Colin McRae injured in Corsican Rally

From Autosport.com :

McRae injured in Corsica crash

Colin McRae has broken his cheek and bruised his lung when he crashed out of the Rally Corsica. The Scot went off the road 4km into stage 10, hit a tree and was trapped in the car for around 40 minutes. He was initially unconcious, but came round shortly afterwards and was airlifted to hospital. Co-driver Nicky Grist is OK.

http://www.autosport.com/img/store/300900-053155A.jpg




For the latest news...

http://www.fia.com/homepage/rallynews.htm

This sounds really bad, is he likely to be out for the rest of the year??

I understand he's got a broken cheekbone and a bruised lung, is badly shaken but is now out of hospital. Nicky Grist is badly shocked apparently.

Makes me wonder. Between McRae's broken cheekbone and the facial injuries sustained last week by a NASCAR truck driver, isn't it time that NASCAR and the FIA outlawed open-faced helmets completely. As far as I know, Auriol and Kankunnen are the only closed-face helmet wearers in the WRC and in Nascar, most WC drivers wear closed-face, closed-visor helmets. If they can do it, so can all the rally drivers.

I waas thinking of making a post along exactly the same lines as Bob. Full faced helmets are a must.

It's not surprising Nicky Grist is in shock - he usually is, especially has Colin Mcrae a) seems to have accidents with alarming regularity and b) never has a small accident. Look at last year - was it New Zealand where he had that massive roll at 100+ mph.

I really do hope that he's OK, because he's a great driver, but I do think that if he's not careful Ford will end up telling him the same as Subaru, where he either stops wrecking cars or leaves.

That said, if you don't go quickly you won't win anything, and you never know what limits are until you've gone over them. But in the words of Murray Walker, to finish first, first you have to finish

Oh, and I agree with the full-face helmet bit completely. I suspect there'll now be some hurried rule-changing...

On the safety note, check this out:
http://www.speedvision.com/pub/articles/racing/rally_off_road/001002a.html

(I know we're not supposed to put URLs, but I don't feel like typing all of that.) :)

Colin is having surgery this week on his cheek and it is possible (probably 50/50) that he'll be at San Remo.