The huge Le Mans 24 Hours accident for Aston Martin Racing driver Roald Goethe that left the German gentleman driver with two fractured vertebrae was triggered by contact from the race winning #19 Porsche 919 Hybrid, driven at the time by Nico Hulkenberg it emerged today.
The DSC Editor was delighted to find Goethe out of hospital and in good spirits this morning but also keen to put the record straight on the origins of the 66g impact that his #96 Aston Martin Vantage made with the wall at the exit of the Porsche Curves.
At the time of the incident the DSC team had spotted some debris following the two cars out of the corner, our supposition that there had been contact between the two cars has now been confirmed.
Still photographs from a spectator, and a brief video clip (from 6:24 in the 20 minute highlights reel below) seems to confirm that Hulkenberg’s Porsche did make contact as the LMP1 man went for a disappearing gap and took two wheels to the grass.
“It was a racing incident, a miscalculation on his part, I am not in any way suggesting that there was an intention to push me out of the way but the result was the worst possible thing, at one of the worst possible places on the track.
“I was committed to the racing line, in a part of the circuit where there are very limited options in a GT car. I have heard, and read, some reports that I was at fault, that I was in some way ‘spooked’ off the track. That’s not true.
“I’m sure he realised he’d made the wrong choice and tried to take avoiding action but he ended up clipping my left front corner with his right rear at a point when my car was on the limit, turning in at high speed, that was enough to unsettle the car and the result was the accident.
“His choice was to take a different line, which I could not do, or to wait and go by on the exit, yes it would have cost him some time, maybe half a second, but he chose badly!
The incident led both to the accident which all but destroyed the #96 and saw Goethe airlifted to a specialist orthopaedic surgeon in Monaco where keyhole surgery on the two fractured vertebrae, in a procedure very similar to that which saw Kazuki Nakajima’s Spa injuries show remarkable progress, allowing the Japanese Toyota factory man to compete at Le Mans.
“They used a process known as ‘spinal jacking’ and then injected cement, I now have to wait 2-3 weeks for the bone and muscle trauma to heal and then will have another scan to see where I stand. I am out of bed and walking but can’t bend. After an impact like that though I am very lucky indeed.
“We have a saying in Germany that I have had good luck in my bad luck!”
Whilst Goethe was relatively generous in his comments around the initial incident he was rather more directly critical of the safety standards that applied at the point of eventual impact.
“If you have a problem at that point there is a straight line to a head on impact with a concrete wall, no tyre layer protection, no SAFER barrier, nothing. That really is not good enough.
The same corner has seen other serious injuries in recent years with Horst Felbermayr Snr in the 2011 race (below, after a clash with a Corvette) and Guillaume Moreau in an LMP1 Oak Pescarolo at the following year’s Test Day.
