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Yes that is true. But for some reason I have taken this to mean Q3 as well. It is the FIA so there is most likely a very strong shade of grey in a rule about this.

Josh Hill has decided to retire from racing, so he won't be getting into F1 now.

He wouldn't have anyway. Seems weird to give up his racing career entirely though.

Guys i have a question about Webbers pits stop. I dont know was it within the rules. Maybe it has been answered in some other/previous threads... dont read much. Anyway.
In the 2010 season reveiw in Hungary when Rosberg lost the wheel in the pit stop. He stopped in the pits, and on the radio he said if he could go back in reverse slowly or the guys could push him back to his box to change the tires... but they told him to switch off the engine and thats it.

On Webbers stop they pushed him back to his box and changed the tire...
So what i want to know is it allowed to push the car back to the box and do the pit stop again?? Is it within the rules?

Yes, it is allowed for the team to push the car back if the car has not left the pitlane. It is not allowed for the driver to reverse (ask Mansell).

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Dan Wheldon ¦ 1978-2011
Marco Simoncelli ¦ 1987-2011
Jules Bianchi ¦ 1989-2015
Justin Wilson ¦ 1978-2015

Yeah, I know he's mad and I don't care. I do not care. I did not care then. I do not care now. I'm here to race him.

I'll miss that helmet design, one of my all time favourites tbh.

And yeah, he's done a good few overtaking maneuvers in various series that surprised me...

I guess he gave it a try and realised it wasn't for him. Better to quit now than realise the same thing and let his name spring him into a seat a better driver could get, like some other famous sons.

Good on him, I guess.

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

I see your point, but it is the definition of a knee jerk reaction. They leave it completely unpoliced for 6 decades, then 1 accident and we've moved to no camera men in the pit lane, and everyone with helmets. Helmets should've been done ages ago, but moving people out of the pit lane seems a bit harsh. What happens when a left hand wheel comes off and hits someone on the pit wall? Will we move everyone off the pit wall, just incase we have a "Tom Pryce" accident on that side? And then there's marshalls, standing all exposed... Yeah the list is endless.

The speed reduction is a good idea, as well as the acceleration being more reasonable out the box.

However I believe your example in 1994 is different. They did keep pilots inside the car but gave their heads proper protection. A similar reaction would have been to ban drivers from the cars altogether and RC-pilot them for the rest of the 1994 season, so that they are completely out of harm no matter the situation.
We're slowly reaching the point where human intervention is banned from any potential hazardous situation.

One may say that drivers know and accept the risks, but so should front line cameramen and reporters who cover these kinds of events. So give them proper safety gear, or a spotter, or whatever but let them do their job which is notoriously as dangerous as a mechanic's.

BTW, did they have a meetting or a discussion with the pitlane cameramen first or was it a one-sided decision?

Its also up to the teams responsibility to ensure the wheels are on. Lowering the pit speed limit doesn't really do much if a wheel comes off. It will still be just as dangerous.

I'd argue it's a very bad thing. Obviously there is a limit to how dangerous something should be, but to use an extreme, but very realistic example - if you made the Dakar, or Ring, or Isle of Man 100% safe, then nobody would bother doing them. Part of the allure of motorsport is that there is a danger. Every driver knows it, every driver accepts it, and they only complain when the danger is too much (see IndyCar 2011, final race).

Should we remove people from the pit lane because someone got hit by a wheel? Well only if we remove people from the pit wall, because the wheel could've went left and hit one of them. When you think about "what if?" on a purely rational level, it makes this one look a bit silly. Firesuits and helmets I agree with, but removing people from the wall seems pointless.

If we want to prevent deaths and injuries F1 should team up with iRacing or a similar program.

I'm sure that even today there a tons of scenarios no-one ever thought of that would make today's F1 cars a deathtrap.

I say this as someone who has spent quite a few hours in the pitlane doing "journalism" (not in F1), and in my opinion there is absolutely no need for any media to walk around in the pits. The things you're occupied with are so different compared to what the teams around you are doing which brings down your attention-level to the dangers a lot, not to mention that there's a big case of tunnel vision for photographers and TV-crew. Spotters and firesuits/helmets definitely help, but I'm all OK with banning them all from there.



But this is not about drivers, or marshals, or team personnel. Those people actually sign up to challenge the dangers.

The chances of that happening if the wheel did the same thing as it did this time are MUCH lower...considering the pit lane wall is lined with protective bars for the teams on nearly every circuit.

Those protective bars at Bahrain are easily large enough to fit a wheel through. In fact, the amount of open space between the bars, I'd say theres a much larger chance of a wheel going through than hitting those fences. Whilst the top pic (Monza) offers some protection, the Bahrain one does absolutely nothing, and is there as a barrier between people and the fast lane, designed to create a very obvious barrier to the step so nobody trips over it.

And given a wheel managed to fit through a gap only 2cm bigger than it and kill a marshal at Albert Park in 2001, there is nothing to suggest that those barriers at Monza will protect them. Which once again brings us back to the original point - these knee jerk reactions are silly because they try to account for freak accidents by only addressing the 1 freak accident. It is impossible to foresee such things (otherwise they'd never happen) and they only react to them afterwards. So again - if the wheel goes the other way, do we remove the prat perches from the pit wall too..? Of course not.

Give the TV Crews and Marshalls in the pit lane proper helmets (not crappy bike helmets like they get at Le Mans) and fireproofs, and let them continue in the pit lane. We've went a LONG time with camera crews in there, and had bigger, more dangerous incidents, with no reaction.

The problem for me is that they aren't dealing with the actual cause, sure maybe it's not a bad idea to have less people in the pit lane during sessions but deal with the actual problem of wheels coming off like this in the first place.

and how exactly do you want to prevent that? There are several parts in the equation of changing tyres that can fail.

You could ban tyre changes completely. Would be fun with these tyres. Or stop using only 1 lug-nut but even if it mounted with, let's say, 5 nuts I'm not sure if it will prevent this in the future.

Bingo, they had a perfectly reasonable system that prevented wheels coming off even if the nut stripped, but iirc the Teams asked for the rule/requirement to be removed because, and I'm going off memory here, it was something like "no wheels have flown off since the clips were introduced, and putting the clip in place adds time to a pitstop".

The sheer level of stupidity and irony within that reasoning is about as insane as it gets.

"Safety first".

I have a feeling that we will eventually see camera men back in (I am slightly confused in that it says written journalists can wander down the pit lane), but in time something will need to be be done aobut the pit stops and the tyres. I'm not a fan of mandatory stop lengths, but perhaps a regression of technology. Like in 2002/4, they showed what an F1 car could do, they've shown they've done 2 second pit stops, but we will need you to use technology that up's the mean time and contains failsafes.

I'd like it A1GP style, keep the team personnel inside the garage until the car comes to a stop, then they have to run back in and hit a green button or something to give the car a green light so it can go.

Still doesn't eliminate the danger entirely (other cars might be entering the pits at the same time) but reduces the amount of targets in pit lane for wheels, etc.

Ehhh, fuck it, I like the pitstops as they are. The more you make a big thing of them the more they detract from the on-track racing, which is what I actually want to see.

Ban pitstops imo. Problem solved

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley