Abstract:
On September 5, a major crash and fire occurred at the CHINA GT Shanghai Station, which was sponsored by Xiaomi. On the seventh lap of the race, No. 37 and No. 33 rushed out of the track during a fight and hit the side fuel tank of No. 91 car. No. 91 instantly burned into a ball of fire. British driver Milori was trapped in his car, surrounded by flames of 800 to 1,000 degrees.
Rescue came quickly, not from the tournament but from the opponent. Driver No. 79 Hartog just passed the accident point, abandoned the race, got out of the car, picked up the fire extinguisher, and pulled Milori out of the burning car with his bare hands.
Milori later wrote on IG: "I am alive tonight, all thanks to one person. There was no flag officer or firefighter in sight. He stopped the car without hesitation and risked his life to rescue me." The accompanying picture was a photo of Hartog holding a fire extinguisher in the thick smoke.
The final result was that Milori had five broken ribs, a fractured collarbone and fingers, and a contusion on his lungs. Several surgeries were waiting for him. Fortunately, he survived in the end. He could not remember anything from 30 seconds before the crash to an hour after the incident. After Hartog returned to the maintenance area after rescuing people, he couldn't hold back his face and cried bitterly.
See you in hell
The performance of the game rescue was simply a disaster.
Another person involved, driver No. 33 Yang Baijie, posted a long post after the race. The first five words were "See you in hell".
He told the outrageous details of the entire accident: The rescuers put down the fire extinguisher and ran away out of fear; it took 15 minutes for the ambulance to move to the scene, because the person on duty was sleeping and someone patted the window without waking him up.
The scene was even more outrageous. The competition staff were all huddling outside the safety line and did not dare to come forward. Hartog himself dismantled and destroyed the parts and actively asked them for a fire extinguisher before anyone dared to hand it over. Even another staff member holding a fire extinguisher couldn't even turn it on.
Yang Baijie's anger doesn't stop there. He said that after the race, the referee summoned the drivers to the arbitration room without knowing whether they were alive or dead, without a word of greeting, without asking about the situation of the other two drivers, and without mentioning the speed of the rescue.
What shocked him the most was that the referee's first reaction was to laugh. The referee also said with an arrogant attitude that this was just a low-level mistake, and even tried to communicate with them to see if they could shift the public opinion responsibility to the driver to reduce the negative impact of the race.
In response, Yang Baijie directly announced his permanent withdrawal from China GT.
According to The Paper, some automotive media colleagues checked their watches and it took more than a minute from the time of the crash to the person being rescued. For comparison, at the 2020 F1 Bahrain Grand Prix Grosjean crashed and caught fire. It only took 28 seconds from impact to being pulled out, and the ambulance arrived in 11 seconds. The FIA's fire protection standards for racing suits require jackets to be worn for 12 seconds and underwear, socks and hoods for 5 seconds. Milori stayed in the fire for more than a minute, and his survival was purely due to Hartog's luck.
Outrageous apology letter
The tournament organizing committee sent a letter of apology the next day. It was obvious that they wanted to apologize properly, but the writing was really bad.
"This is an accident that the event organizing committee and everyone does not want to see." Using "accident" downplays human negligence, but everyone knows that this is not a natural disaster, but a man-made disaster caused by the complete failure of the rescue system.
Besides, the target of the apology is everyone. "I deeply apologize for the impact and impact on everyone." It feels like it has affected the audience watching the game, rather than "Sorry that we did not do a good job in rescue and almost killed the driver."
"We will further review this incident after the game" is a low-level grammatical problem between the two "we". It can be seen that it was written very hastily, and probably no one read it before posting it.
But the real problem isn't these typos. "After preliminary verification, the configuration of the entire event is in line with the configuration of national-level events."
Now that even the driver is still lying in the hospital, the letter first hurriedly stated that "there is no problem with our hardware." If there is no problem with the configuration, then there is a problem with the people, and aren’t people under the control of the organizing committee? The following sentence, "But the detailed management needs to be improved", scared the rescuers away, the fire extinguisher could not be turned on, the ambulance took 15 minutes to arrive, and the live broadcast falsely reported that the driver left on his own, all covered with the words "should be improved". This is not a lack of detail, this is a serious dereliction of duty.
All the controversies that should be responded to most were avoided: false reports on the live broadcast, slow rescue, and the driver being summoned after the arbitration to try to pass the blame, without mentioning a single word. The rest are all empty words about "formulating a better plan", "strengthening management", and "supervising implementation", and none of them are implemented.
However, it is also certain that this letter was not written by AI. AI cannot write such a bad letter.
Milori's FIST AUTO team, which is also the Phantom team that cooperates with Ferrari, issued a solemn statement that day, and the wording was very strong: the event side seriously neglected its emergency response and safety rescue, and the live broadcast information was inaccurate. It has not officially apologized yet. Announced that it will withdraw from all China GT events with immediate effect until a complete independent public investigation is completed.
A team retired from the race, a driver quit permanently, and an accident forced everyone away.
There is another detail that is quite ironic. This event is sponsored by Xiaomi. In April this year, Lei Jun went to the opening match in person and posted on social platforms, "I am at the China GT opening match." YU7 and SU7 Ultra served as the official medical car and safety car and will "protect the smooth progress of the event throughout the entire process." As a result, something went wrong, and it was the opponent who protected the driver.
Hartog later said something that was very touching: "I hope that in the future such actions will no longer be regarded as heroic feats, but as everyone's instinctive reaction." But in an event where rescuers will be scared away and it will take 15 minutes for the ambulance to arrive, the word instinct is easier said than done.
What do you think about this?
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