It has been an amazing year for Sean Edwards. His NGT team is fighting hard in ALMS GTC, he himself currently leads the F1 supporting Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup, he won the 24 hours of Dubai and the 24 hours of Nurburgring, and he was even a featured stunt-driver in the F1 centric motion picture, Rush, playing the role of his father, Guy Edwards. Everything was in motion for Sean to have his breakout year, potentially securing bigger and better drives for 2014.
Today, we awoke to find the news that a young Mr. Edwards lost his life in a driver education incident at the Queensland Raceway in Australia. At the time, Edwards was providing instruction from the passenger seat of a 996 racer driven by a local 20 year old. The driver sustained burns and injuries in the crash and was trapped in the car for upwards of 3 hours while rescue workers extracted him. Sean’s injuries were deemed immediately fatal.
I cannot claim to have been friends with Sean, though I envy those who can. I had met Sean a handful of times, and seen him around the paddock. From that limited experience with him, he seemed among those drivers who love doing what they do. He seemed happy, amiable and genial around fans of the sport. Most recently, I watched Edwards and Henrique Cisneros take a second position finish in class at Circuit of the Americas.
Rather than show images of the aftermath (easily found if you so desire), I greatly prefer to remember Sean as the excellent racer he was, and I am glad that I was able to witness his talents in person one more time. Selfishly, Sean’s death is made all the more tragic by the potentially great future we can no longer witness. FLATSIXES.com would like to extend condolences to the family, friends, competitors, and team members who have known Sean over the years.
In following with this preference, here is a video of Sean in his favorite office at the Nurburgring. Some of the best rain racing I’ve seen in ages.
From everyone in the Porsche community, ‘Goodbye, Sean’.