– Five and a half months after his horror crash in Bathurst, where he suffered two vertebral fractures, Mercedes-AMG factory driver Ralf Aron will make his racing comeback next Saturday. And of all places, on perhaps the most difficult and dangerous track in the world, the Nürburgring Nordschleife – at NLS7 in the Winward-winning car of the 24h race.
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“I don’t remember who said to me: ‘What are you doing? You’re coming back directly on the Nordschleife?'”, the Estonian tells Motorsport-Total.com. “Yes, I understand the point, but I love this place and see no problem. I’m pretty sure that during the 24-hour weekend, with multiple monitors, I watched 80 percent of all onboard footage of the winning car. I was mentally always there.”
The 28-year-old has gone through perhaps the toughest months of his career – and he still vividly remembers the images of the crash on February 15, when, due to initially missing flag signals and a radio failure, he crashed into Johann Zelger’s Porsche with a delay of 32g – according to AMG accident data.
“My first thought was: My back is broken”
“I remember everything,” he says. “And as if it happened in slow motion – every detail.” Aron was leading the restart of the 12h classic at Mount Panorama in the CraftBamboo Mercedes, which turned out to be his downfall because after a blind corner, suddenly two cars blocked the track.
“When double yellow was shown, the two cars were already just behind the corner,” he says. “I had no time to react properly. When I hit the car, because of the pain and everything I felt, I knew something was wrong. My first thought was: My back is broken.”
Therefore, he actually wanted to stay in the car. “Because of the pain, it’s hard to breathe. And you don’t want to injure yourself more, because we know you have to be careful with your back. But then suddenly there were flames in front of me. So I thought, I have to get out!”
“The fans started screaming: ‘Get away, there’s a fire!'”
Getting out felt like an eternity to Aron, even though video footage shows that only about 15 seconds passed from stopping to getting out. “When I was out of the car, I couldn’t stand up. So I crawled to the rear of the car, which was a mistake. Probably the front would have been better.”
Fan video shows dramatic Aron crash in full length
Why? “I lay down and thought everything was fine now. Then all the fans started screaming: ‘Get away, there’s a fire!’ I thought, I have fireproof underwear on, I’m away from the car – all good. But then I realized I was lying in the middle of fuel and oil. It was everywhere on the ground. Then it dawned on me: If that starts burning, I have a problem.”
Climbed over fence despite vertebral fracture: “Wherever the strength came from”
When Aron looked at the car, a two-meter-high flame was blazing from the engine. “So I gathered all my strength and climbed over the fence,” he says. How he managed that? “When you’re in such a situation, under adrenaline and just want to get to safety, you release extra strength – wherever it comes from.”
On the other side of the fence, he was quickly attended to by the medical team, who talked to him and calmed him down. “From then on, everything really went well,” he says.
In the hospital, the older brother of Alpine’s Formula 1 reserve driver Paul Aron was diagnosed with a fracture of the last thoracic vertebra and the first lumbar vertebra. In one vertebra, as he revealed, “even a piece broke off.” Moreover, it was a dangerous spot: “I was really lucky because the nerve canals run very close there, but nothing touched the nerve.”
That was the most important news. Since the nerves were not affected, it was clear that a 100 percent recovery was possible. “For that, I am incredibly grateful,” he says.
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“Immediately in the ambulance”: Why Lucas Auer was so important to Aron
Aron was also grateful for the support of his CraftBamboo teammates Lucas Auer and Maximilian Götz. “Luggi went through something similar,” he refers to the severe Daytona crash of the Austrian three and a half years ago, when he also broke two vertebrae.
“He was immediately with me in the ambulance and accompanied me to the hospital. It was just fantastic to have him with me because he knew exactly what questions to ask the doctors and always remained super calm. So we knew what was happening. That helped a lot. But Maxi was great too.”
Since Aron was far from home, Isabel Schembera, who is responsible for driver management in AMG’s Stefan Wendl team, spontaneously extended her stay in Australia. “She stayed with me until my family arrived. That helped me a lot,” says Aron, who was able to take his first steps again after just a few days and was flown home lying down a week after the crash.
What was the hardest part of recovery for Aron
In the first two months of his recovery, Aron, who did not need surgery, mainly lay on his back so the bones could heal. Nevertheless, the time was mentally anything but easy for him.
“I knew I would fully recover, which made me very happy, but now I had time to think about what I was missing: the 24h race at the Nürburgring and the 24 Hours of Spa – all the cool races I wanted to drive,” he says.
“Of course, it was tough, it was a rollercoaster. But it really helped me that drivers who went through something similar reached out to me. And talking to them and seeing that they are doing well today,” says Aron, who even constantly checked his phone on his sister’s birthday and followed the 24h race at the Nürburgring.
Self-doubt before returning to the cockpit: “Was the best therapy”
Definitive certainty that he would return to the race car came during his first test after the accident, which he completed in May at the Mercedes test track in Immendingen. “After three months on the couch, everyone has these doubts that the comeback might be difficult. Will I be nervous? Will I be scared?”, he gives insight into his state of mind.
“You don’t know until you’re in the car. But I was so happy about this test because from the first lap it was clear that I had worried for nothing. It was like before. Therefore, I think it was the best therapy for me to get back in the car as soon as possible.”
Aron took another step when he supported the Uno team, known from the GT World Cup in Macau, in preparation for the Chinese GT Championship at the end of June and sat again in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 during a test in Zhuhai.
At the racing comeback, which he will complete at the six-hour Eifel race in the Ravenol Mercedes fielded by Winward alongside 24-hour winner Luca Stolz, the last remaining doubts are now to be eliminated. “I’m really looking forward to it,” says Aron. “Because I love the Nordschleife.”
He is absolutely pain-free, which is impressive considering the heavy impact: “I can really say that I am now 100 percent recovered.” He has come a “long way,” he says five months after the accident. “But considering everything that happened, it wasn’t that long.”
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