Pembrokeshires St John Ambulance volunteers played a key first-aid role in Saturdays accident at the Network Q Rally County duty officer, Keith McNiffe, said his Pembrokeshire team received a call when Carlos Sainzs Ford Focus hit a marshals car then careered into 13 spectators during stage 11 of the rally at Brechfa on Saturday. The same crew also aided a spectator who suffered a heart attack during stage seven on Friday.

On Saturday, two St John vehicles were nearby and crews treated spectators for bumps, bruises, cuts and head and spinal injuries. Two were airlifted to West Wales General Hospital while St John volunteers transferred a further six to the hospital. All but one have since been released.

The team have been praised by the RAC for their quick handling of the situation.

Mr McNiffe said: It was the first time communications controller Rob Kilcoyne had handled anything like this but the feedback from the RAC has been highly positive. Three other local volunteers, Idris Owen, Martin Blaney and Vicky Blaney were also quickly on the scene. They were part of 100 St John volunteers at the events which attracted over 200,000 spectators. Mr McNiffe said the accident should be put in perspective. It was a freak accident and rallying is not a dangerous sport -more people will probably be injured playing football over the weekend. He said, however, that the injuries could have been a lot more serious if the car had not hit a parked vehicle first. The car took all of the impact. Without that we could have been dealing with fatalities.