Dubai 24 Hours champion dies in Australia crash

Dubai: British racing driver Sean Edwards, who was on the winning team at the Dubai 24 Hours endurance race for each of the last two years, has died in an accident during a private test at Queensland Raceway in Australia.

The 26-year-old was in a Porsche 996 as a passenger when it hit the barriers at the circuit on Tuesday. He had been leading the drivers’ championship of the Porsche Supercup series, all of the races which take place at Formula One events, meaning he would have raced at Abu Dhabi next month.

Edwards, who enjoyed success at Dubai Autodrome as part of the Abu Dhabi by Black Falcon team, is understood to have been killed instantly when the car left the track and impacted with a tyre wall on the outside of turn six at the track in Ipswich, 25 miles west of Brisbane.

The driver was extracted from the wreckage, which caught fire, by emergency services and was taken to intensive care with life-threatening injuries. It is understood it took three hours to remove the driver from the car.

Inspector Dave Preston of Queensland Police said it had been a difficult operation to get the men out of the mangled wreckage: “The fire and rescue had to do extensive work in relation to extracting and opening the vehicle up sufficiently to remove him, he was trapped for some time.”

The driver, who has yet to be named, was a 20-year-old Brisbane man. His family were understood to be trackside at the time and were distraught. He was pinned from the waist down in the wreckage for three hours after the crash that took place at 11.30am, after which he was airlifted to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital.

Edwards was the son of Guy Edwards, who competed in Formula One and the 24 Hours of Le Mans during the 1970s and 1980s and was one of the drivers who helped remove Niki Lauda from his burning car at the 1976 German Grand Prix.

Edwards himself had won the European GT3 championship in 2006 and gone on to race in the FIA GT Championship, the American Le Mans Series, the Le Mans 24 hours and the Porsche Supercup and Porsche Supercup Germany series.

He had been having a very successful year — as well as winning in Dubai, he was also a winner for the Black Falcon team at the Nurburgring 24 and took the Long Beach round of the American Le Mans series in the GTC class.

Racing for the Allyouneed by Project 1 team in this year’s Porsche Supercup, he had victories in Spain, Monaco and Hungary and was leading the championship by 18 points with two races at Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina due to have taken place on November 2 and 3.

He had also recently taken part in the making of the film Rush, recounting the 1976 F1 battle between James Hunt and Niki Lauda, advising on the racing scenes and in some parts portraying his father.

— With inputs from Guardian News and Media Ltd