Craig Breen

[philippebugalski]

The other thing I don’t like about the suggestion that this corner was ‘obviously dangerous’ is the implication that Craig / James, or the test coordinator, or the local organisers, should have known better.

Craig and James will have been around hundreds if not thousands of corners far more ‘dangerous’ than this one. Indeed, knowing the incident happened around 11:40, it’s unlikely this was their first run of the day. They would have negotiated the same corner several times prior to the crash.

It should almost go without saying since it’s so obvious, but crews at the top level will bring any concerns they might have about safety - people standing in crazy places, unsuitable road conditions, cars parked too close to the road etc. - during their recce or any of their test runs.

Hyundai’s test coordinator is extremely experienced, and fantastic at what he does. He will have checked the road beforehand, making sure it was fit for purpose and that safety measures were in place. There’s a chance that he’s thinking “if only” now, but at the same time, I expect he already knows that he did all he could and that, short of putting a tyre wall outside every corner, there’s no way he could have prevented what happened.

Similarly for the test and rally organisers - they may well be doing a bit of soul searching now, wondering what they could have done differently then, and do next weekend, to prevent such a freak incident from happening. But again, short of either neutering the competition by removing ‘dangerous’ corners and stages from the itinerary, or lining all the roads with tecpro barriers, what can be done? The nature of the sport is that it uses roads and goes to places that circuit races don’t.

By all means, everyone can think about how to prevent it from happening to anyone else. Maybe all fences and barriers with horizontal elements could have some protection put in front of them, or have those horizontal elements removed. But where do you stop?

Absolutely correct.

As someone who drove on that road countless times and watched dozens of PET's and development test on that particular road section this is just terrible fate and bad luck.
Corner speed there in rainy conditions is about 70ish-80ish km/h and if a car would go off a million times then this is ''once in a million'' situation. Still 2 days after in complete shock and disbelief...

RIP Craig, we will miss you!