Tributes are flowing for drag racer Sam Fenech who died after a horror high-speed crash in Queensland on Saturday night.
A multi-agency investigation will be launched into the cause of the fatal accident which was witnessed by shocked onlookers at the Willowbank Raceway in Ipswich.
Confronting footage taken from the stands shows the car sliding, before flipping and becoming airborne, crossing the track and smashing over the fence.
The vehicle crashed into a camera tower, sending the camera operator was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Queensland Ambulance Service said the patient was in a stable condition.
The accident occurred during Willowbank’s New Year Nitro drag racing event.
“It is with great sadness that Top Fuel Racing Australia announces that Sam Fenech, driver of the Fabietti Racing Doorslammer, has succumbed to injuries suffered in a racing accident at Willowbank Raceway and passed away this evening,” said a statement on Willowbank Raceway’s Facebook page.
“We send our love and support to the Fenech family and the whole team at Fabietti Racing.”
Queensland Police’s forensic crash unit is working with Workplace Health and Safety to investigate, and people are being asked to avoid Champions Way, where the racetrack is.
Members of the drag racing community posted tributes online.
Todd Hazlewood said he was “absolutely lost for words”.
Dee Ekert Potenza said drag racing had lost “a true legend”.
“You were also such a gentleman. May you Rest In Peace Sam Fenech,” she wrote.
A member of a camera operator Facebook group, Brett Ramsey, said it was one of the worst accidents he had seen in more than 50 years covering motorsport.
“I’m always very reluctant to have crew down at that end of the strip,” he wrote.
“If something goes wrong it goes wrong big – and this was huge.”
-with AAP
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