"Witneses told The Weekend Australian it took 10 minutes to
get Clark out of his wrecked Falcon and cutting equipment had
to be used.

Marshals then went to work on the stricken second car, in which
Porter was pinned in the driver's seat.

They eventually got him out through the passenger side. Paramedics
applied CPR to both drivers, before the pair were taken away by
ambulance.

A process for sorting injured people into groups based on their need for
or likely benefit from immediate medical treatment. Triage is used in
hospital emergency rooms, on battlefields, and at disaster sites when
limited medical resources must be allocated.

"V8 Supercars Australia says it is still unclear whether Mark Porter
took his racing harness off before a fatal crash at the Mount Panorama
circuit in Bathurst last Friday.

V8 Supercars Australia chief executive, Wayne Cattach, said officials
had examined some video footage of the accident and it had not been
established if Porter was trying to remove the harness before he was
hit by Clark's car.

"There are however, gaps in the flow of information so it's not outside
the realms of possibility that he could have taken it off," he said.

"BATHURST 1000 champion Craig Lowndes believes V8 Supercars
requires tougher safety guidelines after the death of New Zealand driver
Mark Porter.

There have been suggestions Porter had been attempting to escape
his vehicle and was not fully strapped into his safety harness when
contact was made.

V8 officials denied the claims today but said the full details of the
accident would form part of a thorough investigation.

While Lowndes admits it was a "freakish accident", he says it has
highlighted a serious concern about the lack of protection for drivers
from side impact.

"Side impact is our worst nightmare because there is no crumple zone,"
the Ford star said.

"Front or rear impact isn't bad because we have a large crumple zone.

"(On the side) there's not a lot of room between us and the outside of
the car.

"To have an incident like that (Porter-Clark) is pretty freakish . . . you
could not position it. It's one of those incidents you'd never dream of
but it's happened and now we've got to figure out ways to prevent it."

Lowndes's Triple Eight team goes beyond current V8 regulations and
puts reinforced carbon fibre in the driver's side door of his Falcon for
added safety.

But the V8 Supercars series leader wants more to be done, including
allowing the drivers to position themselves closer to the centre of the
vehicle and adopting a driver safety cell which is used in the German
touring car series.

The safety cell is a protective framework within the car that can be
easily removed by rescue crews with the driver inside.

Both Porter and Clark were trapped in their vehicles for about 10
minutes on Friday.

Another Kiwi, Paul Radisich, also had to wait 20 minutes before being
freed through the roof of his Commodore during Sunday's Bathurst 1000
race after a nasty looking collision with a tyre wall.

Last year, Brad Jones was twice rescued from his upside down Falcon.

Lowndes says recent driver trappings are more than a coincidence and
something must be done.

"It gets back to how many times we've now had cars upside down . . .
stuck in seat belts . . . it seems to me now more beyond a
coincidence," he said.

"There is a proper cell that you as a driver sit in and you can pluck it
out of the car.

"The cell can basically be popped out of the car with the driver in it.

"(V8) rules only allow drivers to move so far into the centre of the car,
maybe they need to look at changing that, measurements made a bit
flexible.

Other recommendations from Lowndes include further development of
the HANS safety device which protects drivers from whiplash in front
and rear contact but less effective in lateral protection.