McLaughlin feels lucky to survive crash

Scott McLaughlin feared he had suffered bleeding on the brain as a result of his frightening crash in Sunday’s qualifying session at the Gold Coast 600.

Speaking to the Balls & Bumpers podcast, the Bathurst winner admitted he was ‘‘lucky to be here’’ after hitting the wall at about 160kmh.

McLaughlin, who had been the fastest driver in the qualifying session, described the crash as one of the worst of his motorsport career and revealed tearing up in the hospital as he waited for his scan results.

‘‘I went to the hospital, I was lying on the bed for about 40 minutes, there were like 400 doctors around me, it was fullon,’’ McLaughlin said. ‘‘I was stuck in that neck brace which was so incredibly uncomfortable and then they said we want to take you for a CT scan on your head and neck to check it’s all right, it should take five minutes.

‘‘But it took 15 or 20 minutes and I thought ‘this is weird’. When we came out no-one was really talking to me and stuff.

‘‘They said ‘we just saw a bit of an anomaly on the brain, it’s meant to be 50:50, parallel, what the brain looks like, but it does look like yours has moved in some ways and there’s a little bit of fluid or substance there, something like that, so we’re going to have to do an MRI, we don’t know, it could be bleeding, it could be whatever’.’’

McLaughlin said he was ‘‘absolutely shitting’’ himself prior to the MRI.

‘‘Everything is going through my head, me and [fiancee] Karly, sort of sitting there crying and stuff because it’s like ‘what’s going to happen?’.

‘‘Life in general has just been flipped upside down obviously straight away. You just think the worst, right?’’

However, McLaughlin was cleared of any serious injury. He still has some soreness in his shoulders and neck from the seat belts but is otherwise feeling OK.

Still holding a comfortable 463-point lead over Sunday’s winner Shane van Gisbergen, he said he could not wait to return to racing at the penultimate round of the championship – the Sandown 500 on November 8-10.

‘‘I can’t wait to get back in the car, I just feel bad for the guys [in team], the work they’ve got to do.’’