[Closed] The F1 Thread...

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.