A father says his daughters were left “anxious and rattled” after a wheel tore off a sprint car and flew through a fence into spectators during a race near Geelong on Friday night.<\/p>\n
More than 100 people were at the Fireball Derby at Avalon Raceway, that started at 6pm.<\/p>\n
During one race at about 9pm a sprint car suddenly shuddered to a halt when one of its front wheels detached and tore through the barrier, into the crowd, where dozens of people were seated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The wheel flew through the crowd at about three hours into the race. (Source: Clay-Per-View)<\/p>\n
A parts failure caused the wheel and tyre to disconnect, Avalon Raceway management said.<\/p>\n
Two people were affected, including a volunteer who was treated on scene and a second person who did not require treatment, they said.<\/p>\n
Dale Hills was seated only metres away from the incident with his wife and two daughters when he said people around him began screaming.<\/p>\n
“It was coming straight for me and my family and then it bounced more to our right, so it almost went around us,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Hills said the wheel bounced towards the back wall, hitting at least one person.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I saw somebody in a deck chair who tried to move out of the way but didn’t have anywhere to go, [it] went straight into a group of people there,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The sprint car lost a wheel as it was entering a turn on the Avalon Raceway. (Source: Clay-Per-View)<\/p>\n
Mr Hills and his family left the event an hour early to calm his 10 and 12-year-old daughters who were left panicking and in hysterics.<\/p>\n
“My 12-year-old didn’t sleep much last night she was quite anxious and rattled by the event,” he said.<\/p>\n
Avalon Raceway Speedway Operations Manager David Mills said\u00a0the team would review the incident, including the catch fence, on-track failure and after-care of those affected.<\/p>\n
“Avalon Raceway will continue its review of the incident, implementing change as required to avoid another incident of this nature,” he said.<\/p>\n
“While also continuing to provide high-level motorsport entertainment with the total understanding that motorsport racing can be dangerous.”<\/p>\n
Organisers paused the event to patch up the fence, telling attendees to temporarily vacate the area, before resuming shortly after.<\/p>\n
Commentators said the fence was only upgraded last season to increase its height and angle the top section.<\/p>\n
St John Ambulance have been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A father says his daughters were left “anxious and rattled” after a wheel tore off a sprint car…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,190798,190801,190799,13658,3899,25731,85,190797,190800],"class_list":{"0":"post-344718","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-avalon","11":"tag-avalon-raceway","12":"tag-fireball-derby","13":"tag-geelong","14":"tag-injury","15":"tag-spectators","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-sprinter-car","18":"tag-tyre"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}