First off, I bought this month's Motor Sport magazine last week. There's an editorial in there by Nigel Roebuck written at the time of Bianchi's death on whether or not F1 is too safe. It's a good read regardless of your position on this - I don't believe it reflects any worse even after Wilson's death. In particular it's quite surprising to see Sir Jackie Stewart actually saying F1's too safe now, which should be food for thought for those citing his example as a reason for having canopies
Scotty wrote:
- Test done by the FIA on closed cockpits are now significantly obsolete, as material technology has gone significantly beyond what they did in 2010. Plus, it was a half arsed effort. Not scientifically possible? That's horseshit. If the teams can develop complex hybrid power units, they can string a few bits of carbon fibre together to make a cockpit.
The material's got very little to do with it - they ditched the full canopy because it increased the risk of debris flying into the crowd and killing spectators, and the front roll-hoop was directly in the line of sight for a driver making accidents more likely (and as far as I can tell, that's still a problem with the Mercedes proposal, but to a lesser extent). Things may have moved on but the concepts are still fundamentally flawed because they are still based around the same design principles - the FIA's research didn't need to be more than "half arsed" (and I dispute that it was) because the flaws were clear as day
That's not an excuse to not bother doing any more research, obviously, but at the moment there doesn't seem to be a way of covering all the bases while avoiding the numerous flaws that have been pointed out. If open wheel cars get some kind of protection after this, it'll be because those flaws are being ignored - a kneejerk reaction
Scotty wrote:
- Closed cockpits would be safer. This whole bullshit argument of drivers being trapped in a car on fire, the last driver to die from being trapped in his car when it caught fire happened in F1 was in 1982, 33 years ago, and I have a feeling the fire didn't kill him anyway. So you go back to Williamson, which happened what, 41 years ago? He only died because no fire marshalls turned up.
But you're comparing hypothetical situations - there were no deaths in a time when there no canopies, but that doesn't necessarily mean the drivers that survived fires would still have survived if it was much harder to get out of the car. And fires are unlikely? Well, when was the last time before Wilson's accident that someone had been killed by debris that wasn't a wheel? I can't think of an example of it happening before. A few weeks ago it would have been virtually inconceivable to us that a nose cone could kill a driver. Even the issues of wheels have largely been solved by the stronger teathers
Fire is perfectly conceivable, because it happens. We've seen it happen,
at Indy and
in F1 in recent times. The extra protection is no guarantee, just like the teathers
At the end of the day, to act on the one-in-a-million chance of drivers being struck on the head while ignoring the one-in-a-million chance of drivers being trapped in a burning car is surely just hypocritical and enormously complacent. The FIA are already well aware of this - that's why full canopies won't happen. If anything happens, it'll be a partial covering, and yet to me that's daft because it doesn't solve the problem and adds extra complications
Scotty wrote:
- "Debris field being a problem" the fuck? A canopy would be no bigger than the size of a rear wing or nose cone, and would be integrated into the body shell anyway for it to work, it woudn't fall off or apart, if it has, there is a bigger problem than debris fields.
That's not what I was saying - to put it more directly, if we want to stop stuff falling off cars and hitting drivers, why not stop the stuff falling off the cars in the first place? Or if it has to come off to disperse energy, why not try to make sure it comes off in a certain way not to pose as much of a risk to those in the firing line? Surely that's safer for everyone at a circuit, not just drivers. Reading around various debates and articles, the role of spectators and marshals is being totally overlooked all the time. If you deflect car parts, they have to go somewhere, and onlookers don't have the same level as protection as drivers
Are we saying that a driver's life is worth more than a spectator's or a marshal's? They're all people at the end of the day - they all have families just the same as Justin Wilson. To me it's all the more shocking for a family to hear that someone didn't come home from a race when they weren't even driving a car. And even if you put it into financial terms, if a spectator was to be killed at an F1 event today, the lawsuits would be enormous. If several spectators were killed, it would probably bring the sport down. Surely F1 can't risk that
Scotty wrote:
Dan Wheldon's head hit a fence pole didn't it? If it was a closed cockpit, the roof would have taken the brunt of the force. Not saying he could have survived it, he did go head first into a fence at 220mph, but it would have given him more of a chance. We were lucky we didn't see him decapitated that day, how many people would still be watching motorsport if they saw that happen? How many mothers would let their sons compete huh? A closed cockpit would have made a big difference. Jules Bianchi would have had a much better chance. So would Senna, Surtees, Wilson and so many more who've been seriously injured too.
The FIA categorically confirmed during the investigation that a canopy would have made no difference for Bianchi. His injuries came from the deceleration forces. The car would still have stopped at the same rate, and any canopy or protection would have to be engineered to withstand the same level of force as the rear roll-hoop but not necessarily beyond it, so it would've been destroyed in Bianchi's accident, and therefore Wheldon's as well
The only incidents that a canopy or protection would definitely prevent would be the wheel and debris strikes - in terms of fatalities, the only significant ones would've been Mike Spence (1968), Markus Hottinger (1980), possibly Senna (1994), Surtees (2009) and Wilson (2015). There may have been one or two others buried deep within history, but that's just about it - you're talking about a handful of fatalities over 50 years, and nearly all of them were wheels, which now shouldn't come off except in extreme circumstances anyway
The only reason we're talking about this is because a few years ago there were 2 incidents in quick succession, both of which should have been preventable by the features that were already on the cars - the spring that hit Massa should never have come off Rubens' car, and the wheel teathers on Jack Clarke's F2 car should not have failed like that. Then we had one a couple of weeks ago which was an equally absurd mix of circumstances. It just sheer dumb luck that incidents that have previously been a once-a-decade occurrence happened relatively close together. Added to that, people have lumped in some other incidents (Wheldon, De Villota, Bianchi) while providing no evidence that the drivers in question would've survived
Some journalists went around the F1 drivers after Bianchi's accident prodding them about canopies, which was fucking low and irresponsible considering the drivers were all emotional and there was no evidence at the time that it would have made any difference. It's created myths which are evidently still floating around now. The same journalists are whipping up a frenzy about this after Wilson's accident. Their only interest is in hits and magazine sales, and canopy stories make good copy because safety is an emotive subject. The media are entirely responsible for fuelling this bandwagon, and their position is not neutral - they have an agenda, and it's not driver safety
In the debates I've seen, pro-canopy/protection people have tried to characterise anti-canopy/protection people as irrational. But I think that's grossly unfair - we're talking about this because of irrational, emotional reactions to someone's death (which is entirely understandable), and there are plenty of rational reasons being put forward about why a full canopy would certainly be a bad idea and why other levels of protection are also fundamentally flawed. This isn't about tradition - it's about what works and what doesn't, and I don't see anything out there at the moment that will definitely make open wheel racing cars safer