64 replies to this topic

[johnmhinds]

Does anyone have any example of a driver getting a face full of gearbox from back in the days when noses were lower and shorter than they are now?

 

I'm yet to be convinced that there's any significant extra risk here. In Australia we saw a pretty high speed differential already. You'd have to have a huge difference to get that far under the car in front, and then it would probably be bad whatever happened.

 

Didier Pironi's fatal crash?

[Myrvold]

Didier Pironi's fatal crash?

Was a boat crash.

[johnmhinds]

Was a boat crash.

 

Oops my bad, I meant Riccardo Paletti, Didier Pironi was the driver he hit.

Edited by johnmhinds, 24 March 2014 - 22:40.

[redreni]

Oops my bad, I meant Riccardo Paletti, Didier Pironi was the driver he hit.

 

Don't think he went under Pironi's car. I seem to recall seeing a side-on picture of the Osella that I wished I hadn't seen where the length of the car had been significantly reduced by the impact and the steering wheel had crushed the driver's chest. Now that the nose section / footbox, and the whole safety cell for that matter, is strong enough that it won't just deform on impact, we now have a the problem that the energy has to go somewhere, so it will tend to either go over or under an obstruction like another car. Either is bad, but much better than what to Paletti.

[undersquare]

How do you expect two narrow structures to line up in anything other than the most perfect nose to tail accident? Are you suggesting full width bumpers?

 

 

 

Looks like the Williams barely cleared the chassis step.

It's about probabilities, is all I'm saying.  After a certain amount of misalingment it becomes tyre-to-tyre anyway, as has been mentioned, and then the nose has no effect whatever its height.  But at the moment there's a large proportion of width where the nose is guaranteed to slide under the diffuser, while its fellow rear crash structure is too high to do anything at all.  So with aligning the crash structure heights you at least have the opportunity to make, say, 10% or 15% of rear-ending collisions a lot safer.  And the structures could be made wider, the next time it becomes desirable to slow the cars down.

[midgrid]

Does anyone have any example of a driver getting a face full of gearbox from back in the days when noses were lower and shorter than they are now?

 

I think I posted this video already in a similar thread, but this is the only incident I can think of:

 

 

So I don't believe that low noses are inherently dangerous.

[saudoso]

The front and rear crash structures aren't designed to stop or slow down car vs car accidents, they are only designed and tested for their effectiveness in accidents involving a barrier.
 
As far as I know no F1 car vs F1 car crash testing has ever been done by the FIA.

I know that. But this is just a short blanket situation. Thei fixed cars flying from nose/tyre contact to craete another just as (if not more) dangerous situation.

[warp]

All the launches I can remember were from the rear wheels flicking the front of the car up and then the air catching underneath it. I can't remember a crash where a nose made contact with the rear crash structure and then went airborne.

So if it's the side impact protection, hows about this for a crazy idea, mandate some kind of verticle plane at the front of the car rather than a freaking harpoon shaped crash structure?

 

Same here... I remember a Williams almost doing a Pugachev's Cobra after touching wheels with another car. The rear wheel of the car in front launches the front wheel upwards. Once off the floor, you know the drill, the flat bottom and wing area of the car produce lift.

[CoolBreeze]

https://twitter.com/...4/photo/1/large

 

Your point is? Those cars u posted are legends, noisy and beautiful. Not the ugly looking vacuum cleaners you have these days.  

[chipmcdonald]

1) "it's to prevent flip-ups" is a non-sequiter.  Why?

 

Because it would be a lot easier to mandate a fairing-guard to back of the wheels, if one was *really* concerned about that.  A side benefit would be less spray in the rain - a safety bonus.  Wings can still come off and tires interlock.  Noses can still be lifted up bouncing off of a chicane, onto a wheel.  Block off contact at the wheel and you solve the problem.

 

2) Everyone keeps making references to just the back of the leading cars.  It's not just about that situation.  There are plenty of turn 1 crashes where leading cars are getting turned around, and because of angled impacts, the trailing side of the car lifted up.  That can't be stopped, that's physics.  In these cases - the new cars will submarine.  I would be concerned about Spa and Monaco.

 

3) Side impact safety: well, that doesn't make any sense if it means putting the other driver at more risk in other circumstances.  It's also non-sequiter because that is a circumstance with  limited event parameters - there are only so many angles from the side to the driver's head, not to mention he's got the sidepods protecting him.  On the contrary, the front-impact car has the parameter of possibly

submarining in all front impact scenarios.

 

4) track-side impact structures are not made considering a wedge coming into them, versus and object that has a more axial cross section (higher nose). 

 

5) citing that there isn't an example in previous years with low noses has nothing to do with showing a wedge has no more mechanical advantage in burying itself in a front-impact situation.  If you're wanting to make such an example, you've got to go back and examine how many front impacts there were involving high noses.  How many times did a high nose car go into a tire barrier?  Into a water barrier?  Fence?

 

I like the low nose look from '91 better than the high nose, but just because we didn't have a tragedy with it doesn't mean there won't be one.  Side impact is pretty well guarded against with the modern construction of F1 cars.  Tire flip ups can be prevented with guards.  The only real modern F1 safety issue is cockpit intrusion - which is why we should have canopies.  And high noses... F1 should look like this, anyhow:

 

[johnmhinds]

The problem with F1 implementing any kind of canopies is that once the FIA say that F1 is too dangerous to run without them then every other lower racing series below F1 will have to follow suit or risk losing their ability to get insurance coverage.

 

It would have a cascade effect across all motor racing that could eliminate all open cockpit and open wheel racing from the racing calendar, with arguably very minimal benefits to the drivers themselves.

[johnmhinds]

Don't think he went under Pironi's car. I seem to recall seeing a side-on picture of the Osella that I wished I hadn't seen where the length of the car had been significantly reduced by the impact and the steering wheel had crushed the driver's chest. Now that the nose section / footbox, and the whole safety cell for that matter, is strong enough that it won't just deform on impact, we now have a the problem that the energy has to go somewhere, so it will tend to either go over or under an obstruction like another car. Either is bad, but much better than what to Paletti.

 

Thanks for clearing that up, i'd never seen a side view of the accident, i'd always assumed that he had gone under Pironi and only the top of the car had been pushed into him, i didn't realise the whole of the front of the car had failed like that.

[DampMongoose]

One point about Paletti's crash was that prior to the 1982 season, under Bernie's new regime, all the cars had to have a safety structure right down to the drivers feet to further protect the drivers in case of an accident, not enough in this case.  It was also Paletti's first F1 start with a full 26 car grid, whether that affected any decisions he made on the start is unknown, unfortunately, despite Pironi having stalled on pole frantically waving his arms to prevent the start from taking place, those in control started anyway knowing that every competitor would have to avoid his car. 

 

Paletti's closing speed (around 120mph) from near the back of the grid on the unsighted Pironi didn't give him much chance.  It's also been said that having inhaled the fire extuinguisher foam from the subsequent fire may have been fatal regardless of the chest injuries.

 

Sad times.

[Spillage]

So how does today's accident fit into this argument? Looked to me like Maldonado's nose got underneath Gutierrez, but Anthony Davidson was saying the flip was caused by wheel-on-wheel contact, so I can't be sure. It sure does look strange though, and initially I was convinced it was something that we wouldn't have seen last year.

[Vepe1995]

So how does today's accident fit into this argument? Looked to me like Maldonado's nose got underneath Gutierrez, but Anthony Davidson was saying the flip was caused by wheel-on-wheel contact, so I can't be sure. It sure does look strange though, and initially I was convinced it was something that we wouldn't have seen last year.

 

https://www.youtube....h?v=ScpZCCkRigo

 

at 15 seconds, you can see Maldonado's front tyre hit Gutierrez' rear tyre, which was the cause for the flip. Nothing to do with this year's noses and could've happened last year too.