The rescue team does not know how to use fire extinguishers, exposing the last shortcoming of China's automobile sector.
A car accident made the whole world think China's motorsport scene is nothing more than a "shoddy amateur outfit".
One of China's top domestic auto racing events, China GT, saw a major crash break out on September 5: Car No.7 and Car No.33 lost control while dueling and veered off the track, before slamming into the side of Car No.91. The latter's fuel tank was suspected to have been ruptured, and the car instantly turned into a fireball. Fortunately, the driver barely survived the incident.
As a sport with extremely fierce confrontation, collisions are not rare in racing, but the absurd operations of the organizer after the accident are enough to go down in history.
01 Farcial Rescue
Shortly after Car No.91 burst into flames and stopped by the side of the track, its British driver Oli Millroy almost lost consciousness and could not escape in time, getting completely surrounded by raging fire. About 10 seconds after the fire started, no track staff had arrived at the scene, leaving Oli being scorched alone in the car. The full set of standard protective suits for racing drivers can only provide 11 to 20 seconds of fire resistance, and he was already on the verge of that limit.
Instead, another driver, Dutch racer Rocco Hartog, saw the accident ahead and did not hesitate to drop out of the race to get off and offer help. Calculated from the lap time gap on the event leaderboard, it was already more than 10 seconds after the collision when he stopped his car. Rocco first tried to approach from the main driver's side, but the fire was too fierce, then he moved to the passenger side, quickly removed the car door and tried to drag Oli out. But the car body was already burning hot and impossible to touch, so Rocco, extremely anxious, shouted loudly by the fence looking for a fire extinguisher.
It was not until then that a staff member trotted over slowly. 30 seconds had passed since Rocco parked his car, and at least 40 seconds since the collision and ignition. He handed the fire extinguisher to Rocco, then turned around and ran away, with no one knowing where he went.
Then a second staff member appeared in the frame, carrying another fire extinguisher. But surprisingly, this man seemed to have no idea how to use it at all, fumbling for a long time without pulling out the safety pin. He spent a full 30 seconds picking up and putting down the extinguisher repeatedly, not spraying a single drop of extinguishing agent...
More than 70 seconds after the accident, the rescue vehicle finally arrived at the scene, while another staff member walked slowly forward with a fire extinguisher. By that time, Rocco had already suppressed the flames around the cockpit on his own, and dragged the seriously injured Oli out of the car. The rescue team that finally got ready to work could only spray the scrapped Ferrari race car that was already burnt out.
This rescue speed can no longer be described as slow, it is so unhurried as if the rescuers were taking a casual stroll. Without Rocco's brave rescue, Oli would probably have ended up as a memorial monument next to the Shanghai International Circuit.
In contrast, the ceiling of the racing world, F1: during the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix, driver Romain Grosjean's car crashed through the guardrail at 221km/h and broke into two pieces, instantly catching fire. Only 11 seconds later, the medical car arrived at the burning scene, and at the 28th second, Grosjean successfully jumped out of the fire and received medical treatment under the fire suppression cover and support of the rescue team.
No one expects China GT to achieve the same lightning-fast rescue as F1, but as one of the top GT events in China, it should at least be professional. The first official staff showed up more than 40 seconds after the crash, the rescuers could not operate fire extinguishers and hesitated to move forward, which is so absurd that the whole world's racing fans are mocking it as a shoddy amateur outfit.
Of course, the on-site staff should not be blamed for this. The first two people who arrived were wearing ordinary short-sleeves without any fire-resistant suits. If they rushed close to the burning car, they would only get burned themselves, so it was better to stand far away and not get in Rocco's way.
The stupid mistake of failing to open a fire extinguisher is obviously caused by the organizer's complete lack of training. This is not an advanced math problem, pulling out the safety pin is a trivial operation that anyone can master after a quick demonstration. All in all, the responsibility for the failed rescue should fall on the China GT event committee and its organizer.
Some netizens broke the news that the rescue personnel hired by the event were actually outsourced daily paid temporary workers, just brought in to make up numbers. If that is true, it makes perfect sense: why risk your life for only 60 yuan a day?
What made the drivers even angrier is that the on-site announcer of China GT blatantly lied: after the accident, the live broadcast nonchalantly claimed that "the driver left the car on his own", but the truth is Oli was dragged out of the fire by Rocco, and was barely alive lying on the ground. The driver of the involved Car No.33, Yang Baijie, also revealed online that the event committee summoned them to arbitration after the accident, never mentioning its own rescue failures, trying to shift the blame to the drivers to mitigate negative public opinion, and the ambulance arrived 15 minutes after the accident because the driver was asleep and no one could wake him up even by tapping the window. Multiple teams have withdrawn from the event over dissatisfaction with the safety measures.
The official response from China GT claimed that the event configuration meets the national-level event standards, but there is room for improvement in meticulous management... An incident that nearly took a life was brushed off so lightly, isn't that absurd?
If the event committee wanted to calm things down, they should be glad that the injured driver was Oli, not the two big star drivers on the track.
Car No.85 was driven by Wang Yibo, and Car No.86 was driven by Daniel Wu. If those two had been trapped in the burning car and roasted for more than a minute, the event committee would have been top of the trending list for days and completely torn apart by public outrage.
The bad news is that Daniel Wu, who is always mild-tempered, could not hold back this time, and publicly released a video to condemn the event committee for unprofessional rescue and a disgraceful official statement.
02 The Wasteland of Racing Culture
In fact, this kind of stupid mistake is not unprecedented in China's domestic auto racing events.
On May 26, 2026, at SS8 stage of the Trans-Taklimakan Rally, 37-year-old driver Zhang Xiujun had an accident: his car flipped upside down and fell into an inconspicuous puddle by the side of the track, with muddy water pouring into the car. Zhang Xiujun was relatively short, his seat was adjusted high, so his head was submerged first and he quickly could not breathe. The co-driver was luckily stuck in a relatively wider space, with his head barely above the water, barely clinging to life.
How long did he hold on?
A full hour. In fact, all rally cars are equipped with satellite positioning devices, and the event committee system will send an alarm as soon as the car stops. As early as when the accident happened, many people saw Zhang Xiujun's name turn red on the event's big screen, but the rescue team took no action. The people who finally found them were the drivers of a car that happened to break down nearby. It was not until an hour after the accident that the official rescue team arrived, by which time Zhang Xiujun had already lost his life signs.
Many drivers and netizens questioned at that time that there were many similar small puddles along that section of the track, which looked unremarkable but extremely deadly. The event committee clearly never considered the possibility of a car falling into them, and did not make any emergency plans for such scenarios.
Speaking of karting races