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The Formula 1 Thread

Nick_L

By Nick_L
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kiroquai

kiroquai

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A lot of people on the motorsport forum I am a member of are pretty angry about the race even having been run; a lot of them were saying as early as Friday that the speeds and flat-out nature of the circuit were going to make it incredibly dangerous with IndyCar's current (well, I guess past) wing configuration. In the old CART days they set them up so they would slingshot past each other on the straights; all super speedway races in IndyCar are is a gaggle of cars running along flat-out hitting the limiter and being in close contention. It was pure luck that until now this kind of race hadn't yielded an accident this bad (Atlanta 2001 was pretty nasty, and Kenny Brack's crash was awful but thankfully just involved two cars).

Whatever they do with the new car next season, they need to stop this kind of racing. It's not exciting, it's frightening. Motorsport is supposed to be dangerous, but in this case it feels like it was the series playing Russian roulette with their drivers' lives. Four cars flying through the air as a dozen or so crash around them isn't unlucky or just racing - it's the inevitable result of the situation the cars and the circuit put the drivers in. Sadly the lesson's been learned in the most awful way possible.

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Dudley

Dudley

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Car safety, especially open wheel safety is often game over when things get airborne simply because now the shock is unlikely to come from the direction the car is designed to take.

Ex F1 WDC Jodie Scheckter wants his son to quit Indycar racing. He reckons it is the most dangerous form of car racing and he has been trying to get his son to quit for a while.

When motor sport royalty say it is that bad then you know that it is broken.

And when they do I'll listen.

Jody however is a hack who has had nothing nice to say about motorsport since he fucked off out of it the second it got hard and now just uses it to hawk his overpriced ice cream.

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Dudley

Dudley

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There's always more to do. It's worth pointing out that this isn't a trend. It's the first Indycar fatality in 5 years.

The problem as I see it is that open wheel will always let cars get airborne and that ovals have to have catch fencing because how else do spectators see without having a car actually land in their face.

I'm not sure how you solve that one.

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marsh

marsh

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I was going to say that they shouldn't race round short track narrow ovals with too many cars. But, there have been alot of big accidents with cars getting airborne in the past two years and they've all walked away (pretty much). Wheldon died from massive head trauma as I understand it, and hit the fence that hard his car snapped largely in half. They have to try and stop the cars getting air in the first place. Even in F1 that's simply not possible.

Rock and a hard place. It's racing, and it's a shame but it's going to catch up with you sometime, that's the nature of the beast.

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MrPogo

MrPogo

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I was going to say that they shouldn't race round short track narrow ovals with too many cars. But, there have been alot of big accidents with cars getting airborne in the past two years and they've all walked away (pretty much). Wheldon died from massive head trauma as I understand it, and hit the fence that hard his car snapped largely in half. They have to try and stop the cars getting air in the first place. Even in F1 that's simply not possible.

Rock and a hard place. It's racing, and it's a shame but it's going to catch up with you sometime, that's the nature of the beast.

If you can't stop them taking off you can at least influence the odds of where they'll land, and it looks to me as if it's better to land on flat Tarmac than to hit a fence, which still says to me "packed oval circuits are uniquely dangerous". That type of track also looks to be uniquely dangerous in terms of causing mass pile ups at top speed, which in my viewing experience (albeit almost solely F1) you simply don't get on traditional racetracks.

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marsh

marsh

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Oval circuits are indeed more dangerous than any other in open wheel racing. But that's how they like their motosport over there. This won't change it, the new car design should help but you won't find out until it hits something else....

If people start getting killed in F1 are you going to stop watching? Odds are on as it's long overdue.

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Bruciebabie

Bruciebabie

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At some time in the future it is probably 100% inevitable that we have another F1 fatality. 200mph is a lot of energy to absorb and the human body can only absorb so much G. The cars are very strong but they are too small to absorb that much energy.

Chance being what it is we could lose 2 in a year, or even 2 in one race. Look at San Marino in 1994, or the 1960 Belgian GP.

But now, through Bernievision TV we know the drivers very well. Most of us feel we could just go for a beer and a chat with Jenson or Lewis. So the social and media impact of a fatal crash would be several times what happened at Imola, especially after such a long gap.

The Massa crash was within a few mm of being a fatality. Look at the photos of him in his helmet immediately after the crash, if the spring had hit just a little further towards the visor he would have stood no chance, like Senna's suspension spearing him through his visor. Lumps of car hitting a driver in the face at 160 mph can be very unhealthy. Yet bits fly off the cars at every single race, mostly hitting nothing. Henry Surtees got unlucky in an F2 race at Brands, but that could even more easily happen in F1 with the higher speeds.

It is not nice but it is part of the reality of F1 racing. Young gladiators risking their lives against each other.

So then we have the big question, is it worth the risk? Everything we do in life involves risk, people are killed by vending machines. But how much risk is acceptable? And would you feel the same immediately after an F1 fatality?

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Dudley

Dudley

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And it's worth mentioning that until Sunday, Indycar hadn't lost anyone in a race since 1999.

The answer is not to leave ovals. The answer is to take time and look at what can be done to help. Running metal boxes at 220mph anywhere will always result in the very occasional fatality because you can't design for everyone. The new design will help and maybe it's not sensible to run 34 at Vegas, or Texas. Indycars are better off on flatter, wider or slower ovals like Indy or New Hampshire and maybe that'll need to be the focus.

Incidentally, here is what actually happened to Dan, Spoilered for obvious.

Wheldon's helmet was obliterated on the left side and what a good part of what it was protecting right along with it. Apparently, it was 'very, very obvious' that there were horrific and unsurvivable injuries to his head.

On top of that it sounds like Wheldon's skull was driven down to the rest of his body, crushing everything in his neck and upper spine, and that was obvious, too.

There was absolutely no way no how he could have survived that crash and it's likely he was dead before the field had even cleared the accident site.

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kiroquai

kiroquai

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Having seen Senna's crash as well as Jeff Krosnoff, Greg Moore and now Dan Wheldon live, I have asked myself that question every time. 'Is it worth the risk?'. For a few days after each (a bit longer for Moore and I suspect Wheldon, having watched pretty much their entire top-line career and cheered their successes - they were as familiar to me as Hamilton and Button are to most F1 fans I guess) I sit around wondering about it.

Every time I eventually come to the same answer, as I am sure I will this time: yes. Firstly, motorsport is like a drug. It's addictive and it's something you can even sample if you go and hop on a go kart for half an hour at a local indoor track. Just a complete rush of adrenaline and something that you can get huge satisfaction from. I can only guess what it's like for people at the top of the profession and I know that they have to deal with PR events and all that, but as a trade-off they get to drive cars that only a tiny percentage will ever get to sample, on some of the most amazing circuits in the world.

It also makes young men millionaires and household names, which I guess is part and parcel of it all. It allows them to lead a pretty glamorous lifestyle - boats in Monaco harbour, luxury houses in Florida etc. Alongside the actual thrill of driving the fastest cars in the world they get to do whatever they like outside of working hours and can afford to fund it all themselves. Plus, for drivers who are into the history of the sport it gives them a chance to write their names in the history books. Vukovich, Foyt, Unser, Andretti... Dan Wheldon's name is alongside those as greats of the American open wheel racing. That's something no one can ever take away from him.

Sadly, it's also a very cruel sport and people accept that. For people who have never seen something like Sunday it's a horrible, horrible thing to have to go through (lots of F1 fans here at work only started watching around '98 or so, and have never seen a fatality other than watching things on Youtube) and to be honest even as someone who has seen it happen, it doesn't get much easier. It's much worse for people who work for the teams and for the racing series' themselves, as they know deep down that the person they work to get out on track every other weekend stands a chance - no matter how slight - of not coming back after they leave the garage. Nowadays it's such a rare occurrence that when it does happen it's all the more shocking.

The only thing you can ask is that every time it does happen, people take the maximum amount of time to attempt to see if lessons can be learned. Ratzenberger and Senna's legacy, alongside their career records, was that the changes made in the wake of their deaths have saved countless other drivers. You have to hope that powers who be at the top of IndyCar now look carefully at the flat-out pack racing that their series has encouraged over the years and make changes. Racing on an oval course is dangerous especially in an open wheel car, but it can be made safer by taking steps to ensure the cars slingshot past each other and can actually overtake, rather than having them jammed up in NASCAR style traffic jams. It needs to stop, and it's something people have been saying well before the events of this weekend.

For the most part though, the sport offers people the chance to make history, make a lot of money and to get one of the biggest adrenaline rushes possible. Sadly it sometimes asks a high price.

EDIT: on reflection, this comes across as a rambling, slightly emo bloggish kind of post. Apologies!

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mexos

mexos

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At some time in the future it is probably 100% inevitable that we have another F1 fatality.

Well which one is it? ;)

F1 could go till the rest of time without a fatality, but it's very unlikely. It can be as safe as possible and freak events can add up to create an event it's impossible to plan for.

Every year that goes on the cars get safer and more importantly the tracks do to too. The odds drop every year. As older tracks drop off the calendar to be replaced by new up to date tracks the odds will drop even more. But the risk will always be there.

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Paradigm

Paradigm

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Quick q: I was watching the Villeneuve/Schumacher incident from '97 on YouTube and it might be my imagination but are the drivers not sitting a bit higher than they are now? I know there's a bit more protection for them on the cars at neck(ish) height but Villeneuve (who isn't the tallest) looked like he'd have a view of both front corners. A lot of the 'racing incidents' this year seem to have been caused by a very narrow field of vision.

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marsh

marsh

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The aftermath of sennas incident resulted in much higher cockpit sides on cars. Something which has resulted in them lowering the driver in the car over the years to get away from what was an unsightly design. I'd go as far as saying that had massa been wearing a slightly older style of helmet the spring would have killed him, ironically the design is a result of the cobblers input I think.

Watching indycar oval races you do get a build up of an impending accident sometimes. They're going so fast, so close to one another, your only going to thread it through the eye of a needle so many times before you miss it.

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reani_

reani_

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They also increased the height of the cockpits after the

, which was incredibly close to being nasty.

That was incredibly close! The rear wings were much lower at that time as well - might not be directly related to safety but makes a difference.

If you are going this way you could even consider changing from V12 to V10 as 'safety measure' as they're not going that fast anymore.

To be honest I think that you can compare F1 with indycar only to a certain point - the whole concept of the indycar is different to a F1 car.

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