Photographers put their lives on the line more often than we’d like to admit.
And some racing photographers over in China got an up close and personal meeting with a racecar when it leapt from the track and into the booth with them.
It all went down at the Formula 3 Macau Grand Prix and, thankfully, no one was killed.
To give you some idea of how fast the car was traveling, PetaPixel reports that the speed was 270km/h or 168mph. That’s absolutely insane.
The driver of the car, 17-year-old Sophia Floersch, had to be rushed to surgery for a spinal fracture. Another Formula 3 driver, a marshal for the race, and two photographers also had to go to the hospital as a result of the wreck.
Christian Haart, an Australian photographer based in Hong Kong, told PetaPixel concerning the accident: “Everything happened so fast, the sound was horrific…One minute you are shooting the next thing we were all picking ourselves up off the floor, the impact threw us down, camera gear and bags were all over the place.“
He continued: “Lisboa is a famous corner as the cars come off a huge straight into a tight right-hand corner…It’s where the action is most likely to happen. No one, though, expected the seriousness of that crash. …To get into the bunker we need to apply for slots — I had done this a few days earlier. Shooting at this corner you either go with long glass to capture the cars down the straight and then switch cameras to a wider option to capture the corner. At the time of the crash, I was on the Sony a9 with the 70-200mm. I managed to get most of what happened. …The structure thankfully was built strong enough and did its job. It was a total mess inside. I believe it also saved Sophia’s car from ending up over another fence into the building behind.”
You can watch a video of the crash here on YouTube.
