He’s an all or nothing driver as I see it – either good or bad, little inbetween.

If he can’t keep a car on the road why has he started 208 GP and is still employed.

Who said he can’t keep his car on the road?

He just isn’t as fast in the wet (or the dry). Martin Brundle did a very good analysis of his driving back when he drove for Sauber. He had a very “on off” style on the throttle. Like a teenager playing a video game, rather than gentley feeding in the power he would press it on and off through a corner.

No doubt he has improved through his career but he undoubtley not a top driver and has almost always been consistently beaten by his team mate. He may have lost by a point in 2008 but imagine how well that Ferrari could have gone if it wasn’t driven by Massa and a bored Raikonen.

To be fair they used to say the same about Jackie Stewart but I do tend to agree..

I thought of that before posting but…

You wouldn’t have heard Jackie Stewart moaning to his engineer on the radio. He influenced the people that matter before and after the race and actually changed things, less moaning and more activism. Massa just appears to be a moaner.

Is hartstein cashing in on branch’s misfortune too? Haven’t bothered to check after his Schumacher blog went off the rails. If you legislate all risk out of F1 it becomes a different sport. I’m not sure if there’s a motorsport series with a better driver safety record over the last 20 years. Yes things could be done to limit impacts with recovery vehicles but talk of closed cockpits and safety cars if there’s a damp patch on track are just knee jerk reactions.

He had a very “on off” style on the throttle. Like a teenager playing a video game, rather than gentley feeding in the power he would press it on and off through a corner.

A bit like his late, great countryman, who could drive a bit in the wet.

Massa is no Senna, but it’s a very effective method.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOHDKTH0znc[/video]

I love that Senna NSX video. The brown loafers combined with the sublime heel-toe throttle blip on the downshifts make it!

Don’t forget Massa was nearly killed in an F1 car and he has never imho been the same driver since.

I think it is his accident that makes him jumpy and understandably so. It was a combination of factors that caused the accident and not the conditions in isolation.

I think Nikki Lauda spoke the most sense in the matter.

It was the shoes that put me off watching his feet !

A bit like his late, great countryman, who could drive a bit in the wet.
Massa is no Senna, but it’s a very effective method.

Indeed. It’s one of the techniques that made him so quick through and out of the bends.

But… You want foot on pedal action? Here it is (with mad spectators too).

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdy8CG09rSU[/video]

Just watched the Bianchi video, he was going at a fair rate of knots. As mentioned before the 650kg car lifted the arse end of the telehandler off the floor.

Those marshals were seriously lucky not to get caught up in it.

I’ve just watched the video of the crash as well. After seeing how slowly Sutil crashed I thought Jules would have been going slower than he was. I wonder if the Green flag that the marshal in the tower was waving had anything to do with the speed he was going!

Just watched the video – savage and amazing that he survived

Its amazing that there hasn’t been a death in F1 for 20 years – just shows how well these cars are engineered now and circuit safety

Got up early to watch the race yesterday – but as soon as it was red flagged i went for a cycle

Whilst watching the recovery of Sutil’s car i couldn’t understand what the issue was

Coulthard and Tom were whittering on about all sorts, yet the camera kept panning to the Marussia team

I’ve no idea why the BBC team didn’t get an update on what happened

Great win for Hamilton, but a sad day for the sport 🙁

Sutil and Bianchi could have crashed at the same speed but hit the gravel trap at different angels. Sutil side on and dug in slowing down, whereas Bianchi may have hit the first bit and then been launched over the rest, without scrubbing any speed off.

I think Nikki Lauda spoke the most sense in the matter

Same here

I disagree with Lauda to an extent, in that it wasn’t an unfortunate event, it was something a decent risk assessment should have picked up and mitigation put in place. Remember it is not just the well rewarded drivers at risk in these situations but also the marshals. 2 marshals have died at F1 races since 2000, last being killed by a crane. More can be done to improve safety for all in the situations.

Right. Fantastic overtake- almost like Nico gave up!

Massa has never been right since the spring incident and no one can really blame him really based on the pure psychological trauma let alone the chance he has lasting physical damage to his brain.

This is all too familiar to Maria de Villota’s accident. Open cockpit drivers are horrendously vulnerable in ‘low barrier’ type incidents. The Tom Pryce incident was one of the saddest historical GP moments for me (along with Roger Williamson) and he was basically killed by a fire extinguisher to the face at 170mph (which ended up being launched over a grand stand).

The only way to try to avoid these types of impact is going to be to go around the track and identify anything that can be hit, when the car is on or very near to the ground, and has an overhang at driver head hight. They have butchered F1 cars to stop them launching each other and piercing the sides of cockpits so not it’s time to look at what is around the track and remove stupid things at driver head height.

Accidents will happen but Nikki Lauda really pi$$ed me off by his comments at Silverstone. If there is an accident at one point on a track then going by car insurance type reasoning it is likely there will be another crash there as there is normally some kind of factor or combination of factors which might be more common at that point. Not always and some accidents are never repeated, but there is a chance it will happen again.

It was a double waved yellow. They annoy me when the bring out the safety car when it is not needed and I did not feel it was needed in this case. If you leave a car it might get hit. If you recover it the tractor may get hit. Or a marshal may get hit. Now it’s time to look at what went wrong and what can be done to prevent it happening again.

it was something a decent risk assessment should have picked up and mitigation put in place

Yes but at what point do you say lets just say at home in bed because its safe.

With the power of hindsight its easy to say this or that should have happened.

Every driver knows theres a lot of risk while racing, and while things should be done to mitigate those risks freak accidents will always happen.

Niki knows about about this more than most people.

it was something a decent risk assessment should have picked up and mitigation put in place.

But where do you end? If they risk assessed F1 they wouldn’t even get out of the pit-lane.

The drivers want to take risks, without risk where is the challenge for them?

And the marshalls know what they are doing – they don’t just turn up once a year for a grand prix meeting, they do it week in, week out and probably see more incidents at an average club meeting than at an F1 race.

The BBC commentary prior to the race was pointing out the lack of run off areas and that corner in particular seems to have little space. Pretty sure there’s no gravel trap so it’s either wet grass or tarmac – neither of which is likely to slow a car down much.

But where do you end? If they risk assessed F1 they wouldn’t even get out of the pit-lane

I suspect a risk assessment to that extent would ban pit-lanes!

If you leave a car it might get hit. If you recover it the tractor may get hit. Or a marshal may get hit. Now it’s time to look at what went wrong and what can be done to prevent it happening again.

Self destruct system in the car?

You only need to go back a few weeks to here some drivers complaining that the “challenge” had been taken away from the Parabolica at Monza by replacing a third of the gravel with a Tarmac run off, making it a lot safer to run off at.

I tend to agree with them up to a point but incidental equipment in the firing line needs looking at

Self destruct system in the car?

or the tractor?

No, that’s a daft idea. Then you’d have a crashed car and no tractor to remove it.

hmm

Maybe they should race tractors and recover them with F1 cars?

Yeah, that would work. You’d need to swap the gravel traps for rivers though.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE5WDl_YNbU[/video]

What you need is a crane to lift the tractor out of the way.

You can’t take risk out of motor sport any more than you can from skiing or road cycling or MTBing. Risk is gradually reduced and usually in response to the latest tragedy.

or tarmac – neither of which is likely to slow a car down much.

Gravel traps are being replaced with tarmac left right and centre. An f1 car is designed to have control on tarmac so replacing gravel traps with a driving surface can actually be safer

Gravel traps are being replaced with tarmac left right and centre. An f1 car is designed to have control on tarmac so replacing gravel traps with a driving surface can actually be safer
[/quote]But they only work where there is room for a car to maneuver or brake its way out of trouble. Not the case at many of the Suzuka corners.

They just use cranes at Monaco don’t they? Still need a marshal to be on the track to hook the car up though.

Not if it’s got no wheels. Then a gravel trap would be safer.

Pretty sure there’s no gravel trap so it’s either wet grass or tarmac – neither of which is likely to slow a car down much.

That corner doesn’t have much runoff but then hardly any of the corners at Suzuka have much runoff. It’s a traditional circuit in that it punishes mistakes unlike places like Abu Dhabi where if you run wide you can just drive straight back onto the track. There is a gravel trap at Dunlop corner but at the exact point JB went off it’s not very deep so wouldn’t have had much chance to slow him down.

Gravel traps are being replaced with tarmac left right and centre. An f1 car is designed to have control on tarmac so replacing gravel traps with a driving surface can actually be safer

Still not much use if you have an aqua planing car pelting along at 160km/h onto a sodden tarmac runoff it’s only going to aquaplane more.

He looked to be going far faster than he should have been under double yellows regardless

Green Flags just before the crash

Edit – It’s scary how long the marshal waves the green flag after the crash!

Just watched the video, truly horrific. The unabated speed he hits the digger at is astounding.

As I said previously, a friend of mine was at the race and got an eye witness account back at the hotel. We both thought the guy was embellishing the story, after seeing the footage he actually undersold it!! He also said that Sutil’s car had gone through the gravel before hitting the tyre wall whereas Bianchi slid down a tarmac access road directly into the digger which had moved the Force india car back towards the gap in the armco, about 30m back up the track.

There’s also a picture of the car floating around showing it severely crushed with the roll hoop smashed off and the rear of it in pieces. I hope that means the car did it’s job and absorbed a lot of the energy.

The green flag thing is cobblers. The marshal post is past (although only by a few metres) past where the recovery vehicle was at the time of the Bianchi crash. The green flag is to show that the track is clear after that point which it was. The only reason the marshal will have started waving yellow after this is when the safety car came out as it is then a full course yellow.

The video is bloody awful. I’ve watched it once and I won’t be watching it again.

There’s also a picture of the car floating around showing it severely crushed with the roll hoop smashed off and the rear of it in pieces. I hope that means the car did it’s job and absorbed a lot of the energy.

Unfortunately those are all the parts of the car which hit after his head 🙁

It’s a real shame but I fully agree with Lauda in that it’s a dangerous sport and shit happens.

One thing that’s always surprised me though is why they don’t have larger cranes to pluck the cars away from the other side of the barriers. Is it just that they’ll block the spectators views?

or are you keen to return to the 60s when drivers being killed was part of the spectacle?

Nope. I don’t think anyone is.

But, neither would doing nothing result in that, seeing as it’s still over 20 years since a driver was killed. They’re already too trigger happy with the SC – they were practically on inters when it came in after the start.

As for massa, well, I’ve always liked him. But he is always the one you would bet to be pointing the wrong way first when it starts raining.