Memories of mayhem
Drivers recall the Tassie crash that caused $1 million damage
IT was the biggest crash in supercars history — a staggering scene that caused more than $1 million in damage.
With Round 3 of the championship headed for Tasmania this weekend, the 26-car field will again face the challenge and possibly wrath of the biggest enigma on the supercar calendar — the 2.41km Symmons Plains Raceway.
All who have raced there agree — looks simple on paper, is anything but.
GRM Holden driver Garth Tander was the first car out of shape as the field thundered down the short straight to the hairpin on that rain-hammered day. Tander then hit Rick Kelly, and chaos ensued.
In all, 12 cars — almost $5 million worth of supercars — were damaged or wrecked in the crash, and only eight of them were salvageable to race the next day. We spoke exclusively to some of the supercar drivers on track that day to see how they remembered it.
GARTH TANDER
“I couldn’t see anything because there was a lot of spray and sun glare. I think it was Fabian Coulthard who bounced off the wall or something and I saw that happening and I was on the far right thinking I’d gotten past it. Then someone tagged me in the rear, I got spun around and got hit by 100 cars. I’ve never seen anything that big — so many cars jammed in together. There have been big accidents before but not so many cars involved. Everyone probably learned from it but it’s not something I’ll be worried about when we go back.”
WILL DAVISON
“The track was completely blocked, which is a horrible feeling. I had no chance to pull the car up. I got really angry that later people said I was trying to make up ground, but you’re doing 190km/h into a blocked circuit, there was one gap to the left so I got off the brakes so I could steer there and not plough into everyone. I could see the clear space, I could see the hairpin, and then Rick Kelly bounces across in front of me and then impact happened as I saw him. It was a real shock.”
CRAIG LOWNDES
“It was a massive crash. Running down into that hairpin area it is very much a street-like style of track — you’ve got concrete walls both sides and a lot of room for error. When you’ve got two or three cars spinning in front of you — and it was the wet weather that caused a lot of the problem — you didn’t have a lot of chance for people behind you to pull up. I was in fourth at the time and the race got postponed and in the end we didn’t score points for it so it was disappointing for our championship aspirations.”
CHAZ MOSTERT
“I was in front of it, but coming around and seeing the red flag and seeing vision of it was unbelievable to see so many cars torn up. It’s just one of those things with the track, it is a bit like a street track going down that straight toward the hairpin — if you crash there’s nowhere for the cars to go. It was absolutely crazy and I’m glad no one got ridiculously hurt — I know a few people were a bit sore. It was a crazy thing and one for the highlight reel. You never want to see anyone get hurt in those accidents.”
MARK WINTERBOTTOM
“It was a big crash. I’ve never seen anything like that before. I’ve never seen a race abandoned because almost half the cars were out. It was pretty crazy but I got clear of it and I wanted the race to keep going. It was a massive crash and Tassie does that — the racing is always so close and cars trying to go into small spaces. That hairpin has claimed a few over its time, but that’s one of the biggest crashes I’ve seen taking out half the field.”
CAM WATERS
“I was right in the middle of it and lucky to get through. I saw a couple of cars ‘fence it’ at the wall and I went right to try and miss it. I just got around it, and I clipped my rear wing on someone and I was lucky to get only half a wing damaged and not a ripped up car like half the field. You think ‘where am I going to go to get through it?’ Crashes happen. It’s part of our sport but you don’t want to be part of it.”