Footage of a race car flying off the track at Sandown last weekend, spinning end over end and landing on the back of a ute certainly caught the attention of some living beside the Newcastle Supercars track.
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John Iafolla's car went awry at the end of the back straight on lap one of a Toyota 86 support race. We'll let the Supercars website take up the story ...
"The #8 car then speared into an armco rail, launching over the barrier and into a series of flips, making contact with a trackside support vehicle before coming to rest."
Two guys sitting in the ute had a lucky escape, and Iafolla himself walked away from the wreck and went to hospital with some bruising but no lasting injuries.
Iafolla also crashed (somewhat less spectacularly) in Zaara Street at the Newcastle 500 race weekend last year.
The armco barrier that failed to keep his car inside the Sandown track on Sunday is lower than the concrete and steel mesh fences around the Newcastle circuit, but the crash was a reminder that motor racing is a dangerous sport for drivers and, on occasion, bystanders.
The consequences of a car, or parts of it, leaving the track were evident at the Gold Coast 600 two weeks earlier when a shock absorber from Scott McLaughlin's Mustang ended up on an apartment balcony.
A couple went to hospital at the first Newcastle Supercars weekend in 2017 after a tyre dislodged from a race car, jumped the fence and ended up in the crowd.
Topics asked Supercars and Destination NSW how the Newcastle track was designed to prevent a crash like the one at Sandown.
Destination NSW answered that it "requires that Supercars Australia meets the safety criteria specified by the Confederation of Australian Motor Sports, the motor racing governing body, and the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile during all Newcastle 500 races".
Drinking it all in
Iafolla's crash was not the only thing to catch the eye of east end residents this week.
Some are also concerned about the placement of alcohol and gambling ads opposite houses in Nobbys Road and Parnell Place.
Light rail, light relief
The new Sydney tram broke down during testing on Wednesday, a month before it starts carrying passengers for real.
Luckily for Gladys Berejiklian, the incident happened at the quiet intersection of George and Market streets in the CBD.
The breakdown held up traffic for only 40 minutes, too. Topics can feel another Premier's Award in the making.
The Sydney power failure, unkindly labelled "Peak NSW" by the Twittersphere, was a timely reminder of how little disruption the award-winning Newcastle light rail has caused. Touch wood.
Apart from the loss of parking, demise of inner-city retail and banning of cyclists, our tram has fitted in as well as everyone predicted it would.