How Did This Australian Supercars Driver Avoid Crashing?

If you are a racing driver stopped in the middle of the road on a fast straight, you should not try to turn your car around while anyone is coming behind you. Street circuits, in particular, provide perilously little cover for that sort of move, and the drivers behind you would need a miracle to avoid a huge crash. Fortunately, one Australian Supercars driver might have just performed one in that situation today.

With eight laps to go in today's second race of the Gold Coast 500, James Golding spun on the single most dangerous point on the race track. With only the cover of local yellows signaling to drivers behind him, he chose to spin his car around as others were still coming flying out of a fast chicane, briefly exposing his driver-side door to the possibility of direct contact with a race car accelerating in very little control. That's when the driver of the next car back in traffic, Scott Pye, thought fast.

Pye flung his car to the right, into the outside wall, to avoid Golding's door. He then quickly snapped back toward the straight, starting to snap his Chevrolet Camaro racer out of control just late enough that he missed a head-on collision with the curved wall. After being put in one of the worst situations a racing driver could imagine, Pye found a way to escape the moment with just a couple of brushing hits with the outside wall.

That, unfortunately, still left Pye's car with enough damage to force him to stop and eventually bring out a safety car. While the competition result for Pye was the same, the skillful move avoided two different major collisions that could have come with terrible consequences: One with Golding's car that could have hurt both drivers and one with the wall that could have hurt Pye. Considering that, this was a best-case scenario.

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