Fredy Barth unscathed after qualifying crash

Fredy Barth crashed out of qualifying at Macau and brought out the red flag, as he did in FP2 last year, but only the car was the casualty this time after Barth’s nasty experience in 2011.

The Swiss-driver is in his second of two races, racing in the SEAT León WTCC, equipped with the latest SEAT Sport engine and forms part of the four-strong SUNRED Engineering squad this weekend, who are fighting for the honours in the independent teams’ and drivers’ championships.

Barth ended Q1 with four minutes to go with his SEAT León WTCC buried in the wall at Police, with front-end damage which the SUNRED mechanics will have until Sunday to repair, but Barth was able to walk away uninjured.

“(The car) took quite a hard hit, but it’s not that bad I think,” said Barth to TouringCarTimes. “It’s a bit unfortunate because I was really fast, the car was great, I felt really comfortable with the track. At first I gave a tow to Pepe (Oriola) to get him into Q2 as he’s fighting for the (independents’) championship, then he gave me a tow, but then there were yellow flags because André (Couto) was out, so I had to do another lap, and got held up by traffic.”

“I should have aborted the lap and come in and get new tyres and used a third set, but instead of this I decided to push and go on, but unfortunately I was a bit off-line after overtaking the slower cars and probably a got a bit of dirt on the tyres and then on the braking (into Police) I locked my wheels and went straight.”

Barth’s previous time was good enough for 15th on the grid where he’ll start for both races on Sunday.