doctorvee

Following Robert Kubica’s horrific accident at the Canadian Grand Prix, there have been two more scary accidents in the GP2 race at Magny Cours today.

The first was a rather bizarre accident straight off the start line, where Timo Glock and Andreas Zuber simply appeared to drive into each other. Given that it happened right at the start, it is easy to imagine how that could have turned into a multiple car pileup.

But the second accident, involving Ernesto Viso, was much more shocking. It was reminiscent of the violence of Robert Kubica’s, but the way Viso’s car just flew into the air like an aeroplane is even scarier to me.

F1 Fanatic has a video of the full sequence of events. Unfortunately, it is difficult to see because whoever captured it did so in stretchyvision, so the images are somewhat distorted.

Here is a clearer video of Ernesto Viso’s accident on Dailymotion.

(Updated with a better video.)

In case you can’t tell what is going on, Viso hit Michael Ammermuller’s car, flew into the air and barrelrolled a number of times. The car skates over the top of the wall, narrowly missing a marshall, and collides with a fire extinguisher (which is what the strange thing spraying into the air is).

The car then eventually lands on the wrong side of the wall. It is the sort of thing you simply do not want to see. Simply hitting a fire extinguisher has been enough to kill racing drivers in the past. Viso has been extraordinarily lucky to have apparently escaped any major injury besides severe concussion.

I am guessing that in this instance the blame can not be put down to increasing speeds or something inherently dangerous about the GP2 car. As far as I know, the same GP2 car has been used for two and a half seasons now with nothing remotely as scary as this happening.

The events of the past few weeks have certainly been a sober reminder that all forms of motorsports are dangerous — and not just to the drivers.