Mies Escapes Injury After Kangaroo Strike Ends Ford’s Race

Image: Bathurst 12H

Chris Mies has escaped injury after an early end to the Meguiar’s Bathurst 12 Hour when his HRT Ford Mustang GT3 struck a kangaroo.

The two-time race winner, who was running inside the top-ten in the opening minutes of the race that began in full darkness, collided with a kangaroo on the high-speed Conrod Straight, resulting in “irreparable damage” in a statement provided by Ford Racing.

Mies climbed from the heavily damaged Mustang GT3 under his own power and returned to the paddock without injury.

“Unfortunately I hit a kangaroo, so the race is over,” the German driver said in a social media post.

“It’s a shame because the HRT Ford Mustang was really good. That’s the way it is. We are out of the race.”

The Mustang GT3, which Mies was due to share driving duties with Dennis Olsen and Broc Feeney, was making its highly anticipated Bathurst 12 Hour debut.

HRT managing director Ulrich Fritz characterized the team’s early end to the race as an “unlucky situation.”

“We hit a kangaroo that had just jumped on the race track after about 20 minutes,” he told Sportscar365. “Nothing you can do about it at 245 km/h. Luckily nobody got injured, besides the animal.

“It’s just bad luck, you can’t change it. All we can do is come back stronger next year.

“We would have loved to show more here on the Mountain. There were so many fans supporting us and it would have been great to give something back. But this is the name of the game. Racing is sometimes cruel.”

Several other cars, including the No. 32 WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO of Kelvin van der Linde and Jayden Ojeda’s No. 6 Tigani Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, also collected the kangaroo in the incident.

The BMW continued with right-front bodywork damage although the Mercedes-AMG has made multiple trips to the garage in an attempt to fix the nose of its car.

Despite the situation, HRT’s Fritz said there were positives to take away from both the German squad and car’s maiden outing at Mount Panorama.

“We have learned a lot from this weekend and we made incredible steps from session to session,” he said.

“The other competitors have been coming here for ten or 12 years and we were just learning from session to session how to cope with the car.

“Finally yesterday it came to life. It’s just a shame we cannot continue, but there’s nothing you can do about it.

“The Mercedes-AMGs looked strong, so it’s difficult to say, and you need the good luck, which we didn’t have this time.

“If everything had played into our hands, maybe we could have fought for the podium, but it’s just ‘could have, would have.'”

Jamie Klein contributed to this report

Source: Sports Car 365