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During the WERA Open Superstock Novice race at Roebling Road Raceway on Sunday, a tragedy almost occurred. The video has gone viral, but what also needs to go viral is a renewed commitment to safety to make sure incidents like this don't happen.
In the final laps of the Superstock race, two racers narrowly dodged an ambulance that began driving across the front straight. Both riders went down after avoiding the ambulance at high rates of speed, and miraculously, were not seriously injured from the incident.
In the POV video posted, viewers can see both the Turn Eight and Turn Nine corner stands and there are no flags being displayed. At the start/finish line it appears race control is waving a flag, possibly a waving yellow or white flag, but not in time to properly warn a racer of the impending threat of the ambulance on track. Therefore, both racers had no warning of any potential dangers on the track.
The comments on the sites where the video has been reposted are full of speculation, with blame being assigned to some or all parties organizing the event. WERA, the racing organization, issued the following statement:
"On March 19th in the Open Superstock race at Roebling Road Raceway, there was an incident on the front straight involving an ambulance and two riders. The ambulance was leaving the track to transport an injured rider from an earlier incident. Due to a miscommunication between the ambulance driver and race officials the ambulance crossed in front of two motorcycles. Both riders did fall but walked away from the crash. WERA is investigating what led to this incident and will be instituting any necessary changes to prevent the same thing from happening in the future."
My take, as a racer and a corner marshal
As a club racer, track-day rider, and corner marshal, watching this video unfold is chilling, to say the least. What is more concerning to me however, is that I do not believe the Roebling incident is isolated. I have witnessed a leniency in safety begin to creep into track day and racing organizations across the nation. There is hesitation to throw red flags because "customers are angry they are not getting enough track time" or "it is not bad enough to red flag the race."
If there has ever been a call to reckoning on this lapse of a safety-first attitude in these organizations, surely this must be it. I am not suggesting that this is the attitude of WERA racing, a long-standing racing club organization whose history and popularity are deep. It is important to withhold judgment until a full investigation is complete.
What I am suggesting is that every single race track organization, from the track management down to each individual corner marshal and EMT, should watch this video and make it a personal mission of theirs that this never happens on their watch.
