At the tail end of yesterday’s second Diriyah ePrix, Mahindra Formula E driver Alex Lynn suffered a nasty crash that ultimately resulted in his hospitalization and the race being red flagged. Details were sparse at the time of the accident; Formula E elected not to show crash footage and only spoke about the accident after the podium ceremony had been completed. Thankfully, Lynn has been released from the hospital and deemed fit after a series of routine tests.
In the final minutes of the race, Lynn was battling Jaguar racer Mitch Evans for position when the two collided in the braking zone at Turn 18. Lynn’s car was pushed into the barrier lining the track and launched into the air. The car fell on the asphalt top-down and skidded into a runoff area. Evans pulled over to check on Lynn after seeing the scope of the crash.
Evans told Motorsport.com the following:
It was not a nice accident. Basically, I was defending hard from Alex into [Turn] 18 and he drove close to the wall.
He didn’t really back out of it. Was there room? I’m not sure, I need to see the replay. I hope there was and I didn’t do anything out of order.
But he clipped my rear wheel and had an aeroplane crash. It was really nasty.
[...]
I’ve spoken to him. He seems all fine but he’s gone [to hospital] as a precaution to make sure there’s nothing after the shock has worn off.
It was not a nice moment. At one point I could see him above me. It was not nice. But the main thing is he’s all good.
I saw him go into the wall and I jumped out to make sure he was OK. You never want to see that sort of stuff. He’s a friend as well. You don’t want to see people go through that.
Hopefully there’s a replay out soon. But I think it’s a racing incident. We were racing hard for P-Nowhere.
Soon after, the race was red flagged. Sam Bird, Evans’ teammate, took the win.
Thankfully, just after the crash, Mahindra was able to report that Evans was conscious when being extracted from the car, but he was sent to a local hospital for a series of precautionary check-ups to ensure that he didn’t sustain any unseen injuries.
CT scans revealed no issues, thankfully. It’s tough to imagine what could have happened in slightly different circumstances, especially if Lynn had gone for his upside-down slide in the pre-halo era.
Lynn was released from the hospital and has been cleared to race with Mahindra in the next Formula E round, the Rome ePrix, which takes place on April 10.