Racing Driver Fined €5000 After She Shared Footage Of Near Miss With Course Car
During a practice session for the ADAC Formula 4 Championship at the Oschersleben circuit in Germany, a car got stranded in the gravel and the session was red-flagged so it could be safely removed.
However, a course vehicle was a little bit too keen to get over to the stranded car and crossed the track without looking…right as Mucke Motorsport driver Sophia Floersch was coming around the corner.
Yowsers, that was close! Even though Floersch had slowed down because of the red flag the closing speed is immense and she only just managed to swerve out of the way in time. If she’d have hit it…well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
Understandably Floersch was pretty shaken up by the incident, and speaking to German publication Bild she said: “I was in shock, I cried, could hardly calm down. Luckily, my family was with me.”
Afterwards she shared the video of what happened on social media. After all, this sort of thing really shouldn’t be happening in 2017.
However, instead of questioning why the vehicle crossed the track in the first place the organisers decided it was more important to slap the 16-year-old with a €5000 fine for sharing the video online without permission, which is a breach of the championship rules. The ruling itself says:
It is forbidden to publish any footage taken during an event, unless specifically approved by the ADAC. The stewards shall punish any infringement with fines of at least €20,000.
Though it was later confirmed by the ADAC that it would ‘only’ be €5000 initially, it could be increased to the full €20,000 at a later date.
That’s still a massive amount of money for a young driver in a junior series however, and despite the rules you have to wonder if she’d have been punished if it wasn’t a video which shows the series in such a bad light.
Either way the breach of media regulations shouldn’t have been main focus of the organisers here. The priority should have been ensuring that something as potentially dangerous as a course car crossing a circuit doesn’t happen again.
Comments
They should give her money back and give her race entry fee back as an apology for a crappy decision. Also need an investigstion as to why the course car was crossing the track.
Yeah exactly
The irony is the incident would not have garnered nearly as much attention if they hadn’t decided to fine her. In an attempt to silence and dissuade, they sent it to the front page.
The SUV wanted to get some of that F4 action
I don’t really see how the two issues (one of safety fail and the other of the video fail) are related. She’s guily of contract breach, simple as that. I’m pretty sure there are significantly better ways to deal with a traumatic event than posting it online, which was probably done for her own publicity anyway. Sorry for seeming insensitive and all but the fact the organizer should reevaluate the safety is obvious enough and completely unrelated
She breached the contract, yes, but it was in good cause. This is the kind of situation that needs to be highlighted in motorsport world because it could have easily ended in tragedy, and I’m pretty sure we dont want to see repeat of what happened to Jules Bianchi. Organizers should look at the safety of their events rather than penalizing drivers for putting out the video of a situation in which driver was close to suffering serious injury or even death. Right now they are trying to wipe it under the carpet and forget about it, and thats the last thing they should do.
She should take them to court for gross negligence.
Here is the link to protest against these Gerries
https://www.adac.de/kontakt/motorsport/motorsport.aspx?ComponentId=118079&SourcePageId=0
Is that you, Force India?
BWT sponsors. last year there also was a Formula 4 or something that looked exactly like a Force India
Well she at least should be fined for uploading a video in 144p!! I have recorded better videos with a potato!
As a person on a tight data plan, 144p is my best friend
Its so you can’t see the marshals wildly waving red flags
Jeez, who’s running F4, CNN??
This doesn’t have to do with politics, nor “fake news”.
That’s ridiculous. I think she should have the right to post a video like this that highlights the safety problems of the situation. I can’t help wondering if she was fined just to get revenue - does that sound familiar cough speeding fines cough xD?
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