Seeing rally racing crashes isn’t anything new. Fast little machine on narrow track usually equals some mangled sheetmetal and wounded feelings at some point or another. We’ve shown you Volvos that have gone into the trees while airborne on a snowy course, Escorts that completely yard-sale body panels after a tank-slapper goes completely wrong, and little front drivers rolling over for the smallest little thing. Crashes happen in rally racing. But there’s a basic crash, and there’s the one that elicits that “ooooooooh…” reaction from anybody who sees it. You know the kind…at first impact you draw your breath in and you wait for the bouncing, crashing and other violent motions to stop and your gut instinct is to make sure everybody is alright. This, readers, is one such crash.

Driver Lucas Zielinski and navigator Enzo Mahinc went for the mother of all off-course incidents at the Rallye Coeur de France a couple of days ago. Zielinski overcooked a sharp turn after an uphill section and sailed off, striking a berm that launched the Fiesta way up into the air, front-flipping before coming down hard on the right-side A-pillar and roof hard enough to bounce the car into another flip or two before the mangled little machine finally came to rest. It is believed that the team were not seriously injured in the incident, which is just about unbelievable.

Thanks to Benoit Pigeon for the tip!