International Lakeside Park track: Calls for safety overhaul at notorious Qld raceway

Motor racing enthusiasts are calling for urgent safety improvement to be made at a renowned Queensland raceway after a motorcycle rider was left fighting for life after a crash.

File picture: International Lakeside Park Raceway. Photographer: Liam Kidston.

Motor racing enthusiasts are calling for urgent safety improvement to be made at a renowned Queensland raceway after a motorcycle rider who crashed there was left fighting for life in hospital.

Racers who frequent the International Lakeside Park track at Kurwongbah north of Brisbane have expressed concern over unsafe corners which they say have minimal to no “run off” space, and other areas that lack proper road surfacing. 

Two motorcyclists were hospitalised on Saturday, August 5 in separate crashes, with a woman aged in her early 20s suffering critical head injuries and a man in his 50s sustaining serious head injuries.

The International Lakeside Park track at Kurwongbah. Photographer: Liam Kidston.

A friend of the female rider, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Courier-Mail he witnessed a crash at Lakeside Park “every time I’m there”.

“That’s both driver error and track error,” he said.

“A lot of incidents happen on Karrasell corner and at the second turn.

“There is no run-off, there is nothing there but dirt and grass and a steel wall corrugated iron barrier, that’s it.

“Don’t ever go 100 per cent at Lakeside, you can’t control other riders on track, so riding at 100 per cent is just unsafe.”

The Lakeside Park track attracts both amateur and semi-professional racers, with most looking to use the tough circuit to enhance their skills and break into the professional division.

It’s understood the male rider crashed at the Karrasel corner and the critically injured female rider crashing just hours later at the BP bend approaching the same corner.

Federal member for Wide Bay Llew O’Brien suffered a fractured skull after crashing his motorbike at the track in 2021 and said the raceway was old and may not meet modern standards.

Wide Bay Federal MP, Llew O'Brien shared images to social media of him in hospital following a crash involving his motorcycle and a vehicle at Lakeside Raceway on Saturday.

“If they are building a track today they may do it differently,” he said.

“The run-offs could be bigger.

“Certainly in my case, my incident wasn’t caused by any deficiency of the track and the run-off and the safety features didn’t play in that.”

Mr O’Brien said as motorsports evolved, raceways should look at investing in potential new safeguarding technologies “to make an older track safer”.

Lakeside Park fell victim to the devastating February 2022 flood event with social media posts indicating the track had been resurfaced as recently as June this year.

But a rider told The Courier-Mail the surfacing was not complete around the whole track, with parts of the track switching from old to new bitumen.

The friend of the injured female driver said he experienced the track’s safety issues first hand in April after crashing his bike into one of the metal barriers on the Eastern Loop at 120 km/h. 

“(The Eastern Loop) is called a dirty corner, off camber so if you take that corner too wide there is a lot of dirt where it cambers,” he said. 

“The outcome of my injuries could have been minimised if there had been a run off area.”

Lakeside Park has been contacted several times for comment.

It comes as Workplace Health and Safety Queensland spokesperson told The Courier-Mail it was investigating a separate incident at Queensland Raceway at Willowbank on Saturday afternoon.