With a broken femur yet to fully heal, the last thing Jeremy Mc
Williams needed was to be thrown spectacularly in the air during qualifying at Qatar - but the Ulsterman made a miraculous escape.
The accident occurred on the Ilmor rider's final lap of the afternoon and left onlookers fearing a re-broken bone - but such thoughts proved unfounded when McWilliams made his exit from the circuit ambulance on two, albeit wobbly, feet and fiercely refusing the kind offer of a wheelchair.
As a precaution McWilliams will have his leg x-rayed later this afternoon but he has every intention of competing in the first race of the season on Saturday. Despite his incident, McWilliams had a relatively positive day - out qualifying team-mate Andrew Pitt and recording the seventh fastest Friday top speed.
"I'm relieved that all I appear to have is some bruising, I can bend my knee and I'm able to put weight on both legs," confirmed Jeremy. "I'm feeling a little weak and lucky, very lucky! I should be okay tomorrow and I have every intention of racing.
"It's a shame that I couldn't get a full lap on the qualifying tyres, I messed up the first lap and there wasn't a second in the tyres but the bike was in good shape and I would have liked to see what I could have done," he added.
"I'm glad that Jeremy appears to be okay after his fall. We watched the crash on screen in the box and it looked terrible – we assumed that he'd done more damage than he has fortunately," admitted team principal Mario Illien. "Qualifying was disappointing and we need to find the reasons for why things didn't work out the way we planned."
