A second driver has been killed in a crash during qualifying at the Macau Grand Prix, one day after a motorcyclist died from his injuries.
Race organisers said Hong Kong touring car driver Phillip Yau Wing-choi died Friday. On Thursday, Portuguese motorcycle rider Luis Filipe de Sousa Carreira died in a crash during qualifying for his event.
Yau, who drove for the Look Fong team, crashed on the Mandarin Bend at the Guia Circuit.
Yau’s Chevrolet Cruze went wide as it came around the right-hand bend and slammed into the crash barriers on the left side of the track. The car, with its left side crumpled, scraped along the barrier and flames burst out from the bottom.
Rescuers had to cut open the car to remove Yau, organisers said. He was taken to a hospital but declared dead 27 minutes after arrival.
Despite the two fatalities, organisers defended the safety on the street circuit and said none of the weekend’s remaining events would be cancelled.
“I don’t think there is any question about the track, it has existed as it is for 60 years,” race co-ordinator Joao Manuel Costa Antunes told the South China Morning Post .
