Grant Denyer’s rally crash has sparked a war between rival motorsport bodies over safety

THE near-death rally crash which left Grant Denyer in hospital has sparked a civil war between two rival motorsport bodies over safety procedures.

THE NEAR-DEATH rally crash which left TV personality Grant Denyer in hospital has sparked a civil war between two rival motorsport bodies over safety procedures governing the race.

And as the Family Feud host prepares to leave hospital on Wednesday, News Corporation can reveal there are calls for Victoria Police to investigate the event, after revelations of another accident in the same rally the day before.

Denyer, in his first interview since the accident said the death of racing legend Peter Brock 10 years ago was all he was thinking about as his out-of-control rally car hurtled head on towards “the biggest tree I’d ever seen.”

Denyer, who competed in the same TARGA rally Brock died in, said his hero’s fate “played on our mind” as this silver Lotus left the road last Sunday, “and all I could do was wrestle the car away from a head on impact with the tree.”

NIGHTMARES OF BROCK: Denyer feared the worst

Grant Denyer recovering in hospital. Picture: Grant Denyer‏ / Twitter

His efforts appear to have proved the difference on Sunday during a stage of the Australian Tarmac Rally Championship in Victoria, with Denyer’s race car striking the tree’s root instead, ricocheting into the tree and coming to rest down an embankment near Marysville, the site of the infamous Black Sunday bushfires.

The Channel 10 presenter spoke today for the first time since his near death crash, recovering in hospital from a broken coccyx and finger as well as severe bruising to his lower back and groin — counting himself and co-driver Dale Moscatt lucky to be alive.

Denyer told News Corp Australia just before the impact “everything slowed down and I kind of had a couple of choices. The car was heading directly for the biggest tree I’d ever seen and I had to do everything that I could not to hit that head on because had I done that, it would have been a very different story.”

“I just got to the right of it and hit the huge tree root which launched the car into the air and then into the tree, then it spun around and destroyed the car and came to rest.”

The car absorbed the full 8G force of the crash, with its in-built safety features saving the lives of Denyer, in the driver’s seat and his navigator.

“Thankfully everything in the car that’s designed to keep us safe did its job, from the roll cage to the helmets to the neck protectors to the car crumpling in all the right places. It was 8G, the car absorbed all of that energy and we were pretty lucky to get away with what we have,” Denyer said from his bed in The Alfred hospital, Melbourne.

Grant Denyer's smashed rally car will be taken back to Sydney Photo: Bob Barker.

His near miss was at 160 kilometres an hour, faster than the speed Brock was travelling at in his Daytona sports car when he was killed in a similar rally, outside Perth.

“[Brock’s] was a much lower speed accident than ours and we all know how that one ended,” Denyer said.

Despite being injured, Denyer was able to walk away from the vehicle, turning all his concern to Moscatt who he said “wasn’t in a good way.”

“He’d hurt his back and so I managed to climb out first and make sure the car didn’t catch fire, then ran and got some help,” Denyer said.

“As soon as the car landed, he went ‘this is not good, my back’s not good’ and I could tell by the panic in his voice he was scared and hurt, so then my priority was to get him assistance. Despite my injuries, I ran up the road [and] got help.”

Moscatt was recovering after surgery on Monday, after shattering his knee and fracturing his L4 vertebrae in the crash.

Denyer said: “I knew it was up to me to climb up the ridge and flag someone down and the first couple of cars thankfully stopped and came to our rescue and brought over fire extinguishers because the worst scenario was if it caught fire ... it took them a while to cut Dale out of the car but thankfully we live to tell the story.”

Meanwhile, the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport [CAMS] have called for scrutiny of the organiser of the Lake Mountain Sprint rally, Mountain Motorsport, which was sanctioned to run the event by rival body, Australian Auto-Sport Alliance (AASA).

Eugene Arocca, CAMS chief executive officer, called for Victoria Police to investigate the event and its safety standards, with Denyer’s accident following another crash in the same rally the day before.

Cheryl Denyer at Sydney Airport. Picture: Instar / Diimex

An Ambulance Victoria spokeswoman confirmed it responded to a car rollover the day before, where two men were assessed at the scene and one man in his 30s was treated for cuts and abrasions then transferred to Maroondah hospital.

Mr Arocca said “generally, we are concerned about alternative sanctioning bodies.”

He said: “in a perfect world, we’d like people like Grant to be an ambassador of the sport and an ambassador for the highest safety standards that could apply to the sport. And therefore, I’m personally disappointed that he would feel comfortable racing in events not sanctioned by CAMS, the nationally recognised, internationally accredited motorsport body. No other four-wheel motorsport body in Australia can make that claim. It’s as simple as that.”

Mountain Motorsports declined to comment, but referred to a statement posted on the Speedcafe.com Facebook page which stated it was “furious” at CAMS response.

“To call into question the safety of Mountain Motorsport events is defamatory and I will be referring this to our legal representatives,” the statement said.

An AASA spokeswoman confirmed the body was “holding its usual investigations into major incidents to determine causative factors,” and said MM events and Race Solutions, who provided the medical and rescue support “were incredibly effective in their response times and dealing with this and other incidents at the event.”

The race had “full permissions and approval of civil authorities” and AASA “passed the VicRoads accreditation process and has Victorian Government Gazettal to close roads for events purposes.”

Denyer said he was not aware of the difference between CAMS and AASA but has competed in events organised by both bodies and “I didn’t notice anything missing.”

“The only thing I can tell you is they had a first-class medical and rescue team that came to us. One of them was a head of an emergency ward. One of them was a helicopter paramedic, really top end medical and rescue who got to us in minutes.”

The accident came on the same day Denyer was confirmed as a Gold Logie nominee and the support from fans since “took a little bit of the pain away.”