Asian Motor Sports

Top V8 Supercar driver Mark Skaife has given the Pukekohe Park Raceway track a pass mark.

While plenty has been made of two serious crashes that occurred during racing over the weekend Skaife was blunt in his reaction to questions over the suitability of the Pukekohe track to hold an international race meeting.

“We could be critical about it but we’ll come here,” he said. “I’ve got my hand up I’m here again next year. “We’re here as motor racing drivers. If we thought it was too dangerous we would have our hand up saying we won’t drive here.”

On Saturday a Porsche competing in a support race to the V8 Supercars careered over the safety wire and landed in the stand narrowly missing spectators.
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The Porsche GT3 of Dean Fulford sits in the public seating area And on Sunday during the second race of the V8 Supercars a photographer had his leg broken by flying debris after John Bowe’s Ford hit a safety rail at high speed.

“There is no race track that is completely safe,” he said. “That Porsche incident on Saturday…who could ever predict that a car would do that down the main straight?

“That’s just extraordinary stuff. “Those sorts of things happen in motor racing sometimes. You have a look at the back of your ticket it says Motor Racing is dangerous.

“That’s the fact of life. “There’s no doubt around the globe these days there are safer places than Pukekohe.

“Where John Bowe went off for instance - if you take that in isolation - John has apparently had a jammed throttle and speared straight on and hit the guard rail.

“That’s one of those ones really that again there’s not too many places anywhere on any race track that if your throttle jams open you’re not going to crash.”

Not to rain on Mark’s parade but it has happened before. In 1955 a Mercedes-Benz being driven by Pierre Levegh hit an embankment on a straightway at the famed Le Mans circuit. Major portions of the vehicle flew into the crowd killing 77 spectators.

In more recent times, in 1987 Bill Elliott posted an awesome qualifying lap of 212.809 mph at Talladega Motorspeedway in a 3,500lb stock car. During the race Bobby Allison’s crashed and his Buick LeSabre sailed into the chain link fence in front of the main grandstands, where spectators sustained minor injuries as pieces of the mangled car shot into the stands.

Two investigations follow the weekend’s crashes at Pukekohe by MotorSport New Zealand and any safety recommendations should be followed.