What the $&%@! is happening with motorsport?

Argentina, South America and in fact the whole world of motorsport are witnesses again of an on-track death.

22-year-old Guido "El principito (the Little Prince)" Falaschi was killed after a huge shunt in Balcarce, during a race of the Turismo Carretera championship. Following the disscussions about this type of crashes in other topics, I'll only put the YouTube code for the video: watch?v=oWNqx5fhd3g

My point is, we are in 2011, deaths in motorsport, although not unavoidable, shouldn't be so frequent. This year four professional drivers died: Gustavo Sondermann (Copa Chevrolet Montana, Interlagos), Dan Wheldon (IndyCar, Las Vegas), Marco Simoncelli (MotoGP, Sepang) and Falaschi. Plus the also Argentinean karting racer Ramiro Tot some weeks ago.

Safety standards are extremely high, still, this has been an extremely tragic year for us racing fans. Post your opinions about this topic, so that we all share ideas. Motorsport is, was and will be dangerous, but it can always be less dangerous.

RIP Guido Falaschi, #16



Stats: 139 Starts / 7 Wins / 9 Poles / 5 Fastest laps



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/2011 10:40PM by Carlitox.

Wheldon's accident had the potential to happen to anyone the moment they allowed a field of that size to race on an oval like that. Any number of those drivers involved could have been killed.

Simoncelli's was just pure damn bad luck. Nothing could have saved him from that appalling impact.

Falaschi's crash was just appalling driving. How @#$%& thick do you have to be to drive blind through that much dust and debris while barely slowing down? Even the driving afterwards was shocking, with drivers still going through far too fast. We accept that accidents will happen - what I've just seen is what I've been talking about for the past couple of months - drivers are getting complacent. Some of that field need their licenses revoked.

Sorry to hear that, guys. Another sad day for the motorsport. R.I.P.

the thing in Argentina is that the series where Falaschi died are ages away of modern motorsport. Yes, they reach 240 km/h and drivers have a lot of safety things but their chasis are modified Ford Falcons, Chevrolet Nova, Renault Torino and Dodge 1500... They want to mantain tradition but thats too much. And the track safety is awful here. Theres not even grass in a lot of tracks

There are more than four professional drivers died this year, sadly. E.g. Jiří Skoupil (1964-2011) and Georg Plasa (1960-2011). Here is a photo of Plasa's horrific accident:

gav Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Falaschi's crash was just appalling driving. How
> @#$%& thick do you have to be to drive blind
> through that much dust and debris while barely
> slowing down? Even the driving afterwards was
> shocking, with drivers still going through far too
> fast.

Perhaps you have to be Alonso-in-2003-at-Interlagos-ignoring-yellow-flags-plowing-at-full-whack-into-the-debris-of-Mark-Webbers-car-after-several-cars-had-slowed-to-a-crawl-to-pick-through-the-wreckage thick?

---

It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

well, there wasnt even showing yellow flags at falaschi accident. may we have to look why safety in Argentina racing is ages away of today standards instead of why did the crash happen

I've never heard good things about the safety standards at these South American races. But yellow flags or not, surely those drivers could tell that there had been an accident from that huge dust cloud?

I'd like to see a hard licensing system enforced by the FIA/ASNs. No more exemptions. Just because you can drive a car fast does not mean you're experienced enough to race it. Force the drivers to go all the way through the racing ladder so they work their way into faster equipment gradually.