After a Driver Pulled a Rival From a Burning Car, China GT's Safety Response Comes Under Scrutiny
When a Ferrari burst into flames at Shanghai's China GT round with its driver trapped inside, Dutch racer Loek Hartog abandoned his own race and pulled the man out with his bare hands. The 49-second rescue made him a national talking point — and turned attention on the safety arrangements that left a private individual as the de facto fire crew.
Seven laps into the first GT3 race at China GT's Shanghai round on September 5, a Ferrari crashed heavily into the barriers at the end of the straight and caught fire, its driver still in the cockpit. Loek Hartog, a Dutch driver racing the No. 79 Phantom entry, was close behind. Instead of swerving past, he parked his car, abandoned the race, and ran toward the flames. No fire extinguisher was at hand, spectators and paddock accounts later recalled; he gripped the burning cockpit and pulled the trapped driver out by hand, suffering burns and smoke inhalation in the process. The whole rescue took roughly 49 seconds.
What followed has proved nearly as contentious as the crash itself. The event's live broadcast initially reported that the burning car's driver had gotten out on his own — a version of events the FIST Team AAI crew flatly rejected. That evening the team issued a statement accusing organizers of slow medical response and of broadcasting an account that erased Hartog's intervention, and announced it was withdrawing from all remaining China GT events pending answers. A question posted on Zhihu, China's main Q&A platform, asking what the rescue exposed about the series' emergency procedures, quickly drew wide attention, while commentary on Baidu's hot-search board accused organizers of dereliction in both rescue response and accurate reporting.
The story traveled in part on the fame of a bystander. Pop star and racing driver Wang Yibo, competing in the same Shanghai meeting, won his class in that first race, then publicly followed Hartog on Instagram and reposted rescue footage with tributes; the following day his own race ended when a rival rammed his car from the inside, forcing him to retire unhurt. His enormous fanbase amplified Hartog's act far beyond the motorsport press, and the driver's own Instagram post — written after visiting the injured man in hospital — circulated widely on Weibo.
For an international reader, the episode says something about how quickly China's home-grown motorsport calendar has grown — and how thinly its safety apparatus sometimes stretches. China GT is the country's flagship grand touring series, and its Shanghai meeting drew celebrity entrants and packed grandstands. But the gaps identified in the aftermath were unambiguous: a burning cockpit that bystanders reached before any marshal did, a delayed medical response, and a broadcast that, in the team's telling, preferred a tidier story to a true one.
Hartog, for his part, has been matter-of-fact. "Fear is an instinct, courage is humanity's anthem," reads one tribute post he shared; his own Instagram message to fans was simpler — he was relieved that the trapped driver, Ollie, was okay, and that some things are much bigger than racing. Whether the series' organizers agree, and what they change before the next round, is the question now hanging over the championship.