Spare a thought for driver Leigh Gotch and co-driver John McCarthy who spectacularly crashed out of Rally Canberra on the weekend. The incident happened at the notorious Mineshaft jump where discretion is usually the better part of valour. It’s fair to say Gotch made a meal of the jump, even though the in-car footage (see video after the break) looks relatively tame.
Gotch explained he wanted to take a conservative approach to the jump but an equipment failure complicated things, “I was trying to judge my speed, I wanted to take it at about 60, but our speedo wasn’t working, so I just had to guess what 60 felt like,” he said.
“Later on when I looked at the race GPS it showed we were doing 75. That is what the problem was, we just took it too fast.â€
Thankfully Gotch and McCarthy escaped unharmed but their Subaru Impreza WRC STi was unable to continue. The rally was won by Honda driver Eli Evans.
One reply on “Mineshafted!”
I saw the image before i read anything and thought, “oops”, and upon viewing the footage, I concur, its an oops.
I like how he blamed the speedo, granted its probably a valid point, but still 😉