“I’ll be back!” Exclaimed young German driver Sophia Flörsh after a lengthy operation, who survived a horrific accident at the Macau Formula 3 Grand Prix on Sunday.
“I survived the operation that lasted eleven hours. I hope to do better from now on, ”he wrote on his Facebook page. “I will be back!”.
The 17-year-old German said she still had to spend “a few more days” in Macau before she could move abroad.
Sophia Flörsch also thanked the Grand Prix medical services for their “encouraging and reassuring words in the hard minutes spent in the car” just after the accident.
“I also think of all those who were affected by the accident, I hope that everyone is well,” he added.
The young woman underwent a bone graft to repair a fractured spine after the accident, in which her vehicle flew off Sunday and crashed into a cabin.
The images of the accident went around the world. As it was traveling at 200 km / h and reaching the «Lisbon» curve, Flörsch’s Dallara Mercedes hit a car, went over the security fences and destroyed a photographers booth, before falling into an area where there were track marshals.
The International Automobile Federation (FIA) has opened an investigation but the institution’s race director, Charlie Whiting, said it was “too early” to say what caused the accident.
“It is too early to try to establish the cause” of the accident, Whiting told AFP. “We know why you initially lost control of your vehicle, but we must do a very careful analysis.”
“It takes several weeks to analyze the data from the car, analyze the video very carefully and try to establish exactly how the two vehicles came into contact. We have to get it right, ”Whiting added.
Three riders have died at the Macau circuit in recent years: British rider Daniel Hegarty in 2017 and Portuguese rider Luis Carreira and Hong Kong rider Phillip Yau in 2012.
Whiting said these deaths were not the fault of the circuit. Macau is not a dangerous circuit. In urban circuits the risk of accident is greater than in a normal circuit but there is no evidence to say that the circuit is dangerous, “he said.
“Guardrails and crash barriers have been systematically updated in recent years with significant improvements in several areas,” he concluded. afp