After experiencing an accident whose video went viral, Sean Gelael finally revealed the cause of the accident that made him and Bambang Soesatyo somersault many times at the 2021 National Sprint Rally Championship in Meikarta, West Java, last Saturday (27/11).
The Citroen C3 R5 rally car driven by Sean Gelael and Bamsoet, Bambang Soesatyo's nickname, who is also the Chairman of PP IMI, rolled over during SS2 of the National Championship Sprint Rally in Meikarta.
Luckily, both Sean Geael and Bamsoet managed to escape injury after the violent accident.
At the time, Sean admitted that he did not know what caused the accident, although higher speed was suspected to be the main culprit.
However, this was disproved when the son of former national racer Ricardo Gelael opened the telemetry data and videos from the accident.
"Honestly, before opening the telemetry I thought I was going faster than before, but apparently not," Sean said in the official Team Jagonya Ayam broadcast as quoted by Gridoto.com, Monday (29/11).
He said he was traveling 110 km/h at the scene of the accident during a testing session or shakedown on Friday, November 26, 2021.
Then slowed down to 107 km/h on SS1 due to muddy conditions after the rain and 109 km/h on SS2 after the conditions dried up.
"In conclusion, my speed is more or less the same," said the man who will compete in the Endurance Racing World Championship with W Racing Team (WRT) in 2022.
The condition of the car before the accident was also confirmed to be excellent, as well as the set up of the Citroen C3 R5 rally car, which participated in the WRC2 class.
"The damage is due to the impact of the collision, not before the collision," Ricardo Gelael said on the same occasion.
Given that the WRC event was not held on a track with different ground surfaces like in Meikarta yesterday, WRC cars cannot be tuned for two different conditions.
"In Meikarta, the track length is 5.3 km where 5 km is asphalt and the rest is dirt, so it is natural that the car settings are for asphalt," added Nuno Pinto as Sean's coach.
"With a setting like that, if there is a change in trajectory in the dirt area, it can certainly affect anything, including accidents," he continued.
But after replaying the videos of the crash, Sean and his team discovered what most likely caused the crash.
That is the appearance of an additional mound of earth a very short distance from the initial mound in the area where Sean and Bamsoet landed, and launched their car into the air.
"Well, that extra bump is what I didn't get a report on because during SS1 from the video that we reopened it looks like it's not there," Sean said.
He admitted that he had seen firsthand the condition of the track in the morning before SS1 using a motorcycle and there had been no change.
Sean also did not deny that the new bumps could appear due to natural processes such as the soil starting to dry out in the gravel segment of the SS2 track.
"But someone should have informed all participants that the track had changed, we didn't get that notification," Sean said.
Sean admitted that he did not want to point out who was right or wrong in the incident.
He understands that racing, especially rallying, carries a high risk of accidents with high consequences.
"Hopefully with this incident we in Indonesia can learn a lot about how to create safe conditions, whether during racing or regular driving on the highway," Sean concluded.
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