[Closed] The F1 Thread...

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

[quote=Pook ]

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

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.
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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

[url= http://www.express.co.uk/sport/f1-autosport/519448/Green-flags-waving-before-Jules-Bianchi-crash-Japan-Grand-Prix ]Green Flags[/url] 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.

Don't forget too that perversely the SC may have contributed to Senna's crash as it took all the heat out the tyres and lowered the pressures which in turn affected the ride height. Senna in particular was very unhappy at the slow speeds it was running.

Back then, and it on the Williams which was effectively the '93 car without active suspension to level everything up, ride height was critical to the handling. I think it was Damon Hill who said the early season car was so unstable a speck of dust on the front wing would upset the handling. An exaggeration to an extent of course but a couple of mm to ride height made it a pretty horrid car to drive.

I think after Hakkinens crash in Adelaide '95 someone took to door off the medical car where the doctor was performing emergency surgery on Hakkinens which saved his life so do we stop sending out the medical car?

This was an extremely unfortunate set of circumstances and Bianchi's off even in these exact circumstances could have had multiple outcomes. It could have happened behind the safety car even as the lower speeds mean less downforce so less weight to push the cars through standing water and more aqua planing (albeit at a lower speed).

As others have said the only sure fire way to prevent an accident is not to race.

Maybe leave the car as hitting an F1 car with another is probably preferable to hitting a crane...

He went at an angle forward into the back of the tractor and lifted the tractor off the ground. I thought originally he'd gone in backwards. That footage (doesn't show anything graphic) but it gives clear indication of how fast/how he hit.

Watching that video he's lucky to be alive.

I don't doubt there will be a review of the use and type of cranes at F1, and so there should be

@dannybgoode, yes I think in hindsight it would have been safer to hit the car

Senna in particular was very unhappy at the slow speeds it was running.

It was a Cavalier, though. Completely not fit for purpose.

If the jcb hadn't been in that spot Bianchi would have gone down the escape road unhampered. How can that be possible? There must be some basic failings with the layout of that track.

[url= https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ @34.8445329,136.5338815,3a,75y,309.43h,78.3t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1sL7anpJkE11qAuGjYBuO-Nw!2e0!3e5]Streetview[/url] shows that if he hadn't hid the tractor and threaded the car through the gap in the armco he would have gone head on into a concrete wall so I don't think he would have been much better off. The likelihood of a head injury would have been vastly reduced but a concrete wall won't move unlike the tractor.

I thought the crash had happened earlier in Dunlop corner but now I look at it here it's much more obvious why was going that speed when he had the accident.

so, anyone think that if the car was less reliant on aero downforce and more reliant on bigger tyres and mechanical grip, aquaplaning would be less of an issue at (relatively) lower speeds for F1 cars - certainly it seems the operating window of these cars is getting less and less, especially in wet conditions - before we know it we'll be like the US and stop all racing at a drop of rain.

OR, Perhaps there needs to be a second set of rules for when the race is declared a wet race, where teams are allowed to jack up the height of the cars and fit extra downforce

did anyone else see the major accident waiting to happen with DRS open on the straight going through big puddles on on overtake? one car was slipping around at the back big time and the driver had to cancel the DRS.
I thought a big spin and a collection of the car being overtaken was on the cards at one point.

@backtobasics - isn't it the case that in poor conditions eg lots of water, snow, ice narrower tyres have better grip ? Thats what the rally guys do

bigger tyres wouldn't stop aquaplaning, the opposite in fact.

@NorthernMatt - no, I reckon he'd have been better hitting the concrete wall. The cars are designed with such a strong survival cell, built to take that sort of impact. Sliding under the tractor was such a freak accident that there was less protection for Bianchi

At least the car's crumple zones would have had a bearing on things if he had hit the concrete. At those speeds every little bit helps!

Scotchegg - the CAT deflected him through the gap by the look of the video, he would have it the barrier otherwise.

That corner heavily loads the car up sideways whilst on near full throttle so there was an awful lot of kinetic energy to be dissipated, as shown by the CAT (about 8 tonnes worth according to an F1 forum) moving a good few feet in the air.

As for the '94 safety car being a Cavalier, it was chosen by a sponsor not the FIA. By Monaco they had sourced a converted 911 via the German race's safety team with the Cavalier following the pack on the first lap only. It's because of this that we now have the SLS AMG safety car and the AMG estate medical car. If you've read Prof. Sid Watkins' book 'Triumph and Tragedy in F1' you'll know how hard it was to get a decent car available for a very long time.

Cranes only seems a sensible way forward like they do at Monaco, guessing the costs involved will make it hard at some places.

Sliding under the tractor was such a freak accident that there was less protection for Bianchi

The leftside of his helmet hit the rear body

If you've read Prof. Sid Watkins' book

I have. But the ridiculousness of not being able to get hold of a sports car in Italy is beyond ironic.

the rear body of the tractor?

Yes but - theres a pic of a trackside Doctor holding both sides of his helmet to talk/examin him. I'm hoping he hit and deflected along the angled rear body and it was the air tunnel and pod that glanced/disintergrated and he only took a secondary blow. If it'd been his head first then the car - that photo/the way he is being looked at in the pic would look totally different.

From what I can see he hit/went under the counterweight, ie a massive piece of concrete hanging off the back of the tractor

Either way, parts of the car slid under the tractor and he'd have been better off hitting a concrete wall. Let's hope he recovers quickly

with reg's to my comment on bigger tyres - of course i mean bigger wet weather tyres - not only in width but diameter to give much deeper tread blocks and pattern
didnt they stop using the monsoon tyre because quite franks the f1 cars could not really run on them as they generated no heat and no downforce.

Is hartstein cashing in on branch's misfortune too?

I don't understand the anti-Hartstein crew.

He's more qualified, more experienced and better placed than anyone to give an opinion. If he was any closer he'd be silenced by Bernie. Again.

His pieces are balanced opinion; fair enough if you don't agree with him, but you need to respect that he's earned the right to it.

If it'd been his head first then the car

...then he would have been killed instantly at that speed. It must have been a secondary impact or a very shallow angle glancing blow

didnt they stop using the monsoon tyre because quite franks the f1 cars could not really run on them as they generated no heat and no downforce.

Unlike slicks, wet tyres in the wet don't really generate much heat at all and are designed to provide grip at low temperature in the wet - in fact when the track starts to dry out and they do start generating significant heat, they very quickly disintegrate. Like within 1 lap they can be history.

Tyres don't generate any downforce!

...then he would have been killed instantly at that speed. It must have been a secondary impact or a very shallow angle glancing blow

I'm hoping he saw it coming and ducked or lent to his right as much as he could whilst strapped in.

Scotchegg - the CAT deflected him through the gap by the look of the video, he would have it the barrier otherwise.

In fact I'm fairly convinced he was steering right to try and avoid the tractor, as the straight line from the corner takes him to the left of where the impact was (I worked that out following your comment, as I hadn't noticed the deflection before, and making it through the gap seemed all but impossible from the geometry - thanks). All but impossible to thread the gap under normal circumstances, so he would have hit the barrier as intended and not made it through to the concrete.

Not a lot of space there, as the other side of the concrete wall is 130R and they can't compromise the runoff from that, hence difficult to do much more with the runoff (according to http://www.racingcircuits.info/asia/japan/suzuka.html Dunlop was moved in 2001 to make more runoff space, and 130R was reprofiled a year later)

Having seen the video, if he survives, he's very lucky - it's horrific indeed, I wasn't expecting the speed.

Truly hope he makes it.

Maybe any tractor used on circuit should be fitted with some sort of impact absorption hardware, like the kind you see on the back of highway maintenance vehicles:

[url= https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3935/15281818059_cf1d8f94ae_o.pn g" target="_blank">https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3935/15281818059_cf1d8f94ae_o.pn g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/69309759@N02/15281818059/ ]Truck[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/people/69309759@N02/ ]VeeeDubStar[/url], on Flickr

Obviously it would be difficult to have something like that all the way around a tractor without making it totally un-manouvrable and useless.

However, the overhang on the back of the tractor in the incident could not be at a worse height for the drivers head and needs to be addressed.

I'm hoping he saw it coming and ducked or lent to his right as much as he could whilst strapped in.

They are strapped in so tight, there is no chance of ducking out of the way! They can lean their head a little, but that's about all. It's always been an issue with open cockpit cars. At least they sit much lower down than they used to - just compare the seating position of a modern F1 car v 80's F1 car. I expect he did see it coming, but could do very little about it!

I expect he did see it coming, but could do very little about it!

I'm convinced he did - see my comment above about only hitting there because he'd steered to try and avoid it.

@moshimonster

i never said tyres produce downforce - but the do produce GRIP - and heat produces GRIP and therefore my comments about tyre size/depth/diameter and the non-use of the current monsoon tyre.

Not good news by the looks of it.

They have announced he has a diffuse axonal injury.

Would explain how his helmet looks fine (visor attached and opened normally) and no blood etc when they took his helmet off. Rapid deceleration or rotation so maybe a glancing blow or from when the roll hoop hit the tractor and the car did slow down very quick. 🙁

From wikipedia:

[i]Diffuse axonal injury (DAI) is one of the most common and devastating types of traumatic brain injury,[1] meaning that damage occurs over a more widespread area than in focal brain injury. DAI, which refers to extensive lesions in white matter tracts, is one of the major causes of unconsciousness and persistent vegetative state after head trauma.[2] It occurs in about half of all cases of severe head trauma.

The outcome is frequently coma, with over 90% of patients with severe DAI never regaining consciousness.[2] Those who do wake up often remain significantly impaired.[3]

Other authors state that DAI can occur in every degree of severity from (very) mild or moderate to (very) severe.[4][5] Concussion may be a milder type of diffuse axonal injury.[6][/i].

Poor bloke, I feel so sad for him. 🙁

back2basics - Member

OR, Perhaps there needs to be a second set of rules for when the race is declared a wet race, where teams are allowed to jack up the height of the cars and fit extra downforce

They already have this, e.g. after a dry quali if the race looks to be wet, they are allowed to change to a wet setup.

back2basics - Member
did anyone else see the major accident waiting to happen with DRS open on the straight going through big puddles on on overtake? one car was slipping around at the back big time and the driver had to cancel the DRS.
I thought a big spin and a collection of the car being overtaken was on the cards at one point.

This is already in place, DRS can be (and was) disabled by race control when conditions warrant it.

back2basics - Member

with reg's to my comment on bigger tyres - of course i mean bigger wet weather tyres - not only in width but diameter to give much deeper tread blocks and pattern

They *are* bigger in diameter, approx 5 mm. This allows the teams to run inters/drys when appropriate and still have decent aero, but give enough clearance under the plank to avoid aquaplaning in conditions warranting the full-wet.

back2basics - Member
didnt they stop using the monsoon tyre because quite franks the f1 cars could not really run on them as they generated no heat and no downforce.

Quite the opposite, they work at low heat and overheat quickly if the conditions are too dry. The downforce issue is due to a) running slower b) as above, raising the ride height.

the non-use of the current monsoon tyre

There hasn't been a proper monsoon tyre for years. Bridgestone used to refer to their full wet tyre as a monsoon tyre and called the inters a wet tyre. Confusing eh?

From what I can see he hit/went under the counterweight, ie a massive piece of concrete hanging off the back of the tractor

i never said tyres produce downforce - but the do produce GRIP - and heat produces GRIP and therefore my comments about tyre size/depth/diameter and the non-use of the current monsoon tyre.

But wet tyres do not need heat to generate grip. In fact they really do not like running hot at all. If the priority was to reduce aquaplaning, narrower tyres would be the answer. The main problem with wet running in F1 is the amount of power going through the wide rear tyres only and the cars are very light at low speed. Downforce helps to reduce aquaplaning at higher speeds up to a point.

F1 cars are about the most aquaplane resistant vehicles there are. They can corner in the wet massively faster than a road car and a rally car will only be marginally better than the road car. But this is due to their grip being generated by downforce so once they start spinning they lose grip entirely and keep going.

Feel sorry for the guy.

F1 cars are about the most aquaplane resistant vehicles there are

not sure about that.

At moderate speed ( around 120mph) in high downforce lets say the car is generating about 12kN downforce so it now appears to weigh about 3 times it's static weight ie around 2 ton so the weight of a large car. When you have a car that is actually only 690kg then you can corner very fast as you are generating a lot of grip compared to the centrifugal force trying to make you slide wide.

Another miss-match is inertia. An F1 car is ultimately a low mass so has low interia and is thus easier to deviate than a 2 ton car. So when it hits a bump or a load of standing water there will be more of an affect in terms of movement of the car, change in speed etc. In complete opposite think of a big truck hitting a bit of standing water compared to a little hatchback.

Then add to that F1 tyres are very wide. About 325mm actual tread width which is more than the real tread width you find on a large saloon car or most sportscars.

So we have a car that does not actually have that much 'weight' with low inertia and wide tyres. Lower than 120 it gets a lot worse. Higher it is obviously a lot better (square relationship). Maybe if you are doing 180mph then yes the F1 car will now weight about 5 times it's stationary weight but it won't be doing 180 round a bend, especially in the wet.

Yes they will still corner faster than pretty much anything due to favourable grip V centrifugal force but highly resistant to aquaplaning? hmmm

edit: + add in the potential for the barge board to hydroplane, how easy it is to spin up the drive wheels with all the power on tap and how you can suddenly lose a lot of your downforce due to an aerodynamic disturbance

At moderate speed ( around 120mph) in high downforce lets say the car is generating about 12kN downforce so it now appears to weigh about 3 times it's static weight ie around 2 ton so the weight of a large car.

Try driving a 2 tonne car round a corner at 120mph in the wet. Good luck.

I'll admit it's temperamental but an F1 car can drive faster than almost any other car before aquaplaning. Other cars will have either aquaplaned at a much lower speed or never go fast enough to suffer the effect. Any car can avoid aquaplaning by being heavy and slow.

[url= http://www.f1today.net/en/news/hamilton-signs-for-mclaren-for-2015 ]Hamilton to Mclaren for 2015??[/url] Never saw that one coming! it will be interesting to see if its true

Got to be bollocks that?

an F1 car can drive faster than almost any other car before aquaplaning.

[url= http://www.f1today.net/en/news/alonso-locked-in-tough-negotiations-with-mclaren ]Same website two hours earlier[/url] so I'd not believe it