Sophia Floersch Survives Horror Macau Accident

[alexSchmurtz]

Apparently she is still being under surgery, for more than 7 hours now.
https://twitter.com/SophiaFloersch/status/1064471729513345024/photo/1

Current intermediate info: The medical team deliberately works slowly to avoid risks. The previous course of surgery was good and without complications. The surgery that started this morning continues.​

 

[Koen Verlinde]

Isle of man tt

What do you think IOM stands for?

That's right, the Isle of Man TT.

 

[Andrew Harper]

Apparently she is still being under surgery, for more than 7 hours now.
https://twitter.com/SophiaFloersch/status/1064471729513345024/photo/1

Current intermediate info: The medical team deliberately works slowly to avoid risks. The previous course of surgery was good and without complications. The surgery that started this morning continues.​

Yeah I would imagine any spinal injury is serious, doesn't matter how you report it. My thoughts go out to her and her family.

Hopefully not but I would imagine her racing career may be over, she'll be out of action for at least six months maybe? Maybe longer.

The important thing is she makes a good recovery, fingers crossed we get some positive news soon

 

[The Flying Hun]

They are designed to absorb part of the impact energy by bending. Thats the whole idea. And the fact that the stand was shielded by those barriers proves that the possibility of such event happenign was considered. And thats a good thing.

You talk about the tyre walls that are everywhere on racetracks, also in that turn? Watch the video, the car did not even touch it - it flew right over it.

 

[michelforest]

But does anyone think that closed wheel boxes always prevent horror crashes? They don't. Have a car with significant downforce hopping over an uneven thing on the track like a curb, and downforce immediately turns into upforce and the chassis bottom turns into a wing generating uplift, and the car flies.

Indeed. The worst disaster in motorsport history happened with a closed wheel car: Le Mans, 1955...

 

[prostetnik]

Wow! looked more like her car was traveling at least 3x quicker than the other cars and my 1st thought was a stuck throttle , otherwise how can get to be so much faster than other cars.

She had hit another car, had her suspension damaged and spun 180°. While all other cars were breaking for turn 4, she had no chance to brake, because her car was "surfing" on its underbody.

I think she was lucky the car got catapulted into the air, because an impact into another car or the trackside-barrier would have been far worse because all the energy would have been absorbed by the car and not by the fence.

I wish her all the best and hope she will recover completly.

 

[mantasisg]

You talk about the tyre walls that are everywhere on racetracks, also in that turn? Watch the video, the car did not even touch it - it flew right over it.

No, I talk about steel armco bariers. Though I'm not saying that they have better damping than tire walls. But you can build such structure out of steel bariers to shield the stand, and that was done.

 

[Tom Blackett]

Horrible accident. Glad no fatal injuries, some major redesign of that corner required ASAP. Simple solution is to but armco where the kerb is so a similar incidents will go down the escape road.

 

[jebfour]

My jaw dropped when watching that.

Thank God this young lady is alive. I hope she pulls through this without lifelong injuries.

 

[Richard Dastardly]

Saw this more or less as it happened, I can't ever remember something like it - that was a missile rather than a car. Thankfully she hit backwards, even with HANS I don't want to imagine hitting face first.

Couldn't tell on the videos if there was any catch fence at that corner - should at least have a fence when there's a change of direction. As for racing there... not sure about open-wheelers until they sort any fence issues out; there was a gigantic pileup in the GT3 quali race & everyone got out of that fine, so tintops are probably ok as it is. I think it's a bad circuit but that's not relevant to any discussion of safety.

I fractured various bits of my spine in a very traumatic motor accident, it's quite possible she'll come out of this with no damage like I managed to with my spine ( pity about my head... ). One can hope.

 

[prostetnik]

I just read on spiegel.de that she has a broken vertebra but no spinal-injuries. She can move all limbs.

 

[Ben Lee]

The thing is, I’ve seen horrific crashes and incidents in all forms of sport. The risk of getting injured in figureskating is pretty low because they are professionals, however I’ve seen news articles of people suffering spinal injuries and broken bones in that. They don’t then insist that all figure skaters have to wear a crash helmet and neck brace before they begin.

I think people just want to eradicate all danger and excitement from motorsport at any cost, that’s why we have F1 circuits now which are practically white lines drawn on a 20 acre piece of tarmac, they aren’t really circuits any more, just a vast expanse of tarmac where 20 millionaire egomaniacs pretend to race cars. I really do worry what the sport will become in the next few years, as it all trickles down. So if F1 gets a cough, the rest of the sport gets the cold.

 

[Zuffenhausen Weiss]

Not only the curb, the entire "track" is a load of crap, don't know why people like that or even bother to race there

"why people like that?" - the race has 64 years worth of history and it's the biggest motorsport event in SE Asia. Outside Macau, it's such a big deal in HK and China (and nothing comes as big that, not even the latter's GP nor any of their Formula E races) that TVB (HK's premier TV network) has provided live coverage the whole weekend for over 50 years and it was their first broadcasted live event.

 

[Raikku]

Macao is dangerous, but so what? Nobody is forced to race there or on other tracks, if driver fear some specific tracks then he or she doesn't drive, or if people fear to watch "dangerous" races, there's plenty of "soft" entertaintment available.

Having followed motorsport from early eighties, from around when Keke won F1, I don't have difficulties to accept that sometimes something can happen but I simply don't see reasons to make changes just because modern ppl's seem to be so distracted to reality, which is that sometimes we die/get injured etc and nothing gonna stop it.

 

[Zuffenhausen Weiss]

These ugly tracks in countries that don't have the culture or the history in Motorsport racing should be banned and destroyed
There are plenty of amazing tracks in western world without going in these countries

What year are these? You think motorsport should belong to the west do you?

 

[Richard Dastardly]

Just because F1 has gone a bit over the top at times doesn't mean you should do *nothing*. Marshalls were injured in this accident too, are we suggesting we shouldn't do anything for them either?

Every high-energy accident needs looking at because they very easily kill people. If there's something that can mitigate chances of that without wrecking the particular contest, then it should be done; you can't do that without seriously studying any incidents. Fencing on street circuits might offend someone's sense of aesthetics but sorry, trackside staff ( or spectators ) are worth more.

Win Percy walked away from a 230mph crash on the Mulsanne & paralysed himself gardening; some things just happen. If his car hadn't been designed to survive a crash like that he's have been Jo Gartner & dead, though. There is no reason not to *try*.

 

[Zuffenhausen Weiss]

I start to think that Macau is too dangerous. Last year that massive Gt3 pileup and a fatal accident in a motorcycle race, now this which definitely could have ended fatal too. Don`t get me wrong, i like the track and think its stupid to have too much runoff areas, but we now have often seen that Macau is very dangerous.

Not just that, pileups (especially at the Lisboa, the worst bottlenecking part of the track) have happened since the beginning except with amateurs, not just warning flags were less enforced then, because it's their own cars especially the Supercar Challenge (predecessor of GT Cup) and most of the now extinct races, they don't drive at their 110%

 

[Zuffenhausen Weiss]

Maybe a chicane if the runoff cannot be increased... the long straight into a fairly slow corner with no runoff seems a bit much.

Not practical there now but plenty in those simple times in fact at the Reservoir (the current start/finish), there are plenty and no barriers because you would end up in the drink. You could go back in time and ask them

 

[Zuffenhausen Weiss]

Macau should be a touring car/GT only event. If there needs to be some kind of open wheel racing it shouldn't be done by young asprirants. Maybe this could be an opportunity for Formula E instead.

There used to be an ACP race for amateurs (or weekend street racers), CTM Touring Car, tuner car races and Jackie Chan female celebrity races. Professionalism squashed them and the amateurs out. If you know the history, Macau began as a sportscar race, single seaters came in the 1960s

 

[Zuffenhausen Weiss]

I agree that this is a highly dangerous track. However, it's my favorite track in Raceroom... I wonder how real racing drivers feel about Macau? Anybody knows?

In a motorcyclist PoV, Charlie Williams, who set the fastest lap there in 1982, said it was harder than IoM TT