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the thing I fear the most is banning racing in the rain

earlier in the thread we were discussing about having a warm up session in case of changeable weather

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

I don't think anyone here is blaming the drivers. It would just be interesting to know whether Bianchi responded to the yellow flags or not. Lifting off may have even caused oversteer. We don't know, it was just brought up.

I truly feel all the wrong questions are being asked right now... I'm not sure what the right ones are but time will tell there. As for the wrong ones, I've paraphrased what has been posted in the last few pages:

Q - Was Jules going an appropriate speed in the yellow flag zone?
A - What does "appropriate speed" mean? Appropriate to the yellow flag zone, conditions at that point of the circuit, to keeping enough downforce in the car (through aero and tyre temperature) to avoid going off?

Q - Should the SC have been out earlier?
A - Perhaps, but does that automatically mean the accident would not have happened? Maybe but the risk would have still been at that corner as all drivers would have still been keeping speed as they each needed to catch the SC and keep temperature in the tyres, downforce in the car, etc...

Q - Should the race have even started?
A - This is wrong on so many levels. Every race carries risk and what the drivers showed today is some great racing despite the challenging conditions.

There are a few more but this will do for now. As I said before, I'm not sure what the right questions are.

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BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

Not the most appropriate thumbnail for that serious vid but I realise that's not really under anyone's control but Youtube's auto-picture generator thing.



They won't ban racing in the rain. They might start getting a bit NASCAR road race rules and start mandating what tyres are appropriate for the track though (as by sutils words they were just past the threshold of what the intermediate tyre could manage)

Hope not though, it should still be the teams decision as to what's appropriate and what's worth a gamble, that's one of the most exciting elements of wet weather racing, clever strategy like Button's today, for example.

Again, if that tractor wasn't sent to the accident scene, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Maybe it'd end up a bit Brazil 2003 with a couple of others heading into that barrier before the FIA threw the safety car, but I hope the FIA look at its recovery vehicle procedures first before they start mandating any other changes

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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

Why are you so offended? Obviously if a driver makes a mistake alone on track, he's the sole responsible for it. There is no point to even discussing the idea of "blame" or getting so worked up over it. Chill.

they raced today in the rain mostly because they didn't want to delay the event for Tv coverage reason, so i guess they'll never reach the decision of not racing in the rain, considering today f1 management it's more probable to have a full race under safety car in case of rain

Just one question Kals

Q- Should Recovery vehicles be sent out on a live track with high profile tyres when low down, open cockpit cars could potentially come into contact with them?
I don't buy the arguments of ratio of incidents from before. It shouldn't even be possible that a racing car comes into contact with such a vehicle at all.

Someone pointed it out early, but even Indycar/Cart/Champcar did something to their recovery trucks after Mario managed to hit one.
They put skirts on them so any contact between car and truck was at least on the same level, maybe this should be something F1 looks at?

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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've just thanked your previous post Paul as that is most probably one of the right questions. I'd also earlier proposed the Monaco crane setup as a solution to putting vehicles onto a circuit to recover cars.

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BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

I don't think the issue is whether other cars would have gone off whilst catching up with the safety car. It's that anyone going off would have hit the tyres, or at worst, Sutil's car. The recovery vehicle should only have entered the circuit once everyone had caught the Safety Car.

That's what I've been thinking. May make the SC period longer but safety is paramount. Hitting the tyres or another car would have been much preferable and Sutil himself was long out of harms way by that time anyway.

Impossible solution. You would need at least 4 or 5 cranes for turn. Just imagine how many cranes you would need to cover only Eau Rouge curve, considering that you should be able to recover a car everywhere. Such a solution would cost too much and would be totally unefficient.

Appropriate speed is "don't join the party off the track" speed. the intricacies of how it's done exactly is up to the drivers. They usually are very good at determining appropriate speed, it's basically their job to keep it on the black stuff and they did it 99.99% of the time today.

In my original post I mentioned it wouldn't work at some circuits and corners.

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BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

Agree here. Some have speculated he perhaps hadn't slowed sufficiently for the yellow flag zone. But reducing speed in certain circumstances can create more issues than solve them.

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BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

What perplexes me is that we have this continual drive for safety, so there's a lot of caution when it comes to wet races.

Yet here we had a recovery vehicle on track at a point where one driver had gone off. If one driver has gone off at one corner, the likelihood is that another will do the same, especially in the wet conditions.

And as people have already mentioned, the incident at Hockenheim... A lot of people were apoplectic with rage about that one.

Two weeks ago there was a 15 minute SC period in Singapore due to bits of a front wing on track. It was necessary (albeit not the long period). Yet at Suzuka there's a car off the road being recovered at a fast, blind corner in the wet...

There is always going to be a risk of danger in Formula 1, it is simply the nature of the beast. But you have to eliminate as many dangers as possible and surely a recovery vehicle in a run-off should be a big enough danger, when other decisions are made in the pursuit of safety.

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

Was it the A1GP round somewhere that had a recovery helicopter?

Might be worth looking at, if they can make a small enough one that's downwash from the rotors didn't affect the cars on track while still having enough power to lift a car away.

_________________
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

From L'Equipe: hospital will give no further updates on Bianchi's condition before tomorrow.

So the next question is....will Marussia be on the grid next weekend? Will it be one car or two? Can they even field a one car team in the regs? Cause for a cash strapped team that is a huge hit to the finances.

Maybe you can have one of those trucks with larger deployable cranes, that would go along the service road behind the barriers to get to the car's location and reach from there. They could cover quite some ground with those.

Did they actually implement it or was it just talk?