The fast and furious drivers of a Ferrari and a Lamborghini that crashed earlier this year are now fined and incarcerated.
Yu Muchun, 20, and Tang Wentian, 21, were found guilty of reckless driving and excessive speeding by the Chaoyang District Court. Yu was sentenced to four months in jail, while Tang was sentenced to five months’ imprisonment (out of a possible maximum of six months each). They also received a combined fine of RMB 18,000, which is a bargain considering what the cars, and now the repairs, will cost.
The two were part of a group of cars engaged in illegal racing in a tunnel near the National Stadium in northern Beijing, when their cars crashed, causing both significant damage to each other and to the tunnel. One female passenger was seriously injured.
The men’s light sentence and profile of both the cars and the accident will likely renew speculation that the two are connected to high-ranking officials. Tang’s mother said that her son is “just an ordinary kid” without business or political connections who paid for the estimated RMB 4 million car himself, first hustling snooker, then investing his winnings in the stock market. Uh-huh.
The crash took place just as the movie Furious 7, the latest installment in the The Fast and The Furious film franchise, was being released in cinemas in China. The film has since become the country’s all-time box office champion, pushing out last summer’s Transformers: Age of Extinction.
Neither illegal racing or the crash of supercars on Beijing street is anything new. In February 2014, a twenty-something driver was killed when he wrecked his Ferrari on the Airport Expressway. A white Lamborghini caught fire and burned in September 2013, backing up traffic on the Fourth Ring Road for kilometers. A more notorious Ferrari crash took place in March 2012.
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Photo: Sina