264 replies to this topic

[Nonesuch]

F1 has used the VSC before, and it definitely could have been used in this case. Though hopefully with a little more tact that the first safety car - the dumb timing of which almost caused more problems than Hülkenberg had.

 

That said, I'm not sure if the race director had a role in this. It seemed like the marshal took some personal initiative because if I remember correctly there wasn't even a yellow flag out.

[ExFlagMan]

Not sure just how much safer it would have been under VSC, they are not going that much slower as the sectors times are not 'adaptive' to be very slow in a nominated sector.

I assume they would be slowing somewhat to avoid the debris anyway.

 

In addition I wonder just how much safer it is to have a driver going slightly slower whilst dividing his attention between the road ahead and trying to ensure he gets as close as possible to the VSC delta time, than one just concentrating 100% on the road.

 

As for the yellow flags I don't think you would have seen the flag point preceding the corner, although I assume there was a yellow as I think I caught a glimpse of a green on the exit of the corner.

[AustinF1]

Sorry if already posted:

 

Anderson: Time to take action on nose rules.

http://beta.autospor...source=20151013

Edited by AustinF1, 13 October 2015 - 16:02.

[ANF]

Sorry if already posted:
 
Anderson: Time to take action on nose rules.
http://beta.autospor...source=20151013

Well, I think Gary Anderson and Adrian Newey are right in believing that higher noses may be safer, but I'm not convinced that a 550 mm nose would have kept the tecpro barriers on the ground and away from the top of the car.

For example, it looks like the sidepod on Sergio Pérez's Sauber went underneath the barrier in Monaco.





And Gary should have watched a replay of the start crash at Spa in 2012, because this doesn't make any sense: "The fortunate thing for Grosjean was that we didn't have these very low noses then, otherwise he could have gone straight underneath Alonso's car." Grosjean's Lotus had been launched into the air before it reached Alonso. It had been launched after hitting one of the Saubers, and by the looks of it the contact was between the rear wheel on the Sauber and the high nose on the Lotus – and it was that kind of contact that was one of the reasons, if not the main reason, for the FIA to get rid of the high noses.

Perhaps it would be safer to reintroduce the high noses together with an Indycar-ish covering of the rear wheels? I think they should be covered anyway. And maybe there needs to be some tecpro redesign? The barriers aren't anchored in any way, are they? It looks like they are just standing there like loose cushions.

Edited by ANF, 13 October 2015 - 21:04.

[ExFlagMan]

They are linked together but are designed to slide so they deform like a crumple zone to absorb energy, thus you do not really want to tie them to the ground. 

[ANF]

They are linked together but are designed to slide so they deform like a crumple zone to absorb energy, thus you do not really want to tie them to the ground.

...unlike the SAFER barrier.

[rooksby]

I did think of that but not sure how feasible it would be on some of these temporary circuits - can't have someone digging trenches in the presidents car park....

 

Other worry is if the trench fills up with water - not sure of the flotation characteristics of the techpro barriers, given that the earlier Recticel ones we used in the UK tended to act a bit like 'mae-wests', especially when one got catapulted into the lake at Mallory Park.

 

You likely wouldn't want a trench anyway, the energy consumed by the TecPro being free to move is I imagine part of the driver protection calculation (that's of course when the barrier is not sitting on top of his head).

 

Ideally it would probably be more of a step arrangement. A step down from where the tecpro barrier meets the run-off, all the way back to the armco. So the low nosed car hits much nearer centre-mass, and still allows some free-space for the barrier to drag all its pals backwards towards the hard metal stuff.

[ANF]

I just found this 218 km/h tecpro impact at COTA. Sure, the driver walked away, but what a mess at 0:50.

[Lee Nicolle]

In general, yes.

 

In F1? Not at all.

 

We saw onboard how Räikkönen and Bottas 'observed' the yellow flags in the corner Ricciardo had parked his car.

 

Yellow flags in F1 are as good as meaningless. The drivers don't care, and neither does the race director.

And yet AGAIN there is the problem. The reason the second accident at Suzuka last year happened as they flags were ignored,, actually yellows mean go faster and catch up to the feild.

A 3 month suspension for ignoring racing rules may just have 'big time' racers actually comprehend the race rules the learnt in their early days at club meetings.

[ExFlagMan]

...unlike the SAFER barrier.

The SAFER barrier is designed for a different scenario where there is limited space to install any other type of barrier and the predominant impact is at a shallow angle - the design of the barrier allowing the car to slide along the barrier scrubbing off speed. 

 

I just found this 218 km/h tecpro impact at COTA. Sure, the driver walked away, but what a mess at 0:50.

Looks like the Techpro did its job - hate to imagine the result if they had not been there.

It looks like the impact managed to bend at least one of the debris fence posts back even after the techpro had done its job.

[ANF]

The SAFER barrier is designed for a different scenario where there is limited space to install any other type of barrier and the predominant impact is at a shallow angle - the design of the barrier allowing the car to slide along the barrier scrubbing off speed.

I'm not an expert on crash barriers, but I think the SAFER barrier looks like a much better system than Tecpro. But maybe you're right that it's more suited for a shallow impact, I don't know.

Anyway, we saw what happened to Sainz: The car went underneath the barrier, not necessarily because of the low nose but because there is nothing that will prevent the rows of Tecpro blocks from moving upward. It seemed to take a while to reach him and it took about twenty minutes to get him out of the car. The barriers are heavy and have to be lifted by a crane. And yes, they landed on top of the car. That's not good.

Now here's a video of Max Chilton hitting a Tecpro barrier in Abu Dhabi. The 2011 GP2 car had a higher nose and the car didn't go underneath. But look at the replay at 0:37 and you'll see the nose digging into the barrier, lifting it from the ground, and that caused the front of the car to lift as well. That can't be any good to the driver.

Then there was Maldonado's accident in Monaco in 2013 where he hit the first block of Tecpros at Tabac and the entire barrier was dragged onto the track, one of the blocks hitting both Marussias.

And look at what happened to Grosjean in Sochi: The right rear wheel dug into the barrier, causing massive damage not only to the barrier from which bits of foam were flying everywhere (replacing the blocks would take a long time, so the holes were patched with duct tape!); the back of the car was heavily damaged too, fluids leaking from it; and I suspect that at the initial impact, the car was rotated more violently than it would have been had it hit an armco barrier, a concrete wall, or a SAFER barrier.

Now, I didn't pay much attention to that last bit until I read this transcript from a 2002 SAFER barrier press conference in which the researchers explain why they found it a good idea to let drivers hit a skin of steel rather than polyethylene. Here are some highlights:
 

First generation of this system is called the PEDS Barrier … And the first impact was by Arie Luyendyk. … Although the energy absorbing system functioned and dissipated the energy of the impact, it did cause the vehicle to careen across the track at a high angle and distributed much of the barrier out into the track … Although the barrier did help save Arie's life, it created some other problems. … The PEDS-2 Barrier functions on the same basic principal as the PEDS 1 Barrier, but significantly strengthened to try to increase its energy dissipation characteristic and control the debris field that was generated by the first impact, as you can see by the impact by Hideshi Matsuda during Indianapolis 500. … We then moved back onto our test track to begin to test this system and others … One of the things we looked at was high-density polyethylene skin system, as you see here. It uses high-density polyethylene sheets as the energy dissipation mechanism, and then a high-density skin on the surface. Notice the significant pocketing around these sheet energy absorbers. The pocketing causing significant longitudinal and lateral decelerations. It literally slows the front of the car down, pulls it into the barrier, thereby increasing the risk to injury of the driver. Notice how this vehicle instead of being straightened, the front of the vehicle is actually stopped it causes the vehicle to spin out, increasing the risk of injury to the occupants. This was a behavior our analysis showed that occurred any time we had a high-density polyethylene skin associated with discrete energy absorber, either polyethylene tube or polyethylene sheet. Any of those discrete energy absorbers would allow this significant pocket. Based on that result, included that if we wanted to use the high-density polyethylene skin, we had to move to a distributed foam energy absorbing system that would eliminate that high degree of pocketing. … It did help limit some of the lateral acceleration and the vehicle trajectory was very good. But we were very concerned about pocketing we observed in both of the first two tests. We then went to a steel skin system. The principal here is to provide a tubular steel wall with tremendous bending strength. The bending strength of the wall element will prevent it from wrapping around the front of the car and virtually eliminate the pocketing. As you see here, there's no pocketing of this vehicle inside this barrier. We also coated the surface of this barrier with zinc rich paint. The zinc provides a lubricant, which further reduces the friction between the vehicle from the barrier. By reducing the friction, we reduced the longitudinal deceleration, which, again, as I mentioned previously, longitudinal deceleration pulls the car into the barrier, increasing the acceleration of the driver.

So while I'm sure that Tecpro barriers have saved some drivers from injuries that they would have sustained had they hit a tyre wall, it doesn't really seem like it's a perfect design.

[ExFlagMan]

There is 'no one size fits all' PERFECT design, as every accident is different.

 

I am pretty sure that a SAFER barrier would not have worked as well for Sainz as the car would have had about 2ft of  crush zone compared with the much larger distance afforded by the Techpro, even if it was somewhat compromised by being lifted up.

I am not sure that not only the front impact structure of the car would have deformed if he had hit a SAFER barrier.

 

The quote regarding the PEDS and SAFER barrier research is interesting but is mainly related to high speed oval circuit type accidents where the aim is to slow down the rate of retardation of the car by allowing it to run along the wall but trying to also reduce the danger any more head on impact as suffered by Dale Ernhardt.

As for debris spread from the impact, yes it might cause collateral damage on an oval but that is probably less dangerous than hitting a (semi) solid barrier head on

 

As for a car hitting Armco head on - even though Sainz's car had been ******** by the Techpro it looked like it still managed to punch a significant hole in the Armco - hate to think what would have happened if he had hit it unshielded....

 

Interesting snippet from the Sainz crash - my wife heard a comment on TV that Carlos registered a 5.5g impact (presumably on the in-ear sensor) but it has been reported that the car took a 45g impact - seems a bit of a difference.

Edited by ExFlagMan, 14 October 2015 - 20:54.

[derstatic]

5.5 can't really be correct. They hit 4G+ on normal braking and this was a whole different deceleration.

[Turboflame]

Engine development, higher topspeeds and more duels at 200 mhp+ are more accidents waiting to come, inevitably.

[Ragnar668]

Gary Hartstein in his last post on A Former F1 Doc Writes

 

"My conclusion? I find it odd that Carlos failed to mention his dizziness pre-race to ANY MEDICAL STAFF AT THE CIRCUIT, including the CMO and the Medical Delegate, who unquestionably asked that specific question. And that he blabbed about it to the press almost immediately after alighting from his car. Let me repeat this: this kid denied symptoms to the people responsible for his care, got into his car, raced, then complained about not being well-taken care of.

HOW STUPID IS THAT?"