Kiwi somersaults two others in NZGP
Brendon Leitch remembers seeing the sky twice as he went airborne following a three-car crash in the opening Toyota Racing Series race at the New Zealand Grand Prix at Manfeild on Saturday.
The Cromwell driver walked away unscathed from the crash, which paused the race on the second lap.
Brazilian Pedro Piquet went on to win. But that was only after the race was stopped for 20 minutes as the cars were removed from the centre of the track. Australian Luis Leeds and American Keyvan Andres had been battling for position ahead of Leitch. Andres and Leeds made contact knocking them into the path of Leitch.
‘‘I was really just the innocent bystander,’’ Leitch said. ’’These things happen in motorsport you just have to take it on the chin and move on.
‘‘I was coming through turn three on the outside of Andres, he got fired into me and caught my front wheel and then my rear and sent me flying.
‘‘It all happened so fast I can’t really tell you much about the rest. I think I saw the sky twice.’’
After watching a replay of the crash, he saw the lighter side of it.
‘‘I would have got a 10 out of 10 at the Olympics,’’ he said.
Leeds was able to rejoin the race straight away and Andres made it back out after a quick fix to his spoiler in pit lane.
Leitch, however, was stuck watching from pit lane. But he said the damage to his car was not as back as it first looked.
‘‘It is well and truly fixable so I will definitely be out there [Sunday] morning and try and redeem myself. We are on P7 for the Grand Prix so we can definitely do some things. The car is very fast so we will see what we can do.’’
In an impressive effort, Leitch was back racing on Sunday, with his crew taking only three hours to get the car back in working order.
Andres was handed a 30-second penalty for his role in the crash.
There was one more crash late in the race as Australian Harry Hayek ended up in the dirt on turn seven, after coming around the bend three wide with Kiwi Taylor Cockerton and Austrian Ferdinand Habsburg.