UPDATE: Robusto suffered a concussion in the crash.
Original story to follow
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An awe-inspiring crash with two laps to remaining in the CARS Tour Pro Late Model race at Hickory Motor Speedway on Saturday night sent a photographer to the hospital.
Racing for the win in lapped traffic, Mike Hopkins and Isabella Robusto came together at the start finish line, the contact seemingly breaking something in the car driven by the latter, sending her forward facing first into a section of the inside retaining wall.
The contact was so severe that it unmoored the concrete slab into the photographer named ‘Frank P’ standing on the other side of the wall with the photographer flipping head over the moving barrier.
Robusto climbed out of the car under her own power and went on to compete in the CARS Tour Late Model Stock race later in the night. The photographer was awake and alert but was transported to a nearby medical facility for additional treatment. It is believed that he received stitches but suffered no broken bones.
Robusto was interviewed after the crash, where she was asked how she felt, by FloRacing pit reporter James Pike.
“All good,” she said.
And what happened?
“I think I just had him trapped behind a lap car and he tried to clear himself before he got trapped,” Robusto said. “Got into my front tire, something broke, and it sent me straight into the wall, I couldn’t turn, and away it went. I just hate it for my guys.”
It wasn’t immediately made publicly clear why that wall was more detachable than the rest of the structure.
Hopkins went on to win the race in equally incredible fashion — surviving an attack from both Connor Zilisch and Brent Crews. In fact, Hopkins and Crews spun across the start-finish line into Turn 1.
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