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

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://t.co/y2tF0T8AUz

— F1i (@F1icom) November 30, 2020

@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.

BREAKING: Haas announces Romain Grosjean will not race in this weekend's Sakhir Grand Prix after the injuries he sustained yesterday – Pietro Fittipaldi will replace him #F1

— Chris Medland (@ChrisMedlandF1) November 30, 2020

t’s in some ways odd that Armco is still used and that the medical car team is still ill-equipped for extrication from fires

The former yes, the latter – I guess fires of this nature are now so rare they simply didn’t factor them in. I suspect that will now change…

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.

@pondo completely agree, I suspect if I were put in his shoes I’d have been bricking it too and done an even less effective attempt to tackle the fire. I was careful with my words as didn’t want to criticise but the intervention from the people in the car was much more direct. Not sure if it’s just better training required for track side fire marshal’s or just braver ones.

I guess fires of this nature are now so rare they simply didn’t factor them in. I suspect that will now change…

There’s a lot to be said for the way NASCAR and Indycar operate, the right people with the right equipment at the scene very quickly. Would be harder to deploy on a normal track (rather than a speedway) though

“The last time an F1 car split in two was at Monaco in 1991. The last time one caught fire in a crash was at Imola in 1989.” Would not have guessed it had been so long since the last (crash) fire

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.

The Armco needs to move to dissipate the energy. That’s its fundamental advantage over a concrete barrier.
A case in point here would be Allen Simonsen’s fatal crash at Tetre Rouge, Le Mans in 2013. There was ARMCO but they were right up against a few very big beech trees so there was no give and the forces were un-survivable as a result. They altered the corner from 2014 so they could realign the armco .

In the case of that barrier at Bahrain, it will probably be judged that it needed a rubber conveyor belt over it to stop penetration. Unfortunately it sometimes takes incidents like these to realise the danger. And generally speaking that barrier was at least 100m after corner exit where they tend to think the danger is reduced as it’s a straight…

the drivers watching the replays during the red flag period, that they were quite shocked by what they were seeing

Vettel’s comment was interesting. I’ll get it slightly wrong but in essence ——- I haven’t watched it in detail because if I’m honest I really don’t want to.

A link to some of his comments

https://www.racefans.net/2020/11/29/vettel-tried-not-to-look-at-video-of-grosjeans-crash/

It certainly was a horrific looking crash – especially with the fireball. Long time since we have seen anything like that in F1 which made it even more shocking. I am also glad that Grosjean is mostly ok and that he walked away from the accident. Given his previous experiences in F1 though, I still don’t understand why he cut across the driver behind him which, from what I could see, is ultimately what caused the crash. I suspect that’s probably the last we will see of him in F1. There have been a few few ex racers that have commented that back in their day the race would have carried on after an incident like that. The advances in safety have made it possible to escape big crashes relatively unscathed but I think you still have to have a bit of humanity around them and red flagging the race was the right thing to do.

I still don’t understand why he cut across the driver behind him which, from what I could see, is ultimately what caused the crash.

I think he saw Kimi off the road to his left and then a couple of cars squabbling directly in front of him and thought Kimi was going to swing back on or even spin directly where he was heading so decided to move right. Karun’s analysis on the Sky Sport website goes into this in detail.

Interesting fact I learnt from someone at the @fia last night :

They introduced a new race suit this year which is heavier but protects the driver from fire for 20 seconds, whereas the gloves still only do 10 seconds, like the previous suits. Another lucky break for @RGrosjean pic.twitter.com/6UvVolN3rs

— Karun Chandhok (@karunchandhok) November 30, 2020

This graphic may help people understand what happened with Romain on Sunday. pic.twitter.com/Lps32px0m6

— Joe Saward (@joesaward) November 30, 2020

“The last time an F1 car split in two was at Monaco in 1991. The last time one caught fire in a crash was at Imola in 1989.” Would not have guessed it had been so long since the last (crash) fire

I don’t believe that either. That may have been the last big proper fireball crash, Berger IIRC, but that definitely wasn’t the last time a car split in two, Brundell in the Jordan, Australia 1996 springs to mind.
.
Talking of which, showing my age, I thought I was back in 1994 for minute, Christian or Jean-Dennis?

Got to be a better option than Fittipaldi or Deletraz.

On the subject of whether to race again after a really nasty crash, I can sort of relate to it. I was racing at the 24hr World Championship in Canberra in 2013 (MTB, I wasn’t at Le Mans or anything like that) and a rider suffered a really nasty injury on the Friday, the day before the race. He had been competing in a different race, one for the Aussie military, the weekend before, and had stayed around to watch ours. He was riding the lower part of the DH, after it joined our track, when he crashed. I didn’t see it, which I guess is different to the other drivers in the crash we are talking about, and there was no TV footage of it either. I saw the ambulance but you see those all the time at MTB races. It was the next day, standing on the start line, that we were informed that he died of his injuries in hospital and we had a minute’s silence.
It was a strange feeling, even not having seen it, but knowing exactly where it had happened, and that I would be passing that exact spot less than an hour later. The mood was obviously very subdued.
However, as soon as the race was underway it never even crossed my mind, that was quite a fast section so the concentration was on my line, the guy in front and the guy trying to get passed, I genuinely didn’t even think about it for a good few laps, and I had passed that spot often enough and got my confidence when I did remember that it just wasn’t an issue.
.
I’m not claiming to be anywhere the same level as the likes of Hamilton and co, but if that’s what it’s like for me I can easily believe they have a very similar mindset, and probably more so.
http://andrewhowett.blogspot.com/2013/10/i-need-other-rear-wheel-and-piece-of.html

Looks like that’s it for Hamilton’s season, he’s got the plague 🙁

So, do they go for Vandoorne who is supposed to be their reserve but hasn’t raced an F1 car for years, Russell, who Williams will not want to lose, or Hulk?

That’s a shame, first race he’ll have missed. 🙁

Be nice to see what Russell can do in the fast car.

+1 for Russell – he’s most likely getting a full time Merc seat in ’22 so it’d make sense to give him the opportunity. Williams won’t be keen though as he’s probably their only chance of fluking a point this year.

It really doesn’t matter who they put in the car as they have both championships sewn up, shouldn’t be changing their driver line-up next year and can throw the whole team behind Bottas. Wouldn’t be surprised if they just ran one car citing issues with getting someone suitable there tested safely in time. There’s also the issue of whoever he’s been around may have to isolate so the team on his side of the garage could be depleted too.

Would love to see Russell in that seat… and if so would love to see him maintain his unbeaten qualifying record 🙂

Wouldn’t be surprised if they just ran one car citing issues with getting someone suitable there tested safely in time.

If you get a reliable 2nd driver then they can potentially take points off Verstappen and make Bottas getting 2nd more achievable.

But to be fair, he is already in front of Max and has the fastest car on the grid. It shouldn’t be much of a stretch for him to secure 2nd in the championship

But to be fair, he is already in front of Max and has the fastest car on the grid. It shouldn’t be much of a stretch for him to secure 2nd in the championship

Remind me where Valteri finished at the weekend. Verstappen is quite capable of winning the last two races.