China GT Says Its Safety Setup Complied With National-Level Standards. The Driver Was Pulled From His Burning Ferrari by a Rival Who Stopped Mid-Race and Took a Fire Extinguisher From a Marshal.
On Saturday 5 September 2026, on the back straight at Shanghai, David Chen of Harmony Racing and Neil Verhagen of TBC by 610Racing made contact and slid through the grass. Chen's Ferrari 296 GT3 struck the Ferrari of Ollie Millroy, which caught fire with Millroy inside it.
Loek Hartog, a 23-year-old Dutch driver running a few places behind in a Phantom Global Racing Porsche, stopped his car in the run-off and got out. He tried the driver's door and could not free Millroy. He took a fire extinguisher from a marshal, knocked the flames back far enough to work, and pulled Millroy out through the other side of the car. According to reporting on the incident, track personnel arrived with extinguishers of their own well over a minute after the crash.
The Injuries
Millroy's injuries were extensive — broken ribs, a broken collarbone, a broken hand, and a bruised lung, with surgery required. Accounts of the exact rib count differ between five and six. He has publicly credited Hartog with saving his life.
Hartog's decision is worth stating plainly, because it is the part of this story that functioned. He was mid-race, in a competitive session, and he stopped, which forfeits the result. He then approached a burning GT3 car with a hand extinguisher, which is not what a driver in a fireproof suit is equipped or trained to do, and did the thing anyway.
The Statement
China GT issued a statement apologising for the incident, expressing sympathy for Millroy and the other drivers, and thanking Hartog, who it noted was the first to arrive at the scene to provide assistance. That last clause is accurate and is doing a great deal of work.
The statement then reported the preliminary finding: that the overall event setup complied with national-level competition standards, with room for improvement in terms of detailed management. A thorough review was promised, covering organisation, safety measures, emergency response, rescue operations, and medical care.
The sentence that matters is the compliance one. The organisers' own preliminary assessment is that the safety arrangements at an event where a driver was extracted from a burning car by a competitor met the applicable national standard. Both halves of that may well be true at once, and if they are, the finding is considerably worse than a failure would have been. A system that fails has a fault to fix. A system that performs like this while satisfying its own standard has a standard to fix.
The Penalty
China GT found Verhagen responsible and issued a one-minute penalty, a ten-place grid drop for his next start in the series, and three behavioural warning points.
He is not expected to serve any of it. His team has withdrawn from the championship permanently, which means the grid drop applies to a race he will not enter and the warning points attach to a licence in a series he has left. The sanction survives on paper. The next start it governs does not exist.
The Withdrawals
Two teams announced their exit: TBC by 610Racing and FIST Team AAI, the team Millroy drives for. Bathurst 12 Hour podium finisher Kerong Li said he would take part in no future China GT events, writing that the sport cannot depend on drivers stepping into harm's way, and that the organiser failed to provide basic humanitarian support — with the medical burden, he said, falling on Millroy's wife, who flew in urgently from the UK.
Yang Baijie, who runs TBC by 610Racing, made a series of allegations on Instagram that the organisers have not confirmed. He claimed marshals panicked, dropped their extinguishers and fled; that the ambulance took fifteen minutes to arrive because its driver was asleep and could not be woken by people banging on the window; and that stewards summoned the team to a hearing without first establishing whether the driver was safe. He said he had submitted onboard data to WEC stewards and threatened legal action. These are the claims of an interested party in a dispute over fault, and they are unverified. They are also the account of the only people who were there and are willing to describe it.
The championship's season concludes at Sepang on 6-8 November, as scheduled. The review is ongoing. The event setup, pending its outcome, complied with national-level competition standards.
Filed from public reporting:
- Speedcafe — "China GT responds to fallout from fiery Ferrari crash"
- NBC News — "Driver thanks rival for saving his life by stopping to pull him from flaming car"
- ABC News (Australia) — "Driver Ollie Millroy praises 'superhero' Loek Hartog for pulling him from flaming Ferrari"
- Motorsport.com — "Hartog hailed as hero after rescuing Millroy from fiery Shanghai crash"
- SPEEDWEEK — "Loek Hartog becomes a lifesaver in a horrific fire accident"
- GPFans — "British racing star thanks rival for pulling him out of burning Ferrari"
