The General Motors executive who inadvertently wrecked a $120,000 Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1 leading the field to the green in Sunday’s Race 2 of the Chevrolet Dual in Detroit issued a statement about the incident on Monday morning.
Mark Reuss, the executive who was piloting the car at the time, took to his Facebook page to explain what happened when he lost control of the 755-horsepower sports car, spun and piled head-on into a retaining wall, causing extensive damage to the car and causing a nearly 30-minute delay to the start of the race while debris was cleaned up.
“I want to thank you all for your well wishes today,” Reuss wrote. “I am ok. I have driven this course many many many times. I have paced this race in the wet, cold, hot, and calm. On Z06’s, Grand Sports, and other things.
“It is never a casual thing for me, but an honor to be asked. Today I let down my friends, my family, IndyCar, our city and my company. Sorry does not describe it. I want to thank our engineers for providing me the safety I know is the best in the world.”
Reuss is Executive Vice President of Global Product Development, Purchasing and Supply Chain at General Motors. He was chosen to drive the ZR1, which had been tabbed as the pace car for Sunday’s race.
Reuss and passenger Mark Sand, a Verizon IndyCar Series official, were uninjured in the mishap.
GM issued a statement shortly after the incident, saying: “It is unfortunate that this incident happened. Many factors contributed, including weather and track conditions. The car’s safety systems performed as expected.”
Sports Business Journal’s Adam Stern found a silver lining in the incident, saying in a tweet that even though Chevrolet had a heavily damaged car and an embarrassed executive, it gained some strong exposure from the televised incident.
The exposure that @Chevrolet and its Corvette brand got yesterday due to ZR1 pace car crash was more than 70 times’ worth the exposure it got during @DetroitGP's race No. 1 Saturday, per Apex Marketing Group (@ApexMGAnalytics).
— Adam Stern (@A_S12) June 4, 2018
➖ It generated $3.47M in exposure as of this AM. pic.twitter.com/WtgdA6PGy7