DUBAI // Mohammed ben Sulayem, the legendary rally driver, walked away from a spectacular 150kph crash in a Formula One car during an exhibition event yesterday. The 14-time Middle East Rally champion was driving the car in the Renault F1 Roadshow at the Dubai Autodrome when it veered sideways and spun into a barrier only four seconds after starting. The crash resulted in substantial damage to the left side of the car, valued at between ?1.5million (Dh7.32 million) and ?2million. The rear left tyre was shorn off and a spectator who was only a few feet away when it crashed said it looked like "a complete wreckage".
"The most important thing is that Mohammed was OK and the car is repairable," said Tarik Ait Said, the operations manager of Renault F1. Organisers of the Dubai event said they believed the car had struggled to adapt to the road surface at the Autodrome - an F1 certified circuit - after being driven at high speed on a desert road earlier in the day. They said its failure to grip the surface as Mr ben Sulayem was accelerating may have caused it to veer.
Mr ben Sulayem, who is vice president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, the world motorsport governing body, was driving a model of the R28 Renault in which the Spanish driver Fernando Alonso won the Singapore and Japan Grand Prix races last year. He was racing against Julian Piguet, Renault's back-up driver, who was driving Mr ben Sulayem's Ford GT. After 150 metres, as Mr ben Sulayem changed into second gear, the rear of the vehicle veered to the right. Then it went into a clockwise spin and was facing almost backwards when it crashed into the right-hand barrier.
The Ford GT, which was a few feet behind the Renault, quickly swerved into the left lane to avoid the spinning Renault. Rami Elias, a Canadian who was standing about a metre from the crash, said: "We saw him start to weave and lose complete control of it. It cut straight across the Ford GT and smashed in to the wall. Bits of carbon fibre and tyres were flying everywhere. "We all ducked once we saw it coming for us. When we looked back up, the car was eight feet to our right and was a complete wreckage."
"It just started to swerve right in front of us and within the blink of an eye it was in the barrier," said Frank Heidger, from Germany, who was at the side of the track. One spectator was hit by the flying debris but was not seriously hurt. "I'd say he didn't duck in time and had a small cut to his head," said Mr Elias. "We took him into one of the garages and cleaned him up a bit and he went over to the medical centre to get a bandage." The medical centre reported no casualties.
Earlier in the desert, Mr ben Sulayem reached a spead of 240kph in the R28 over a 2km stretch of straight road. "The conditions were different than this morning's test in the desert," Mr Ait Said said at the Autodrome after the crash. "It was a different surface and the temperature of the track was also different." "Every Formula One driver crashes his car," Mr Ait Said added. "It is not the first time this type of thing has happened."
"He handled it very well," the Renault F1 team's showcar co-ordinator, Colin Hale, said of Mr ben Sulayem's desert outing in the Renault. "A lot of people think these are easy cars to drive but they are not." A spokesman for Mr ben Sulayem said racing an F1 car was not a new experience for him. "He has driven these cars before," said Anthony Fernandes, the press officer for Automobile and Touring Club UAE, of which Mr ben Sulayem is president.
The Renault Roadshow will go ahead as planned at 7pm tonight at Downtown Burj Dubai. Renault's number two driver, Nelson Piquet Jr, along with fellow Renault drivers and the stunt specialist Terry Grant will demonstrate handbrake turns, doughnuts and other tricks. eharnan@thenational.ae
