contention on the final day, only to crash out with two stages to run (below).

IndyCar

Race 12 of 16: Mid-Ohio

Video not available yet.

Simon Pagenaud extended his championship lead with another victory in 2016, though Will Power was hot on his heels in second to minimise the damage. The two team mates had minor contact at a restart following a caution period, but neither suffered damage and both stated after the race they felt it was hard but fair racing.

Behind them though, it rather fell apart for the other title contenders. Scott Dixon and Helio Castroneves collided on lap 15 – breaking the former’s suspension – while Josef Newgarden suffered damage to his rear guard and was forced to pit for repairs, losing a lap. Conor Daly led as the race entered its final stages, but was forced to ‘splash and dash’ with eight laps to go, eventually finishing sixth.

Guest series: Endurance Series

Round 4 of 5: Spa 24 Hours

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWsWz0nE0_A

In a race that needed to be seen to be believed, the number 99 ROWE Racing BMW of Maxime Martin, Alexander Sims and Philipp Eng took victory in a race filled with incident, controversy, intrigue, overtaking and Spa’ usual dramatic changes in weather.

Before the race even began Mercedes cars caused controversy by being excluded from qualifying due to a technical infringement regarding their ECU. That meant the cars which locked out top six places were all sent to the back of the top 20 superpole grid and handed five-minute penalties for the race.

A day of racing at Spa saw 15 full course yellows, three safety cars and two periods of heavy rain. The second downpour arrived half an hour before the end and caused chaos at the bus stop chicane where five cars crashed in the space of a minute.

In the madness, the AMG Team AKKA-ASP car of Tristan Vautier, Felix Rosenqvist and Renger van der Zande overcame their penalty to take second position, nearly two minutes behind the winners. The ever-present Audi Sport Team WRT car of Laurens Vanthoor, Rene Rast and Nico Muller took the final podium spot only five seconds behind the Mercedes.

Pro-Am honours went to the IMSA Performance Porsche 911 of Patrick Pilet, Maxime Jousse, Thierry Comac and Raymond Narac, while the Am Cup was won by the Kessel Racing Ferrari 458 of Marco Zanuttini, Vadim Gitlin, Liam Talbot and Nicola Cadei.

Also last weekend

Lewis Hamilton won his fourth consecutive grand prix, ahead of Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen after a poor getaway for Nico Rosberg, and now leads his team mate by 19 points heading into the summer break.

Sergey Sirotkin took the GP2 feature race win from pole position despite being forced to make a second pit stop after his first was discounted due to it taking place under the virtual safety car. Pierre Gasly made an atrocious start from second on the grid before fighting his way back to third behind Luca Ghiotto, only to be disqualified for having an empty fire extinguisher on board after it went off mid-race. That promoted Raffaele Marciello to the final podium spot. The second Prema car of Antonio Giovinazzi got an equally as poor start from reverse grid pole in the sprint race, handing Alex Lynn an easy lead which he converted to victory ahead of Sirotkin and Arthur Pic.

In GP3, Ferrari junior Antonio Fuoco made great use of a virtual safety car restart to jump from third to first, and held on until the end to win ahead of McLaren junior Nyck de Vries and Matt Parry. The virtual safety car was again the decider in race two as Jake Hughes – who had lost the lead from pole – passed Arjun Maini for the lead following a collision that eliminated championship leader Alexander Albon. Jack Aitken finished second while Charles Leclerc took third to steal the lead of the championship from Albon.

Over to you

It’s the summer break for Formula One now, and a variety of other European series, so we’ll turn are attention to the Americas next weekend.

The World Touring Cars head to Argentina while the World Rallycross Championship is in Canada and both IMSA and NASCAR are in action too.

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5 comments on “Cameraman unharmed as car vaults barrier in BTCC smash”

  1. That first GP2 race was absolutely phenomenal, where tyre degradation made it really unpredictable. The order was changing constantly towards the end, with some drivers managing to manage their drivers, and some sinking in the standings because they had killed theirs. And Gasly’s overtaking of Marciello on the finishing line was breathtaking. Too bad he got excluded later, that was a bit unfair and unnecessarily harsh, because the empty extinguisher had nothing to do with his performance.

    Unlike F1, GP2 has kept me entertained for every single race since Azerbaijan. I’m now looking forward to every race of this series, while in F1 since Canada, I always feel like witching the TV off before the end of the race…

    1. Regarding Gasly, are we sure the fire extinguisher had nothing to do with his performance? What’s the weight of the extinguisher material? 1-2kg? That can make enough of a difference. Exclusion was the only option, because otherwise at the next race you’d see all teams “accidentally” firing the extinguisher to save some weight.

      It was definitely unfortunate, but no different to running the car underweight for other reasons. Plus the safety factor mentioned below by @buck5top although you’d hope that would be dealt with with black-and-orange flags.

  2. Excluding Gasly was overly harsh. I mean, I could understand it if it was empty to begin with, for failing to field a car that satisfies the regulations. But it was OK at the start and through no fault of driver nor team it went off.
    To then be doubly penalised for it is brutal when you’re fighing for the championship: not only 15 hard-earned points lost, also a back-row start for the sprint race. This is also why I have always preferred FR3.5’s two qualifyings, one for each race.

  3. Although Gasly being excluded seemed harsh, it was entirely predictable. When they showed his onboard of the extinguisher going off during the race, I actually said he may as well retire the car now as he’ll be disqualified anyway. Nice to see I can still be right occasionally!

    I’m not certain but I think he was DQ’d on the regulation that the car must have a full and working extinguisher at all times. At the end of the day though, it’s purely a safety issue. If he’d have crashed later in the race and the car had set on fire, that extinguisher gives the driver an extra few precious seconds chance to get themselves out of the car. I know some people will argue the chances of that happening are slim, but then no one foresaw a spring falling off the back of a car and hitting the following driver in the head. Just because something is incredibly unlikely to happen, doesn’t mean it won’t.

    I agree about the qualifying though. It annoys me that a driver can be taken out at the first corner of the feature race, through no fault of their own, and then have to start the sprint from the back of the grid. It can ruin their entire weekend. Surely it would be much better to split the qualifying session in two – the first 15 minutes sets the sprint race grid, the second 15 the feature, or vice versa. The teams currently do two runs in qualy anyway so it wouldn’t really alter anything, plus it puts a bit of extra pressure on the drivers to get each run perfect. There’s still chance for slightly mixed up grids if a driver gets one of their runs wrong and it gets rid of the abomination that is the reverse grid!

  4. Not quite “vaults” the barrier for the BTCC Touring car race….more perched on top of it…..and the camera gantry went over in slow motion so the cameraman was able to jump off without injury….however the action that led up to this was more than spectacular….its a hidden gem these touring car meetings and well worth a watch
    Normally its heat 3 when it hots up, but yesterday was all 3 races…roll on 2 weeks and the very tight Knockhill track

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