Chris van der Drift has crashed out of the second race of the seventh round of the Superleague Formula at Brands Hatch over the weekend. The race was ended prematurely by a red flag after van der Drift (Olympiacos) suffered a massive accident while challenging for fifth place in the closing stages.
The young New Zealander had driven superbly to climb from 12th on the grid to sixth but as he hit his push-to-pass button on the back straight to move further up the order he went over the right-rear wheel of Julien Jousse’s AS Roma car and flipped through the air.
As the medics attended to him and he was taken to hospital with a suspected broken leg, Karthikeyan became the 11th different winner in 14 feature races when he was declared the victor after an excellent drive from pole position. At this stage there is no update on van der Drift's condition.
While the race was red flagged it meant that van der Drift was credited with sixth place. Earlier he finished seventh in race one.
John Martin (Beijing Guoan) netted €100,000 by winning the five-lap dash-for-the-cash Super Final in round 7 of Superleague Formula by Sonangol at Brands Hatch, while the topsy-turvy title fight swung back in favour of Yelmer Buurman (AC Milan).
After winning race 1 in dominant style earlier in the day, Martin finished down in 16th in the reversed-grid second race after losing a front wing during contact in the hectic first few moments, but came back in style in the final event.
Van der Drift's team, Olympiacos is fourth on the table with 406 points, 57 behind leader AC Milan with five more rounds in the championship.
