Multi-Vehicle Crash During Nurburgring Public Laps Kills 1, Injures 7
Several vehicles lost control and crashed after a Porsche 911 reportedly leaked coolant on the track.
A deadly accident involving several vehicles occurred Monday on the Nurburgring, according to local German news outlets and Road & Track. The pileup occurred after a vehicle leaked coolant on track, causing several other cars to lose control and crash. Per the Hamburg Morning Post, 10 vehicles in total were involved and one person killed, two seriously injured, and five walked away with only slight injuries.
A witness to the incident spoke to R&T and laid out what happened from their perspective. According to the witness, a Porsche 911 GT3 leaking coolant pulled over to the side of the track to be recovered by a tow truck right after the Bergwerk corner, roughly 5.5 miles from the start-finish line. Meanwhile, several vehicles began to lose control as a result of the coolant on track, causing a pileup. It's unclear how many vehicles were involved in the accident at this point, but a short time later a Mazda MX-5 came around the same bend, also losing control and impacting the tow vehicle. Its fuel tank reportedly ruptured, which triggered an explosion and subsequent fire.
Several drivers reportedly rushed to help with personal fire extinguishers, with a witness telling R&T that "At this point I think it was a mixture of smoke and fire extinguisher residue floating into the sky. I couldn’t really see but as it cleared I was shocked to see one of the orange Lenz low loader tow trucks with a car wedged underneath it." The witness says the car was "unrecognizable," and that the vehicle had "pushed the truck into the air and was completely underneath."
Shortly after the accident, the track was closed for public lapping and the drivers on the track were escorted off. "We were then instructed to turn our cars around and follow the ring taxi BMW M5 backward down the track to exit at the Adenau entrance," the witness said. As the drivers left, more emergency vehicles began to arrive. According to R&T, the driver involved in the fatal accident was a regular at the famous 12.94-mile Nordschleife circuit.
Accidents on the Nurburgring are not uncommon, and serious fatal crashes still happen. Back in 2015, a spectator to the VLN Endurance Championship was killed after a factory-backed Nissan GT-R got airborne, flipping off track into the barriers. Other fatal accidents involving non-professional drivers have occurred at the circuit since then as well, with the latest before this incident occurring in 2016.
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