A curious echidna caused chaos at the Bathurst 1000 by wandering the track and temporarily disrupting racing at the annual Supercar Spectacular.
The spiked native animal was close to being crushed by a car around a track at 300km/h, with supercars legend Mark Schaff said ‘just madness.
The famous race on Sunday’s Mount Panorama was yellow flagged and the time to cross the security car deployed after Echidna was very poor and almost fatal.
An echinda chose a very bad time to cross the road at the Bathurst 1000 at Mount Panorama
Fortunately, the crater was spotted in time and its wobble did not eventually become a roadblock, but not before many cars arrived. came very close to him.
The crowd and drivers heaved a sigh of relief when the echidna turned to the other side and was picked up by a security marshal.
‘In my experience we’ve seen kangaroos, we’ve seen horses, we’ve seen trees and bits of water and cars. We’ve never seen an echidna,’ said Skiff.
‘This place is just madness’.
Channel Nine commentator Neil Crompton said, ‘What an Australian reason for a safety car.
‘There’s an echidna on the edge of the racetrack, which we have to take care of.
An echidna painted between red and yellow cars chose a bad time to see what’s on the other side of the road
‘The poor little thing isn’t making its way. We need to get the cars under control and help that little one off the race track.
‘It’s going to change the game.’
Although stopping a car race is very unusual and very Australian, it is far from the time an animal has delayed a sporting event.
In April 2014, a Major League Baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Colorado Rockies was interrupted by an Eastern Gray Squirrel.
A year earlier, in April 2013, a three-legged alligator known as Stumpy disrupted the Zurich Classic golf tournament in New Orleans.
Echidnas typically operate at 300km/h. No need to deal with traveling cars
Stumpy wandered around, smiling for the camera while the players continued to play, presumably believing that a golf club a foot shy of a full quota would be enough to deter an alligator attack.
Tennis is also sometimes beset with problems with the organism. Pigeons became such a problem at Wimbledon nearly a decade ago that they hired a hawk named Rufus to keep orders on the court.
Rufus did his best, but was unable to stop Roberto Bautista Agut during mid-serve, a pigeon dive-bombing match against Andy Murray.