The Belgian athlete runs into the pole at a speed of about 180 km/h

2022 Belgian Rally Vice-Champion Gino Buck experienced a serious accident during the 3rd stage of the Belgian Rally Championship during the holidays. While fighting for victory in this rally, Baksa’s crew ran off the road at high speed in the seventh stage and had an accident.

It is reported that the “Volkswagen Polo GTI R5” driven by the athlete ran off the road at high speed and ran into a pole with the driver’s side. Before a fast corner, which the athletes took at a speed of about 180 km/h, Bax’s car had a punctured left front wheel, as a result of which the athlete could not control his car, which ran off the road. The pilot revealed that he had felt a slight vibration shortly before the fatal turn, indicating that a tire might have blown, but by then it was too late.

Photo: Paul Fraikin Champion’s

The pilot was not injured in the accident, which cannot be said about the pilot. Buck revealed that he was diagnosed with six broken ribs in the hospital, as well as a broken collarbone and a bruised lung.

In an interview for the portal dhnet.be Bak says that ”I am in great pain, I can’t sleep even with morphine. I will have to stay in the hospital for at least a week because I have lung damage and can’t breathe normally without help. I need oxygen. I have six broken ribs. It’s painful and recovery will take a long time, but luckily the vertebrae and spine are intact so I didn’t have to have surgery. My hip hurts, but it’s not broken. The collarbone and humerus are broken, but as the doctors said, that is a nice break and that it should grow back quite easily. I will need at least three months of rehabilitation, so my season is over. I could have been paralyzed or worse, so I think I was very lucky,” so Gino Bucks.

The car after the accident. Photo: Twitter

Asked if the athlete remembers how the said accident happened, Bak continues: “I had made some adjustments to the settings, and in the first ten kilometers the car behaved much better than at the beginning of the rally. But then suddenly, although there were no warning signs, I felt that there was a problem. The next corner came really fast and the car just couldn’t turn. There was nothing I could do. At 176km/h I saw myself dying. I went straight for the pole but then I applied the handbrake to avoid a head-on collision with the pole, so the pole hit my door . The first thirty seconds were tough because it was hard to breathe. I could feel the pain increasing. Fortunately, friends soon arrived on the scene. Cedric Cherain managed to keep me awake.”

The athlete added that he would later analyze what happened after the accident, since a long time had passed since he was cut out of the car. ”When I’m better, I’ll analyze everything and try to understand why it took the fire department 15 minutes to arrive at the scene of the accident and another forty-five minutes to get me out of the car. In a rally, you take a lot of risks, thinking that if something happens, help will arrive quickly. But it didn’t happen. If I had internal bleeding or something more serious it would have been dramatic. To get me out of the car, the entire roof and part of the front of the car had to be cut off to get me out.”

Photo: Gino Bux

The athlete admits that despite this serious accident, he will definitely return to the rally. “The season is over for me, but I will be back. I want to enjoy again what I saw and experienced with the Sarrazin team. I had a great feeling with this car. I will win rallies with them. Where and when, I don’t know yet, but I don’t want to be a failure.”