Disaster struck for Aston Martin on Friday as one of their car doors was blown clean off midway through the Qatar 1812km World Endurance Championship race. Marco Sorensen was behind the wheel of the #009 Aston Martin Valkyrie when the gull-wing door opened at high speed. And his race engineer was quickly onto him about remedying the situation.
“Close the door or bring the car in for repair,” he told the Dane. But as Sorensen was unable to reach across, he was forced to try and nurse the car back round to the pits in bizarre circumstances.
WEC commentator Martin Haven said: “You are going to want to come back as quickly as you can, but like with a puncture, as slowly as possible because if you rip out the mountings for the door…
“Those of a certain vintage may remember doors blowing off 956 Porches in the early Group C days. They have probably changed the drinks bottle or pumped something into the oil system and not latched it all the way closed.”
Haven’s co-commentator, Graham Goodwin, chimed in: “He’s going to have to be really careful here because he’s on the wrong side of the car, he doesn’t want the air to rip it off.”
After a full minute of bombing around the track, the door finally gave up and was blown off its hinges by the wind. That left Aston Martin with more work to do to get it track-ready once Sorensen had returned to the pits, and pundit Anthony Davidson was not impressed by Sorensen’s ‘irresponsible’ driving.
“There you go, door off,” he said. “He is driving way too fast. Irresponsibly too quick for what was going on there. They’re not here to win today, they’re here to finish and to have as clean a race as possible. The team should have been onto him to just slow down. We all spotted it.”
Sorensen’s gull-wing door mishap came 32 laps into the 335-lap race. By the 74th lap, another controversy occurred when Cadillac driver and former F1 world champion Jenson Button was accidentally rammed into by his own team-mate while leading the race.
Button and Alex Lynn were making great progress three hours in before making contact behind the safety car. There was significant damage to both cars as they were forced back to the pits so engineers could assess the damage.
