An enormous pile-up has brought action in the final race of this year’s Gold Coast 500 to a grinding halt on the streets of Surfers Paradise.
Just four laps into race 32 of the Supercars Championship, the red flag was drawn when James Golding triggered arguably the biggest crash of the season.
A mistake by the PremiAir Racing driver through the Beach Chicane resulted in his Holden Commodore getting crossed up before clobbering a tyre bundle.
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Golding spun before the trailing pack of cars piled into his car.
James Courtney, who recently celebrated the arrival of his newborn son, nearly rolled his car.
Among the wreckage lay Macauley Jones’ car, which began to pour smoke from the bonnet before bursting into flames.
Despite nursing a sore wrist, Golding quickly got out of his car before retrieving a track-side fire extinguisher – as did Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Broc Feeney.
Lee Holdsworth’s car also burst into flames as he drove away from the scene of the crash before pulling over to the side of the road.
More than half the field was involved in the incident in one way or another.
Thomas Randle, Nick Percat, Jack Smith, Tim Slade, Broc Feeney, Todd Hazelwood, Bryce Fullwood, Andre Heimgartner and Jack Le Brocq all suffered varying degrees of damage.
It marked the sixth incident this year in a race to result in a red flag.
“That’s a horrible moment then for James Golding,” said Supercars commentator Neil Crompton.
“And then all this lot have got nowhere to go. They have literally arrived in the middle of a gigantic accident.
“It starts with James Golding tripping over right here, gets it crossed up, launches across the top of the kerb, lucky not to roll it, and that has had the effect of tripping over Randle.
“The rest of them are doing 150km/h and they drive smack bang into the middle of a gigantic mess.
“At least he gets to scoot out the other side,” Crompton said of Randle.
“But what’s gone on behind him at this stage is high-grade warfare.”
The race resumed half an hour later once the wreckage had been cleaned up.
Courtney, Randle, Hazelwood, Golding, Feeney, Holdsworth, Percat and Jones failed to take the restart.
Dick Johnson Racing’s Will Davison led the race after four laps ahead of champion-elect Shane van Gisbergen of Triple Eight Race Engineering and Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Chaz Mostert.
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