AutoFest crash: Family say they’re lucky to be alive after car crashes off track at dragway show

Stacey Mills says she and her family are lucky to be alive after a car at Saturday’s AutoFest careened off the track at high speed, missing her by as little as one metre.

The speeding car smashed through the track barriers at Meremere’s NAPA Auto Parts Dragway and destroyed a storage shed, before slamming into a parked tractor.

It missed an area with food stalls by just metres.

Mills, her two sons and niece and nephew had been walking in the area at the time when they saw the car coming down the track towards them.

It had been taking part in the ‘Light em up’ lane burnout display and looked like it had started cruising down the track simply to do a U-turn.

But instead it began to speed up.

“He just got faster and faster and then started getting closer and closer,” Mills said.

“I said to the kids, ‘He’s not gonna stop, he’s not gonna stop.”

Scared, Mills and her family stopped in their tracks and it likely saved their lives as the cars smashed straight through the fence with a bang and spray of debris, she said.

“If we had walked any further, he would have taken us out,” she said, saying it felt like the car passed by within just one metre.

“Honestly, I think we’re all going to be traumatised for a long time after that - we are very, very lucky to still be here.”

The Herald has approached AutoFest organisers Downtime Entertainment for comment about the incident but has not had a response.

However, several people have contacted the Herald to say the vehicle concerned was not doing burnouts at the time of the crash and had instead suffered a mechanical problem.

Mills said it is also lucky her family was the only one in the area at the time.

After the crash, people began running from elsewhere to check on the driver, with Mills saying she believed he didn’t suffer serious injuries.

However, no one seemed to realise how close her family had been to getting hit because the crowd didn’t check on them, she said.

“Myself and my 16-year-old son, we just burst into tears because we realised how lucky we were and we were just so glad that no one got hurt and there was no one else around,” Mills said.

She said the car had been taking part in the burnout event further down the track just before the crash.

It looked like had at first been coming just to do a U-turn, so she didn’t understand why it sped straight on.

Mills said her family will never “forget” the incident.

“My kids have already said, ‘I don’t think we’re gonna sleep tonight’,” Mills said.

She said her family are still at the track and trying to enjoy the rest of the day because the dragway has always been a place where her boys love to come to events.

“I don’t know how they’re going to feel after today,” she said about her boys.

She’s called on the track officials and organisers to improve safety.

“After [the] incident, they really need to look at making it a little bit more safe ... because something like that could potentially happen again,” she said.

“And the next time it happens, if there’s people walking, they might not be as lucky as us.”

A spokesperson from Hato Hone St John said they had no details about the incident.