After the one involving Luis Salom last year, the Barcelona-Catalunya circuit experienced new drama, this time during the 24 Hours of Catalonia.
Enric Saurí unfortunately lost his life there and the team Més Competició, one of the teams taking part in these 24 Hours of Catalunya, launched a petition so that the Barcelona circuit improves the escape route at turn #1 which is located at the end of the box straight.
Despite the incessant efforts of all stakeholders to improve safety, tragedies are and will always be too frequent, both in competition and on the road. Nevertheless, they at least have the utility of being studied to learn from them, as was the case for Luis Salom and the attempt at a new chicanery that resulted.
In the case of Enric Saurí, everything is much more obscure since the official press release only indicates “the driver went off the track when entering the turn of the first curve, crossing the loophole diagonally and hitting the protections. Enric Saurí suffered a significant shock and presented multiple critical injuries”.
The explanation therefore reveals a pilot who makes an error on his own and will crash against the protections.
For the moment, the Spanish daily El Pais suggests that an investigation seems open while this accident followed the very strange one, having involved among others Manuel David Tirado exactly the same place after half an hour of running, and having led to theappearance of the safety car to repair the protections after a tragedy that was narrowly avoided (the pilot escaped with a fractured femur).
In our humble opinion, this would indeed require at least some clarification, if only out of respect for the deceased pilot and so as not, in the future, to increase in this turn a list already including the names of Xavier Fabra (2005) Carlos Vargas (2007) and Enric Sauri (2017) ...
