Inside the ugly aftermath of kangaroo collision at Bathurst 12 Hour race: ‘I needed to vomit’

GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING 

Two-time Bathurst 12 Hour champion Christopher Mies was ruled out of Sunday’s marathon race after his car struck a kangaroo while travelling at around 250km/h on the Conrod Straight.

The devastating incident happened just 20 minutes into the race, with he and his Supercars-star team-mate Broc Feeney being the first to be ruled out of the race.

In gruesome scenes, the German driver was able to exit the field’s sole Ford entrant but was left covered in kangaroo blood, and was thankfully unharmed. 

However, his Ford Mustang GT3 was wrecked during the crash.

Mustang’s third driver Dennis Olsen said Mies had hit the kangaroo while racing at 250km/h, but was cleared by the medical team.

‘Unfortunately, we had an animal on track and hit it at 250km/h,’ Olsen said to Fox Sports.

‘Luckily, Mies is OK.’

‘We can see that he was for sure impacted by that. I’m glad he’s OK, that’s the main thing.’

Mies has since recounted the moment that the kangaroo jumped in front of his car, stating that he only saw the animal at the last possible moment.

He told Speedcafe: ‘We were all in line and basically within a thousandths of a second, a millisecond, the kangaroo showed up on the left, obviously at a very high speed.’

The German driver said he was fortunate to have avoided suffering a serious injury.

‘So the moment I saw it was the impact. It was very unfortunate and it was quite a big one, but honestly, I’m glad that we have such a safe race car, it could have been much worse.

‘If I can just imagine the whole kangaroo would have come inside. I mean, half of it was inside, so I’m glad I’m standing here now.’

Recounting the horrifying crash, Mies had tried to guide his car off the track, but added that he was unable to see because the kangaroo’s blood had sprayed into his eyes.

‘The issue was, I couldn’t see anything anymore, the windshield was fully smashed. Obviously, I was covered in blood and whatever is inside a kangaroo,’ he said.

‘My eyes were full of blood and, how you call it, the guts from the kangaroo, so I had to clean them first because I had no idea where I was.

‘I looked through the side window, saw a wall and tried to go as close as possible to the wall on the left side.

‘I still saw the cars coming from the rear, so I wanted to be in a safe place as much as possible, not that someone doesn’t see me or whatever and hits me again. So I just tried to make it the safe way.’

The German said that the smell was so bad that he threw up on the side of the track.

‘I already had two showers. I still have the smell in my nose. I can tell you the inside of a kangaroo doesn’t smell very nice,’ he said.

It’s not the first time that kangaroos have found their way onto the track at Mount Panorama, with Team WRT BMW having also revealed that their car was struck by an animal during the early hours of Sunday’s race.

‘Every year the kangaroos are around the track, we already had like a couple of safety cars for kangaroos,’ Mies said.

‘I don’t know where this one came from. It must have been very quick and just sudden because there was no pre-warning, no yellow flags or nothing, no radio message that there’s a kangaroo near the track.

‘To be honest, I think we should think about maybe having a later race start, maybe instead of 5:50 in the morning, maybe something like 7-ish or 8 o’clock and finish later or put up some big fence.

‘In the end, we all want to race, right? And if we crash, we crash, the race is over. But to end the race because you hit an animal on track is never nice, especially in the first 10 minutes.’

Former Supercars driver Maro Engel has guided Team GMR to victory during the chaotic 12 Hour race.

Engel’s No 888 Mercedes crossed the finish line first at Mount Panorama, with the German claiming victory with co-drivers Mikael Grenier and Maxime Martin on Sunday.

The factory-backed Mercedes outfit won the 262-lap marathon by 1.036 seconds ahead of the No 86 Team High Class Racing Porsche in second.

Legendary MotoGP rider Valentino Rossi was third in the No 26 Team WRT BMW, after finishing second last year.

Engel and his team claim victory after qualifying 29th out of the 34 cars – setting a new record for the lowest starting position to win the endurance race.

‘I’ve waited a long time for this,’ Engel, who raced for Supercars outfit Erebus in 2013, told Fox Sports.

‘It’s every bit as special as I dreamt it would be.’

One-time Supercars champion Will Brown led the No 183 Jamec Racing-Team MPC Audi to fourth in front of 55,231 fans.

The race was suspended under the red flag for an hour after then-leader Ralf Aron’s No 77 Mercedes burst into flames following a collision with the No 79 Porsche of Johannes Zelger.

Unaware Zelger had spun to a halt after the bend at Forrest Elbow, Aron obliterated his car after rocketing into the Porsche with three hours and 40 minutes remaining.

Aron’s No 77 Mercedes wasn’t the only car to be engulfed in flames, with Supercars driver James Golding suffering a similar fate.

Blanchard Racing Team driver Golding had failed to recover after brushing the barrier on the run to McPhillamy Park, resulting in a heavy airborne collision against the concrete wall.

Aron, Golding, and Zelger were able to exit their cars, with Aron taken to hospital in Orange for further assessment.

Tickford ace Cam Waters had snared pole position in the No 222 Scott Taylor Motorsport Mercedes with co-drivers Thomas Randle and defending Supercars champion Chaz Mostert.

But the all-Australian line-up was ruled out with less than an hour on the clock, after Mostert collided with Supercars rookie Jayden Ojeda in No 2 Team Tigani Motorsport Mercedes.