Heimgartner, Randle to hospital for checks after Race 22 shunt

Andre Heimgartner and Thomas Randle will make a precautionary visit to hospital after the big shunt at the start of Race 22 of the Repco Supercars Championship at The Bend.

Heimgartner, who qualified on Row 6, nailed the #55 Tickford Racing Mustang at high speed when Randle stalled on the outside of the front row after the lights went out.

The incident triggered a red flag to clear the damage, while both of those drivers were able to walk away from their wrecks.

Heimgartner displayed the more obvious signs of soreness, and his team boss Brad Jones has advised that the New Zealander is on his way to hospital.

“I’ve had a couple of texts from Dr Carl [Le, Supercars Medical Delegate] and they’re going to take him into hospital,” he said.

“He’s got some tenderness in the lower abdomen, but the feeling is that he’s okay; I think he got winded pretty bad.

“So, I think they’re just going to go into a CT scan and check him out.”

It has also been confirmed by Supercars that Randle too is on his way to hospital for precautionary scans.

As for the vehicles themselves, Brad Jones Racing may be forced to revert to a spare ZB Commodore for next month’s Sandown event, although that decision will be made after returning to their Albury base.

“If you compare it to Andre, car’s a lot worse,” remarked Jones.

“Until we get it home and we pull it apart, and then see what the guys can do with it… but, it’s got a lot of damage, as you’d expect from that sort of incident.

“I have a bunch of magicians working for me, so I’d like to think that we’re going to be under control, [but] we’ve got a spare car,” he added.

“The guys and girls work really, really hard at BJR; we’ve achieved the impossible before and maybe we’ll have to do it again.

“Until we pull it apart, I really don’t know what’s going to happen.

“Our back-up plan is obviously our spare car, but we haven’t run it for a while, so there’ll be a bit of work to be done to that, so we just have to get home and see.”

Tickford team principal Tim Edwards is already predicting that Randle’s car will not race again.

“From what I’ve heard already about the car, the car will be a write-off,” said Edwards.

“Because, [in] an accident of that magnitude, the main hoop obviously comes down just in front of the rear wheel, and so as soon as you damage the main hoop, then the car will be a write-off.

“So, I’d suggest that’ll never see the light of day again.”