Medical car crash close to tragedy

The former racing driver Alex Ribeiro had a split-second escape from death in a bizarre accident during the warm-up for the Brazilian grand prix when the Mercedes medical car he had been driving was hit by Nick Heidfeld's Sauber.

Ribeiro, 53, who raced for the March formula one team in 1977, had just opened the door of his car to help attend to an accident in which Enrique Bernoldi crashed his Arrows when Heidfeld squeezed past at over 100mph, smashing into the medical car's door and twisting it out of shape.

Had Heidfeld arrived on the scene just a second later Ribeiro could have been climbing out of the Mercedes with catastrophic and tragic results.

The incident occurred two minutes from the end of the half-hour practice session, after Bernoldi had hit the barrier heavily coming out of the first left-hand corner after the start line.

The Brazilian driver was just lifting himself out of the car as officials threw all the warning lights around the circuit to red, indicating that the session was being stopped immediately.

The medical car, which Ribeiro has driven regularly at grands prix over the past three seasons, accelerated under the cover of the red flags across the circuit and parked just ahead of the damaged Arrows.

Heidfeld was just braking for the corner when he saw the repeater warning lights flashing on the dashboard of his Sauber, a safety measure that was introduced on all formula one cars last summer, but was unable to slow his car sufficiently to avoid the accident.

"I didn't see any yellow warning flags as I came into the corner at the end of the start-finish straight," said Heidfeld. "A Ferrari in front of me took part of my view and as it moved to the right I suddenly saw Bernoldi as the team warned me over the radio that the session was being stopped.

"By then it was too late - although I was hard on the brakes, the only way I could get through was to the left of the Arrows. I knew it was my only chance."

The Sauber team manager Beat Zehnder commented: "It is clearly the duty of the medical car to help as fast as possible at the scene of any accident. It was just bad luck."

It was the second time Ribeiro had been involved in an accident with the medical car, the first two years ago at Monaco.

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