Floersch crash speed confirmed by team

Sophia Floersch's team principal Frits van Amersfoort has revealed that the 17-year-old was travelling at speeds of up to 276km/h (171.6mph) when she was involved in a terrifying crash which left her with a fractured spine during the Macau Grand Prix Formula 3 race on Sunday.

The first turn of the race saw a melee of cars colliding which resulted in a safety car period, but the race would be given a red flag not long after when Floersch's car became airborne after crashing into Jehan Daruvala and then Sho Tsuboi at the Lisboa Bend.

Van Amersfoort shared his disbelief that his driver was able to survive at such high speeds.

"It was nearly a rocket. Surviving was incredible," he told BBC Radio 5 live.

"We reckon she was travelling at 276km/h (171.6mph) at the time."

Van Amersfoort described the 20 minutes immediately after the crash as "one of the worst of my life" and he labelled the crash as the scariest he has seen in his time in motorsport.

"We got some information from social media while we were waiting at the door of race control, but when you look at those images it is heartbreaking so we were thinking of the worst," Van Amersfoort continued.

Today was a very difficult day for our team at the #MacauGP. The whole world saw what happened and we can only thank God that @SophiaFloersch escaped with relatively light injuries. Our thoughts go also to the other people involved and we wish them a speedy recovery. ???????????? — VanAmersfoortRacing (@VARmotorsport) November 18, 2018

"It took quite a long time before the race control could say anything about the health of Sophia - everyone can imagine that's not a nice thing to have.

"I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. I haven't seen all accidents in motorsport but this was surely one of the worst I've ever seen.

"We were lucky that she was flying because she went over a barrier. If she had hit the barrier it would have gone a lot worse."

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