A&E Editor? Whatever my role is
2018 has been a year of massive crashes in racing. From Pietro Fittipaldi’s leg-breaking WEC shunt at Spa-Francorchamps to Robert Wickens’ paralyzing IndyCar crash at Pocono, it has been a year of pain and recovery for many racing drivers. This streak repeated itself once again at the Macau Grand Prix on Nov.18.
The Macau Grand Prix is held under Formula 3 regulations, so its field is mostly filled with young drivers looking to make their way up the ranks to the highest level of single-seater racing, Formula 1. The Macau circuit is known for being extremely tight, extremely fast, and extremely dangerous, but nothing quite like Sunday’s crash has happened before. 17-year-old German driver Sophia Flӧrsch, the only female driver in the field, was hit by Jehan Daruvala before the Lisboa corner at the end of the circuit’s longest straight. This sent Flӧrsch out of control, sliding down the track at over 150 miles per hour. The car bounced off a kerb on the inside of Lisboa, bounced off the top of Sho Tsuboi’s car, flew through the outside catch fence, slammed into a makeshift marshal post, and finally came to rest on the outside wall of the track. The crash, linked below, was obviously extremely frightening, but remarkably everyone came out of it alive. Flӧrsch only suffered a single broken vertebra as a result of the crash and never went unconscious. Luckily, her spinal cord was not damaged so she has no risk of paralysis. Tsuboi, the driver who she literally ramped over, complained of lumbar pain after the crash but was released from the hospital without injury. The photographers and race officials in the makeshift marshal post all suffered injuries as well, but they too are expected to make full recoveries.
It is a testament to the safety of modern race cars that Sophia Flӧrsch is still alive after literally flying into a building. A fractured vertebra is by no means a painless injury and she will have a long few months of recovery, but the most important thing is that she will be able to fully recover and return to racing.
All our thoughts and prayers goes to Sophia Flörsch and everyone involved in the horrible crash that just happened in #F3 #MacauGP pic.twitter.com/H9KwDQUHvx— Troll Sports (@TroIISports) November 18, 2018
