65 replies to this topic

[Gary Grant]

...this looks bad re the marshal...

[loppa]

thats what i believe..

[MP4/?]

I can't believe this!!! Again???? Please no more!!! Please!!!!

[Gary Grant]

What an awful start to the new season. My thoughts go out to his family.

[loppa]

ch 9 believes a race offical, who was air lifted to the alfred, and the condition was unknown..

looks bad..

[MP4/?]

I can't believe this!!! Again???? Please no more!!! Please!!!!

[SB]

Really Bad
2nd in 5 races ....

SB

[Louis Mr. F1]

i hate it,

i hate to hear this!!!!

[loppa]

RIP..

[_Hink]

I just got a chance to watch the race at a bar (so no sound) and you could tell that something was very serious by the length of the yellow.

It's times like these I hope that the information I hear is incorrect even though it may very well be.

[NOvene]

I am not jumping conclusions and blaming JV. But if it's his fault that the car spun off I hope he feels a tinge of guilt for the rest of his life.

God bless the marshall's family.

[loppa]

@ novene..

thats the kind of crap that no one should be made to live with..

[snow]

The race means nothing when a life is lost. My thoughts are with the marshal and his family.

[Gary Grant]

I entirely agree - someone has died, lets not go saying inappropriate things like that, NOvene .
This has really cast a cloud over the season already.

[baddog]

atlas now reports this as fact.. and the drivers demeanour etc on the podium made it obvious they were aware of something horrible.

I dont have a clue what to say here. So sad.

Shaun

[Louis Mr. F1]

from f1racing.net

A track marshal has tragically been killed after being struck by some airborne debris following an incident involving Ralf Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve in the early stages of the race.

The devastating news struck the whole of Albert Park as traditional celebrations for the end of a Grand Prix were subdued, and champagne spraying was foregone and a silence fell over the circuit.

According to reports a tyre broke free from the double wheel-tethers and the BAR Honda car striking the marshal in the chest.

F1Racing.net offers its sincere thoughts and condolences to the family of the marshal who was tragically involved in this accident.

--------------------------

what a **** way to start the year!!!

no joy about the race at all

[JayWay]

What a horrible way to start the season. This was supposed to be a week for F1 fans to rejoice.

Does anyone know of the Marshalls name yet?

Whoever said JV should live with this the rest of his life needs to be smacked over the head.

[loppa]

why can't marshalls wear helmets?

[Mr. Salty]

Damn...

So tragic.

Novene,
Poor choice of words I think. Do you realy feel that way? You may want to reconsider...

[Pascal]

That's tragic news...

[loppa]

BAR should be fined, if not receive a race ban for their tethers not working...

as should jaguar and every other team who had wheel tethers fail this weekend..

wheel tethers are a rule and are not optional.. when a marshall loses their life through incompentancy, they should be punished

[bigblue]

Damn

[Juan]

With accidents as violent as that one steel tethers wouldnt of been able to hold the wheels.

Its tragic but thats racing and things like that happen.

[baddog]

Originally posted by loppa
BAR should be fined, if not receive a race ban for their tethers not working...

as should jaguar and every other team who had wheel tethers fail this weekend..

wheel tethers are a rule and are not optional.. when a marshall loses their life through incompentancy, they should be punished

you are utterly wrong. the teams are required to provide tethers that meet abreakign strain specified by the FIA. suggesting that they did not do so or that they should provide the impossible is quite wrong and deeply heartless. how the **** do you think JV and his team already feel without this sort of rubbish?

Shaun

[loppa]

i will retract that statement, but not delete the post..

blame doesn't belong with BAR, and punishing them would suggest so..

as i said above, blame lies with the saefty standards and again i ask why marshalls dont wear helmets..

[maxie]

on the other hand, JV is really lucky. it is very similar to the accident his dad had.

[WKAYE]

This is the shits .

[Mr. Stay Puff]

Very tragic, RIP..........while I watched and had a funny feeling that something had gone wrong, the reality of it hadn't occured till the post race interviews. Very sad indeed.

[Williams]

Condolences to the family of the marshal, if the reports are true. I would like to think that some thought is being given to what further safety measures might be possible to make the marshals' jobs safer, hopefully as much thought as is being given to driver safety...

[Gary Grant]

why marshalls dont wear helmets..

The report in the thread suggests that the marshal was hit in the chest. You can never make motorsport entirely safe. A time for looking into the accident and improving safety will come. Now, however, is a time for grieving....

[NOvene]

HHF said he felt partly to blame for the Monza tragedy, even though it wasn't his fault. That's human for you. If JV is like that apologetic he'll earn my respect, not condemnation.

BAR should be fined, if not receive a race ban for their tethers not working...

as should jaguar and every other team who had wheel tethers fail this weekend..

Well that's clever..not.

[Lamont]

Really sad news that puts a damper on my excitement about the race results and the start of the season in general. This is not a good way to start the 2001 season, and my heart goes out to the marshall's family.

There is no way they could make tethers strong enough to keep wheels on in every accident....if they did the wheels wouldn't be able to turn at all.

As for marsalls wearing helmets, we don't even know what hit the marshall and on what part of their body. A wheel and tire hitting someone at 100+ mph is likely to be fatal if it hits anywhere on your torso.

May he rest in peace

[loppa]

as you saw, i RETRACTED that, but didn't delete it.. WHY? because i think it should be a ruling in the future when a more suitable method of keeping the tyres and parts of a car attached in an accident, even though this isn't entirely possible..

blaming a driver in this accident like you did, is low.. blaming a team, when a part of their safety measure failed, is still low, but not as low as blaming an individual..

but i am not arguing over trivial **** when someone has lost their life..

[Comma]

RIP

One marshal died again after being hit by a tyre again after the wheel tethers failed again - familiar pattern that we'd hope to never to see again after last year, but yet which has reoccurred. Proof that wheel tethers (even double ones) do not work effectively and that a way to prevent this happening again must be found somehow to prevent the tragic loss of life.
Also, 12 fans were injured and not to be forgotten. We all hope that they're okay but no one knows their condition - I guess the fencing was no match for the mass of debris created.
I personally think the race should have been stopped. They knew that one marshal had died at the time, they also knew that 12 fans were injured and taken to hospital, let they let the race continue. I would have thought the loss of at least one life would have been more important to them morally than the premature end of a race or loss of finances that way - I just think that's highly disrespectful to them and focusing on the unimportant things, but I guess that's how business works - there's no way they'd have stopped the race, unless maybe it was a driver killed (though I hope we never see that).
Anyways - our thought are with the marshals family and those fans injured - and we hope that the FIA will sort the problem soon which effects F1 so seriously.

[Gary Grant]

It can't have been good psychologically for the drivers to drive past a slow moving ambulance either. I agree with Comma - where a fatality occurs there is a case for stopping the race as a mark of respect.

[loppa]

re: the helmets..

yes, they wont work in all cases, and i didnt know the marshall was hit in the chest, but a general question i've always had is why dont marshalls wear helmets?! it may be the difference between life and death in some cases.. but there will always be incidents that nothing could've saved them, and it is those that will happen rarely..

[Daemon]

To hell with those of you blaming BAR and Villeneuve for killing that race marshal. A guy that loved his racing, gave his time and efforts for free to provide the entertainement that we all love and enjoy so much is dead.

Burti, had his wheels come flying off in his accident on saturday, and the only reason Schumachers didn't is because he was going sideways. Villeneuve hit that wall at an unbeleivable speed and angle, and if you know anything of physics, loads and forces, there is no way 2 carbon fibre strips are going to hold those wheels on. The fact of the matter is, the tyre went through the fence according to reports.

The sheer supidity and moronic comments of some people on this BB never cease to amaze me.

Someone is dead, and that is tragic, and all fans of F1 feel a bit stunned I'm sure, but the last thing we need is finger pointing, and the ensuing farce of placing blame as we have had with first Senna and then at Monza. Just simply respect the man who died to bring you your entertainment, I'm sure he wouldn't want people pointing fingers.

[Comma]

Originally posted by loppa
i will retract that statement, but not delete the post..

blame doesn't belong with BAR, and punishing them would suggest so..

as i said above, blame lies with the saefty standards and again i ask why marshalls dont wear helmets..

It isn't BARs fault - the design of the wheel tethers are ineffective, not the car manufacturers fault. The wheel tethers simply don't work properly - they don't keep the wheels on the car attached like they're supposed to do, as seen last year too. The FIA needs to introduce a new system to stop the reoccurrence of these sorts of incidents, as wheel tethers clearly don't do their job.

I agree that the marshals should wear helmets - it would protect them from debris and injury. But as to whether it could have prevented this... who knows...

[baddog]

its a very strange mark of respect for someone who died when involved in something they love (marshalls do this for that reason alone remember) to cancel the thing they died doing. better to finish it and let it stand as their memorial, Im quite sure its what they would have wanted.

Shaun

[NOvene]

Loppa

I didn't blame Villenueve, like you to the team. The marshalls are there to ensure drivers' safety, you just need to be a little broad minded to understand why I said JV should feel guilty.

So I stand by what I say.

[loppa]

you're pointing fingers right now..

my argument is that rules were broken so they should be punished.. i wasn't laying blame and went on to say that it is wrong to blame them..

its a hard area to police tho, as you pointed out, its impossible to keep wheels attached in some incidents..

[Lamont]

It seems to me that the crash fencing needs to be A LOT higher, although if the wheel punched through the fencing as Daemon said, it wouldn't have made a difference.

In general, I agree with Daemon's post, although not with the language....

[Gary Grant]

Dies anyone know anything of the condition of the spectators who were reportedly injured?

[loppa]

i didn't BLAME the team.. i said they should be punished for "breaking the rules".. regardless of the fact if someone loses their life, anytime a wheel comes loose, it should be investigated..

unlike you, i made myself clear, in a following post..

i didn't mean to seem to BLAME the team, and went on to say..

Originally posted by loppa
i will retract that statement, but not delete the post..

blame doesn't belong with BAR, and punishing them would suggest so..

as i said above, blame lies with the saefty standards and again i ask why marshalls dont wear helmets..

this was said before anyone had the chance to point out i was being an ass..

[Alien]

The only way to prevent this kind of thing is stopping marshalls from being at the fences, this is always going to be a danger in any motor sports, but some measures have to be taken by the FIA

Maybe the marshalls should be dug in, or at a considerable distance, obviously a fence or a meter tall concrete wall is not good enough as protection

[Bruce]

Death is, and always likely will be a part of motor racing. I for one, find the death of a marshall, if anything, more difficult than the death of a driver, for reasons that should be obvious.

However, as Andretti (I beleive) said; "This too is motor racing"...

My thoughts and sympathy go out to the family of the marshall. It is small consolation, but he died doing something which he obviously enjoyed. I hope that his loved ones can find some comfort in that...

[MP4/?]

Great picture Wolbo. It's very clear what has happened there!!! It's really terrible. Why dead is always so close to F1??? I'm very dissapointed!!!

[Daemon]

In response to someone wanting information on the other spectators injured, they are ok. Six spectators suffered minor injuries, reported as cuts and bruises.

[Williams]

My speculation is that the thread tethers probably don't work because they are using a double thether, which is just as effective as a single tether, since all it takes is for the breaking force to be applied to one tether before the other. They need to make the tethers themselves stronger, though I am skeptical that is possible, considering the enormous energies and g-forces involved in these accidents.

It's hard to say how you can protect marshals against this kind of accident. For sure they should be wearing helmets. But a full-size F1 car hurtling through the air directly at a group of people standing behind a barrier is pretty difficult to protect against. Unfortunately this is one of those freak occurences that will happen even if you have special posts for the marshals and all the protective gear. You just know that something is going to happen someday while a marshal is out near the track waving a yellow or helping at an accident site.

However that is no excuse for inaction and hopefully something can be done. This is a good argument for using a signal light system instead of marshals for flagging cars. Although marshals cannot be dispensed with, nor should they be, the fewer people exposed to danger on the track, the better.

[rek]

Originally posted by Wolbo
This picture of the accident seems to support the reports that the wheel and other parts of debris probably went straight through the fence. You can see that part of the fence is being destroyed and a gap is created.

the 'gap' you mention is most probably an opening in the fence that is used by the marshalls for flag-waving etc.

a terribly unlucky place to hit the wall in a major crash