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At this rate the race will be finishing at about 8pm!
Grosjean named driver of the day. One of the R5 commentators said "driver of the day? He drove 3 corners and caused a collision" 😂
Wtaf!!
The car literally broke clean in 2 and the car exploded!! Anyone watching that live must have immediately assumed that's a fatality.
I can't comprehend how someone had survived that, let alone walked away from it relatively unscathed..
WTF was that Marshall doing running across a live racetrack to the stricken racing point?!
Lewis bossed it.
Merc engine blow up could just have saved Albons F1 career
If you watch the video of the medical car arriving and getting Grosjean out, there's 16 or 17 seconds from the car stopping to Grosjean appearing. How on earth he's not dead is a mystery. How can he not have serious lung damage?!
Grosjean named driver of the day. One of the R5 commentators said “driver of the day? He drove 3 corners and caused a collision” 😂
The commentators on Sky F1 suggested that DotD should be Alan van der Merwe, the driver of the Medical Car.
Merc engine blow up could just have saved Albons F1 career
I'd imagine an outfit as successful as Red Bull will look at the bigger picture than a gifted podium. They'll be well aware of how far down the road he was to Max again.
Just an amazing thing that he can speak to us after that. Bonkers.
Obviously great news that he survived and the halo played a big part in that but barrier should never have failed in the way it did. Pure chance he wasn't knocked out or trapped in the barriers, would have been a fatal accident if so - Google Helmuth Koenig crash if you have strong stomach.
I'm not so sure the response time was that great given the safety car was following the field. Even with all the massive advances in safety over the years, there's a lot of pure chance in surviving the big one.
I'd been warned there was a big accident before watching the highlights but that was shocking. How the hell he got himself out is unfathomable, stopping that voliently must have knocked him out for a few seconds and that fire was not being put out quickly enough for him to survive in there long. The fire suits, helmets etc are designed to survive for 30 seconds, he was very close to breaching that.
I felt sick watching it even knowing that he survived.
That was chilling to watch—a fireball is always sickening, almost anything could have gone just slightly differently and turned that into an unsurvivable incident. Took me straight back to '89, seeing Berger's crash at Tamburello. And then the pictures of the wreckage just brough Francois Cevert to mind.
Just seen the full aerial replay on C4, too. Hideous.
I’m not so sure the response time was that great given the safety car was following the field.
1) it's the medical car
2) it's a Merc estate, it's not going to keep up with an F1 car capable of over 200mph
<20 seconds response time is good
I’m not so sure the response time was that great given the safety car was following the field.
I think it was remarkably quick.
I thought we had seen the last of fires like that a long time ago. I guess it's a big reminder not to get complacent.
I suspect one of the reforms will be to have the medical car staff to be in full fire suits/helmets. A lot of the old footage of firey crashes have the first people on scene able to help have been drivers, on account of no one else being equipped to take the heat.
Not sure how the medical car could get there any quicker, whilst carrying all the kit they need. It’s an E63 AMG, a 600+ hp monster, there’s nothing quicker, only an RS6 is even comparable.
Awful. No way should the barriers have failed like that. Must be an inquiry because clearly they had no vertical strength whatsoever. Thank goodness he was ok. And that fire marshal really was a hero.
The barriers narrowed the track at that point like a funnel, I think they'll need to rework it.
This view shows he was in the burning halo for some time glad he was in a condition to get out.
In the commentary they were saying that he must have hit between the posts of the TCB, but you can see in the gif that he hit next to/on one and tore it clean out the ground.
I can see the upshot being full fireproofs and possibly even BA for the medical car, or another vehicle the same as the medical car only with BA equipped fire fighters in it, so that in the event of that kind of accident they can have an unconscious driver out of the fire really quickly.
They'll likely also be checking the inspection schedule of the barrier, to make sure that it was inspected/tensioned/bonded as per specs, and if it was, looking at increasing the inspection/testing frequency to identify if there is an issue with the barriers where they can fail between inspections (they can, obviously, but does it happen consistently is the question). As well as investigating the design/fixing of the post to see if it could be secured better - as a general rule if the post doesn't pull out, then the barriers shouldn't split like that. All this could be totally wrong, as it's based on my knowledge of barriers on the motorways, which is over 15 years out of date now!
I like Roman, and I’m ever so glad he survived (as unharmed as he was is amazing) but he’s a terrible driver, surely that’s got to be the end of his F1 career surely?
I’ll not repeat what others have said other than it’s incredible that he not only survived but relatively unscathed.
I can see a few things coming out of this. Full fire suits with full visors for medical car personnel. Also more, professional firemen and women around the circuit. Only one with an extinguisher to hand and it was really only when they got the extinguisher from the car that it appeared to have an effect.
Still, a testament to the safety improvements in the last decade.
Only one with an extinguisher to hand and it was really only when they got the extinguisher from the car that it appeared to have an effect.
You don't like to be critical of anyone having to deal with such an absolute nightmare, but the overheads suggest that the first fire marshall appeared fairly ineffectual, starting their extinguisher some way from the car.
I do wonder, with the barrier split, how much harder the railing would need to be and what the consequences would have been if it had been sufficiently strong not to move.
Just had an awful thought. His wife would have been commenting on that live! That must have been horrible to witness with all the replays and lack of info immediately afterwards.
He hit the barrier with an impact of 53g according to the news.
That is one hell of a hit for a barrier to take.
just glad of the halo, otherwise I doubt he would have been taking in that video
I do wonder, with the barrier split, how much harder the railing would need to be and what the consequences would have been if it had been sufficiently strong not to move.
The railing deforming and the car breaking in half dissipated the energy of the accident. If the front of the car had not penetrated the railing, then all that energy would have been concentrated on the safety cell, which may not have been strong enough to withstand being crushed between the engine/gearbox and the railing. In that case, you would probably have a dead driver.
@thols2. I don’t think so necessarily. Kubica’s Canada crash was into the angle of a concrete wall and peaked at 75G and he walked away.
Given the angle of the impact all the energy was fairly concentrated into the nose of the car also and the survival cell stayed intact.
Also people are quite rightly crediting the halo but I think as well with both Kubica and Grosjean, the outlook for both would have been very different without the HANS device as well.
I think the difference with the Kubica crash was that it was not as close to head-on as Grosjean's was, my suspicions are the same as Thols2's. And absolutely +1 for HANS saving another life.
Just had an awful thought. His wife would have been commenting on that live! That must have been horrible to witness with all the replays and lack of info immediately afterwards.
Jesus! Can't imagine, can you.... 🙁
I don’t think so necessarily. Kubica’s Canada crash was into the angle of a concrete wall and peaked at 75G and he walked away.
Yeah, things like a car crash are really complex. Two crashes that look very similar might have totally different outcomes. What we do know is that the energy has to be dissipated somehow, which means that something has to deform or break. Crash barriers that deform will absorb more energy than a solid concrete wall.
Two crashes that look very similar might have totally different outcomes
Very true. I remember part of the shock of Senna’s crash being fatal was that people had seen what looked to be far worse accidents with people walking away but they didn’t end up with a wheel plus suspension arm in their head.
There’s a dozen things that could have happened slightly differently with Grosjean that would mean a very different outcome but all the safety features introduced over the years had the cumulative effect of saving him I think. Had he not gone quite so far through the barriers they may have trapped him in the car for example. So a dose of luck helped as well. Think I’ll try and get this week’s lottery numbers of him.
The problem yesterday is that the barrier didn't just deform, it split, which let the nose of the car past it. I don't think that should have happened, and could easily have resulted in a much worse outcome.
Verstappen being a dick...
Max Verstappen says that if he was an F1 team boss he would "kick out of his seat" a driver in shock who would refuse to race after witnessing a dramatic accident. https://f1i.com/news/391774-verstappen-would-kick-out-an-f1-driver-who-refuses-to-race.html
https://twitter.com/F1icom/status/1333321359431241734
@dawson. Actually I think he has a point. At that level you cannot afford to get spooked. You cannot drive around nervous. I can't remember who it was but they said they could never be an F1 driver as they would always be thinking 'what if, what if my brakes failed going into turn 4, what if a wheel comes off at 200mph etc'. F1 drivers don't, cannot in fact, think like that otherwise they would never get in the car or if they did, perform way below peak. When they do start thinking 'what if' they generally retire anyway - they are not 'normal' people by any stretch....
We cannot make F1 totally safe. This truly comes across as a freak accident. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t analyse what happened an learn from it. If I was going to take anything from it on first glance I would suggest not driving at that angle and speed into Armco.
Oh and replace all run off areas with gravel traps.
On that point ^^.
Quite a few years ago, at one of the airshows there was a big crash involving two MiGs when the pilots got a bit too show-offy.
It was obvious that both were fine (both ejected and walked off), the crash was a way off the active area. This would never happen now but back then it was just a case of "crack on!" and a Swiss aerobatic team took off and did a perfect display.
To be flying along inches from your mates wingtips having just seen the aftermath of the MiG crash takes real concentration, you just have to block it out. I can see Verstappen's point even if it wasn't made in the most diplomatic manner.
@dannybgoode - on balance, I agree they need to be 100% when they strap themselves in, it just shows his immaturity (again) when it was apparent from the footage of the drivers watching the replays during the red flag period, that they were quite shocked by what they were seeing.
If I was going to take anything from it on first glance I would suggest not driving at that angle and speed into Armco.
🙂 🙂 . Fair...
So who is the Haas reserver driver?
Can't see Romain back in the car within the next fortnight. Early promotion for Mick Schumacher perhaps?
Got to be a better option than Fittipaldi or Deletraz.
To be flying along inches from your mates wingtips having just seen the aftermath of the MiG crash takes real concentration, you just have to block it out.
My MD's nephew is Red 9 but was an instructor on the day of the 2018 training crash and he knew the engineer that was killed well (he's been in the Reds on and off for a few years now). He still had to take off and do his day job. How they manage I am not quite sure but as you say when you perform at that level you can just shut it out as and when required.
lewis can take the total british gp win count to 300 if he wins the next 2 races, which he's won almost a third of them! 8)
@dawson - perhaps useful in its full context and note this was in the post race interviews and Hamilton said the same thing just less forcefully. Don't forget the Dutch are known for coming across a little blunt so much of it is a language thing:
In Sunday's post-race press conference, it was suggested to race winner Lewis Hamilton and Verstappen that drivers should perhaps be given the choice to not restart a race in the event of a major crash involving one of their colleagues.
"We’re not the safety regulators," replied Hamilton. "We’re here to do a job and we rely on the FIA who are aware of safety and we trust them implicitly. So no, I don’t think so."
But the Dutchman dismissed such an option more bluntly.
"I don’t get why you wouldn’t race," Verstappen said. "If I would be the team boss, I would kick him out of the seat.
"If the guy wouldn’t race, if I would be the team boss, I would tell him ‘then you never sit in the seat again’."
Actually I think he has a point.
I think any professional racing driver would race if there had been a non-fatal crash that was driver error rather than a problem with the circuit itself. Problem is, Verstappen was being a dick saying it in that way.
I don't they shut it out, as such, I think they just don't think about, I think they just have a very strong "that could never happen to me" thing going on.
Yeah, what Verstappen's saying is fair enough, he's just being characteristically blunt. You can't race at 100% if you think about what might happen if you spear off the track, and all true racers will tell you that once the visor goes down they're in race mode, where that thought isn't ever entertained; the same was true at Spa last year. Jackie Stewart is one of the more eloquent storytellers on that front, managing to do that regularly for his whole career right until what would have been his 100th and last race.
I must admit, I did think that the configuration of the barriers didn't look obviously problematic given their location in relation to the preceding corners, and there is perhaps an element of certain drivers pushing the envelopes in terms of finding new ways to crash…
Armco is really intended to deflect collisions at an angle, it's not a good solution for a head-on collision for several obvious reasons. If there's anything to come of this then I suspect that it will be better fireproofing for the medical team (or firefighters to support them) and a review of where Armco can be used, perhaps looking into a new type of more energy-absorbent barrier.
Given how much the sport's learned since incidents like those of Cevert and Koinigg, and Courage and Lauda (admittedly the last of those being exacerbated by the inherent problems of the Nordschleife) it's in some ways odd that Armco is still used and that the medical car team is still under-equipped for extrication from fires, but there we go.