motorcentral.com

The Race of Champions is held every year to see who is the best driver regardless of whichever flavour of motorsport in which they currently compete.  This year, Heikki Kovalainen (a previous winner) was called up to the plate and unfortunately things went front for him.

After clipping the barrier around one of the final turns, he seems to have punctured a tyre which has sent him spinning out of control into the barrier.  While the incident didn't look particularly bad, it was enough to send him to hospital for precautionary checks.

Heikki alluded to the fact that he has a jammed throttle as well which probably caused him to initially hit the barrier which resulted in his spin.

Portuguese GT racer Filipe Albuquerque was eventually declared the winner, beating out seven time world rally champion Sebastien Loeb in the final.

Full credit to the guys at at Red Bull, the build one hell of a car.  Not only is it quick but seeing as Mark walked away from this crash without too many worries, it's a tribute to the quality of the safety engineering, particularly when the nose cone had already broken off before Mark slammed into the tyre barrier.

Heikki Kovalainen was the driver of the Lotus that was involved in the incident.  In my view, this was entirely Heikki's fault.  He has come under criticism for racing Mark when obviously the speed difference between the cars was too much to over come.  I personally don't have too many problems with this attitude.  If you are racing for position, then you are racing for position and you shouldn't have to just give the place up.  Whether he should have given up the position anyway is debatable, however, what I think needs further investigation is the blocking style employed.  Heikki goes right to block down the straight.  Mark, obviously wanting to stay in the slipstream, follows him down the dirty side of the track.  But then it all goes wrong when Heikki starts to go left to take the driving line, hesitates and then starts to go left again when Mark runs into the back of him.  As far as I'm concerned, this is moving twice (maybe 3 times) and as we all know, that isn't on.