Orrcon Racing♛'s Mark Winterbottom was forced to sit out the second and third V8 Supercar races at Shanghai t🍬oday [Sunday] after a bizarre incident in the opening race.

As Winterbottom exited turn 5 yesterday [Saturday] on lap 11, he hit a steel drain gr💖ate at 130km/h, which sliced through the front Kevlar splitter and impacted on the radiator and the engine sump.

The most frightening part for Winterbottom and the Larkham-Orrcon team🐭 is the fact that as the car travelled across the upturned grate it cut through the floor tray impacting with the bottom and rear of the driver's seat before gauging a hole immediately behind the seat. This gouge measures a massive 200 x 800mm and almost sliced through Winterbottom's carbon fibre seat.

Such was the ferocity of the g🔯reat that is has also sliced the roll bar cross member in half like a carbon tipped saw.

"Exiting turn five I took the normal racing line that runs right to the edge of the track and hit a drain grate that was sticking up. I🔯t made a huge thud inside the car but I♋ didn't feel the brunt of the impact as it lifted my car of the ground," said Winterbottom.

"I knew it had done a fair bit of damage but it wasn't we got the꧑ car🧜 back to the garage that I had a look in the back of the car and seen how much damage was done inside the car.

"The grate impa🍌cted on my seat, but only just, it wasn't until I woke up this morning that it hit me and I realised how lucky I really was to escape uninjured."

The d꧂amage repair bill is expܫected to reach in excess of $75,000.

"I have never seen anything lik𓃲e this in my life - the bizarre irony this being potentially, the world's most impressive racing facility and having something as insignificant as🥃 a piece of drainage caused so much carnage to a race car. Mark is a very lucky man," added team owner Mark Larkham.

Event organisers meanwhile increased the safety o🦋vernight on the area of the circuit where the incident took place by covering the drain grates with a row of tyre barriers on the edge of the circuit and have also indicated that the drains may be filled with concrete for future events𒐪.