Sometimes you’re just in the right place, at the right moment, and you see an event unfolding right before your eyes. It’s very surreal, and there’s this sense of awe that first wants to bubble up from inside you. If you let it come to the surface, it will already be too late, and that moment will be gone. The only thing to do is not think, shove the camera against your face and pull the trigger as fast as possible. After it is over, the sensation of “did that just happen” will return, and even more so if you’ve captured it on film.

Hit the jump to see the crash frame by frame as I did. I know there are lots of people out there who like seeing this sort of thing and think that it is cool, but I don’t want to downplay a serious situation. This was no small mishap, and Tony admitted in interviews afterwords that while he was able to get out of the car and walk away, he was pretty beat up. The fuel does catch fire in the last shot, but don’t worry, it only lasted a few seconds and did not enter the cockpit. Meira had it much worse later on…

Notice how the front left wheel was not moving, but the rear left was still turning. He was skidding with absolutely no control over the steering of the car at nearly 200 mph.

That’s your race winner, Helio Castroneves, entering the frame on the lower right. Tony was in a pretty comfortable third place when his car broke, a reminder that anyone’s race day can end violently in an instant no matter how close to the front and out of traffic they might be.

There was quite a lot of debris left on the track, and there was at least one team who was lucky enough to pit quickly and change tires to avoid a puncture.