Insight: Why Aron Isn’t Bitter About Brutal Bathurst Crash

Ahead of his racing return this weekend, Mercedes-AMG factory driver speaks in length for first time since back-breaking accident at Meguiar's Bathurst 12 Hour...

For anyone who watched it live, it’s almost hard to believe nearly half a year has passed since Ralf Aron’s awful crash during this year’s Meguiar’s Bathurst 12 Hour.

Sickening images of the Craft-Bamboo Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo being driven by Bathurst debutant Aron, leading the race at the time, ploughing into the stricken Tsunami RT Porsche 911 GT3 R of Johannes Zelger just before Forrest’s Elbow are likely to remain deeply ingrained in the memory of anyone who saw them for years to come.

While Zelger mercifully escaped the wreck unharmed, Aron was not as fortunate, sustaining two fractured vertebrae, an injury that has left him away from racing ever since.

But, after a recovery period and a gradual return to the cockpit in private testing, Aron is finally ready to retake the wheel in this weekend’s seventh round of the Nürburgring Langstrecken Series, the six-hour ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen with the Nürburgring 24-winning Winward Racing squad alongside fellow factory driver Luca Stolz.

Up to now, Aron has shied away from discussing the crash and its aftermath with the media, but ahead of his long-awaited return to action, Sportscar365 had the opportunity to speak in-depth with the 28-year-old Estonian and look back on an episode that, while initially shocking, thankfully doesn’t appear to have left him with any lasting scars.

In fact, Aron was surprisingly chirpy when recalling the accident, declaring “I remember everything!” when quizzed about his memories of the events leading up to it.

“I think everyone knows we had radio issues during my stints,” he recalls. “I couldn’t hear the team, but I figured out they could still hear me. I kept talking under it as it’s procedure, just in case they can hear me. So we could communicate with the pit board and the radio.

“Then we did the restart, which went well. I wanted to push on the restart to try and make a gap. Then actually I saw a single yellow flag on top of the mountain. I don’t remember exactly which corner, but it was quite a few marshal posts before the actual accident.

“Just before I actually arrived at the scene of the accident, there was a double yellow. I saw it, but it was just before the accident, and the car was also around a blind corner. I started slowing down for the corner a bit earlier, went in a bit safer to have a bit more control, but when I came around the corner, there were two cars parked in front of me.

“I was slower than I would normally be on a racing lap to try and avoid whatever was ahead. But there was no time to get fully stopped because the track was fully blocked.”