Sport The Formula 1 Thread

[Picasso Of Pain]

I'm in total shock at the moment, one of the good guys and a great racer. I was so happy earlier this year when he won at Indy and after hearing his comentary on Versus during the summer I throught I would hear/see him race for years to come.

R.I.P Dan Wheldon

[marsh]

I knew he'd been bummed out of his drive, hence the testing he was doing on next years car. Fucking joke, some of those drivers make massa look like fangio, but they get a big car with a shitload of power under their foot and a concrete wall as a barrier.

What a waste.

[kiroquai]

I went through this at Fontana in 1999 and no, it really doesn't get any easier even if you've seen it happen before.

Truly gutted . Horrible that the last shot before the accident was onboard with him as he started to try and avoid all the trouble.

[Picasso Of Pain]

I went through this at Fontana in 1999 and no, it really doesn't get any easier even if you've seen it happen before.

Truly gutted . Horrible that the last shot before the accident was onboard with him as he started to try and avoid all the trouble.

It's a tragic day and it also takes me back to Fontana 1999 with the death of Greg Morre always thick about him on the day of the final race of the season and pray that everyone gets through the final race of the season, It's always the good guys that get taken early.

[JPR]

Horrible news, saw him at Goodwood this year and he seemed a really nice guy, sad day.

[the_debaser]

Nasty looking crash. With the amount of carnage it's amazing that he was the only fatality.

[max renn]

Nasty accident. Read that he was doing some kind of $5 million challenge to start at the back of the grid and make his way through the pack. One of the last to get in the accident, but there wasn't really anything he could do.

"Then he laid claim to IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard's offer to pay $5 million if any non-regular series driver entered and won the season finale at Las Vegas. Wheldon said he would split the $5 million with a randomly-selected fan."

[SeanR]

better to go doing something you love I 'spose...

[Halkyon]

Thats horrible. Indycar safety doesn't seem to be all it could be? Broken roll hoops, metal fences, really?

[thefriscokid]

They should give that $5 million to his family.

[Halkyon]

More like they should put it into car safety R&D.

[marsh]

better to go doing something you love I 'spose...

This, you never think it's going to be you, and most of the time it's not, but sometimes shit just happens. Feeling this a bit more than I would normally cause my 4 year old took his first quad ride without me holding the tether switch. Stand there wondering wtf have I started, but if you could see the smile and the laughing.....

[marsh]

More like they should put it into car safety R&D.

The new car which he spent most of this year testing is intended to do just that. They want to stop the cars getting airborne.

Oh the irony, one race away from finding out?

Blows.

[Nick_L]

Terrible news, tragic

RIP

[marsh]

I've just seen a different angle of that, fuck me thats horrendous.

[pulsemyne]

The bumper at the back on the new cars is supposed to stop wheels touching (that seems to be a big factoir in making cars go airbourne). Terrible accident though. The course was obviously very dangerous. Doing 225 mph and being three wide is a recipe for disaster. Carbon fibre is only so strong and humans can only react so fast.

[kiroquai]

I distinctly remember seeing an interview he did we David Letterman (there's a Youtube vid of it) where Letterman says something like 'the rear bumper there is to stop cars taking off', to which Wheldon replied 'yeah, I don't want any part of that kind of thing'. Pretty haunting.

I think after the sadness has become less raw and due time is taken to remember him and for everyone to move onwards, IndyCar is going to have a few questions to answer about this. A lot of the drivers had been saying throughout the weekend that they were unhappy with the circuit and how close the cars got, and to have 34 of them meant that any kind of small trigger in the middle of the pack was going to cause a horrible accident. They've dodged bullets for years with their Texas races (although Kenny Brack would disagree) - sadly this time putting so many cars on such a steeply banked circuit in close contention had the result it was always likely to some day.

Very bloody sad .

[Bruciebabie]

People forget how much worse it was just a few years ago in F1.

I remember Piers Courage, Jochen Rindt (who was so far ahead that he won the title posthumously) and Jo Siffert being killed in fairly quick succession when I got really interested in F1. Rindt was especially felt as I was following his season closely.

Roger Williamson's death at Zandvoort was truly horrific.

Then the tragedy of Fracois Cevert, another driver I followed closely because he was Jackie Stewart's team mate and I read Stewart's column in Car magazine for years.

What was really bad was how accepted the risk was and many people, including drivers, didn't want to make it safer. It was a long fight to get seat belts, fuel cells etc introduced.

Then two of the greatest died, Ronnie Peterson and Gilles Villeneuve. And we got a move towards safety, the biggest change being the introduction of immensely strong carbon fibre tubs.

So now F1 has thankfully been fatality free since Senna in 1994.

Through the 60s and 70s F1 averaged about a fatality a year which was horrendous, yet at the time was just considered to be a part of the sport.

rip Dan Wheldon

[kiroquai]

It's a tragic day and it also takes me back to Fontana 1999 with the death of Greg Morre always thick about him on the day of the final race of the season and pray that everyone gets through the final race of the season, It's always the good guys that get taken early.

Turns out that yesterday's race was the first event Rick Moore (Greg's Dad) had attended since his son's death.

Woke up this morning still feeling pretty down about the whole thing.

[morcs]

Through the 60s and 70s F1 averaged about a fatality a year which was horrendous, yet at the time was just considered to be a part of the sport.

See Isle of Man TT. Derek Brien died this year in the Supersport race, so they peeled him off the circuit and restarted it.

[Rattlehead.ie]

Its terrible news, just shows how much F1 has advanced after the 94 incidents with regard to safety, although how you could make this slightly more safe Im not sure

On another note, anyone seen this

[myoozikk]

awesome cam is awesome!

[Dandy_Sephy]

Its terrible news, just shows how much F1 has advanced after the 94 incidents with regard to safety, although how you could make this slightly more safe Im not sure

Even just recently (possibly from Japan, if not the race before) they made a mandatory change on helmet design based on the research they did after Massa's accident just in case. Now the helmet has a extra peice attached above the visor.

[mexos]

Its terrible news, just shows how much F1 has advanced after the 94 incidents with regard to safety, although how you could make this slightly more safe Im not sure

On another note, anyone seen this

Wow, you can see waaaay more than I thought you would. Cool camera, be awesome if they could work out a way to do this for the TV. Without blinding the driver of course.

[RFT]

See Isle of Man TT. Derek Brien died this year in the Supersport race, so they peeled him off the circuit and restarted it.

The TT's a total anachronism these days. In a way it's admirable that it still exists, but the level of danger doesn't bear thinking about mostly.

My son's best friend's dad is a Sidecar racer and does the TT every year. There was a fatality in the TT sidecar event this year as well, which led to a bit of worrying. I can't imagine doing something that dangerous, but to the guys who do it, they can't imagine not doing it.

[Rattlehead.ie]

Even just recently (possibly from Japan, if not the race before) they made a mandatory change on helmet design based on the research they did after Massa's accident just in case. Now the helmet has a extra peice attached above the visor.

What I meant was the Indy safer. Im sure as much safety is put into the helmet and car, but with regards to it just being an oval shape Im not sure if there is anything you can do re the track to make it safer? Tyre wall would prob be a bad idea

[Bruciebabie]

Even just recently (possibly from Japan, if not the race before) they made a mandatory change on helmet design based on the research they did after Massa's accident just in case. Now the helmet has a extra peice attached above the visor.

Thanks for that. I looked it up: http://www.formula1.com/news/features/2011/3/11880.html

Interesting.

“In tests we found that Zylon was better than carbon fibre for this application as it offers better energy-absorbing qualities. Our goal for the visor was to get the best performance-to-weight ratio for whatever material we chose. We’ve added about 70 grams to the visor, but we have doubled its impact performance.”

[morcs]

The TT's a total anachronism these days. In a way it's admirable that it still exists, but the level of danger doesn't bear thinking about mostly.

My son's best friend's dad is a Sidecar racer and does the TT every year. There was a fatality in the TT sidecar event this year as well, which led to a bit of worrying. I can't imagine doing something that dangerous, but to the guys who do it, they can't imagine not doing it.

Yeah I still find it fascinating. Everything else including F1 seems to look less bonkers the more familiar you get with watching it. The TT though brings the same "WTF" feeling every time it comes on.

[RFT]

What I meant was the Indy safer. Im sure as much safety is put into the helmet and car, but with regards to it just being an oval shape Im not sure if there is anything you can do re the track to make it safer? Tyre wall would prob be a bad idea

Most of the oval tracks in the US now have a "SAFER" barrier that's a deformable structure between the cars and the concrete wall, at least on turns - this was installed at most tracks about ten years ago in the aftermath of Dale Earnhardt's death.

However there's not much more that can be done than that - the root cause of Wheldon's death is more about running IndyCars on an oval designed for NASCAR, meaning it's too steep and therefore too fast. Most IndyCar ovals aren't that steep and so aren't flat-out all the way round - the drivers have to brake or lift to make the turns, which means there's less side-by-side running and huge shunts like we saw here (and like we often see at Talladega and Daytona in NASCAR, which are also flat-out-all-the-way) are a lot less common.

thing is, these days trackj builders design their tracks for NASCAR, which is where the money is, and NASCAR likes its tracks at around 1.5 miles and with 18-22 degrees of banking. that gives good racing for NASCAR cars, but is just too fast for IndyCar.

Cars getting airborne are also a problem, and the new 2012 indycar has been designed with preventing takeoffs in mind, but really the IndyCar brass need to take a hard look at the tracks they visit, especially at the level of banking and length of track. if they want a season finale at vegas, then fine, then run it on a road course, but not a NASCAR oval.

[marsh]

In total agreement, 34 cars with a massive bunch of unknowns and a course that's not wide enough or long enough for that volume of cars. Slap a 5 million $ bounty down and it sure does make for entertainment.....

Or at least that was the plan. The aftermath of that looked like a plane crash, I was wondering what might have been specific in his death, but the sheer velocity of the force which he hit the wall and fence, he was a passenger the second his wheels went airborne.

Bernard will be soul searching for a while about this, utterly avoidable incident. There have been several this year, and some tracks I've seen in the past where they've run over tram lines getting airbourne and you just think 'what the fuck?'