Official 2014 Japanese Grand Prix Thread #ForzaJules

My point isn't that it would have prevented Bianchi going off, but that even after Bianchi went off the safety car still didn't come out for another minute or so.

Sutil went off, then around 1 minute 50 seconds later Bianchi went off (camera cuts back to Sutil's car with steam behind the tractor around 2 minutes after Sutil went off and the marshalls giving the medical assistance required signal). 50 seconds after that gesture was made the safety and medical cars were deployed.

My issue is that with a tractor off to the side to the one of the worst corners, with little run off, worsening conditions and most of the cars on the wrong tyre, that the safety car wasn't deployed.

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Morbid
Remember Brazil a few years back, when we had like 5-6 cars go off at the same corner? We had a car that slid off when the recovery vehicle was working and almost hit it. We didn't get SC back then either.

That was 11 years ago. I'd have hoped procedures would have changed in that time.

What I find disturbing, is that AFIAK, that corner used to have gravel traps instead of run off tarmac. If Bianchi's car aquaplaned then the run-off tarmac did nothing at all to ameliorate the impact. You can't aquaplane on gravel and it would have slowed him down. As I have seen no skid marks on the crash site, I find it highly likely that this is the first case of run-off tarmac being a real safety hazard.
'
While you can critize that the safety car was not deployed earlier, it is of little consequence, if it would not have made a difference.

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



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/05/2014 12:47PM by Morbid.

Morbid Wrote:
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> What I find disturbing, is that AFIAK, that corner
> used to have gravel traps instead of run off
> tarmac. If Bianchi's car aquaplaned then the
> run-off tarmac did nothing at all to ameliorate
> the impact. You can't aquaplane on gravel and it
> would have slowed him down. As I have seen no skid
> marks on the crash site, I find it highly likely
> that this is the first case of run-off tarmac
> being a real safety hazard.

There was a gravel run-off, but also a tarmac access road - I think linking up to one of the other layouts of the track. Not quite sure whether Bianchi just followed the tarmac or hit the grass/gravel.

See the video of Sutil's spin here
[www.youtube.com]

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X (@ed24f1)

We don't know that. If it had been deployed straight away, who knows when the delta kicks in. It might not have stopped Bianchi going off, but it's going to sit heavily on Charlie's head that it could have done.

Bianchi's father has reportedly said that his son is critical and being operated on in hospital.

https://twitter.com/francetvinfo

It seems you are right. The position of the car at the crash site suggests his trajectory was along the tarmac portion.

Italian and French TV are reporting that Bianchi never stopped breathing of his own accord. Salo has been quoted for stating that Bianchi suffered an impact to the head.

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



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/05/2014 12:53PM by Morbid.

I had feared that he might be already passed, so at least there is a minor positive that there is still some hope.

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X (@ed24f1)

gav Wrote:
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> We don't know that. If it had been deployed
> straight away, who knows when the delta kicks in.
> It might not have stopped Bianchi going off, but
> it's going to sit heavily on Charlie's head that
> it could have done.

When have we ever had a SC deployed straight away? It doesn't happen. It can happen quickly, but they always seem to struggle to catch the leading car, and very rarely do they even catch the cars that where in the immediate proximity of the accident. This is hindsight 20-20, and not properly connected to the way races are held.

Let me suggest this to you. There is going to be an official report. Given the fact that the Japanese police is involved, it's probably not going to be conducted internally. Let's await the facts, instead of going loggerheads over spurious speculation.

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

No, it never happens instantly, but 2 minutes later it still hadn't been deployed - only a minute after Bianchi had crashed. But for the need for the medical car to come out they might not have brought the safety car out at all (of course that is pure speculation). They were hoping to clear Sutil's car away with double waved yellows, but in such conditions I feel that was absolutely nuts.

On a dry track with no outside influences (oil, debris, etc) I wouldn't complain, but when one car has already aquaplaned off, it's likely another car could do the same. As I've said, it happened in 1994 at the same turn and sadly it's happened again.

I agree with Ed. I gave the example of Hockenheim just to say that it is always better to be too overdone with safety than to have such outcome as the heavy injured driver. But the modern F-1 is too concerned about entertainment and now they would rather not deploy the SC at all than deploy it and then deal with pressure from F-1 audience who seem to be bored when SC is on track. That's how it looks to me. Ofc the whole accident is not just as easy as this, and I wouldn't say that Jules crashed only because SC had not been deployed, but I think that SC just could help to prevent it.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/05/2014 01:28PM by Soutsen.

We have had 20 years were we have gotten it pretty right when it comes to safety. There will always be risk, serious accidents... and there will always be fatalities. It's terrible, but there is no reason to get the lynch mob rallied hours after the accident. Charlie certainly had the safety car on track more than the drivers wanted that day, the radio messages made that quiet clear. I will reserve judgment until I have more information. It's better to await the facts, than to go overboard in retrospective condemnation.

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

Sky reporting at the circuit that the FIA have confirmed that Bianchi is being operated on for a severe head injury and will then be taken into intensive care.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/05/2014 01:27PM by gav.

Yes, relatively encouraging news. Apparently many of the drivers are at the hospital waiting which is nice.

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X (@ed24f1)

Apparantly, there will be no more news on Bianchi's condition for 24 hours.

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

Morbid Wrote:
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> Regarding the decision to not hold the race
> earlier, the reason was that the vast majority of
> spectators arrive at Suzuka by train. When you buy
> a train ticket there, it is stamped for the time
> you specify. Which means that those that already
> had bought train tickets would be in a pinch, and
> the organizers feared mass refunding due to the
> audience not being able to get train tickets to
> arrive on time.


I hope it is not true but I did read elsewhere last night that
a Big window of decent weather at 9am was there but refused as a start & the 3pm start kept
Reason cited was not about the local viewers but the bigger $$$ from commercial advertisers
that could be lost by putting it to the middle of the night in most of Europe (2am)

One driver...Daniel I think... said after race the teams & drivers were never asked for input/opinion before the race.

Maybe at times like this the teams need to stick together & speak up if they feel it is too high a risk?

The consensus seems to be that Honda (the race promoter) did not want the start time brought forward because of the number of fans who would rely on public transport to get there. Rail tickets are likely to have been for a specific service, so a last-minute rescheduling would have created a logistical nightmare.

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as much as i feel sorry for jules, I would like to bring the topic back to the race.

hamilton make two fundemantal errors today, one at spoon and one into T1, yet lost a total of around 1 sec. This is why I do not like the new run off areas. Hamilton made unforced errors, but there was not an infrastructure on the track to ensure an appropriate penalty.

I hope the F1 world is able to take a good breath, after horrible accidents like this there is always the risk that the world over dissects what happened. But now is not the moment to be pointing fingers or jumping to conclusions until a cool and calm investigation has been carried out.

Let's not forget that a man's life is at stake here and it's good to see the drivers uniting in their concern for poor Jules.

Motorsport is always going to be dangerous but I think it's important to acknowledge that today was not a problem with the conditions or the circuit nor the strength of the cars. It was a set of extremely unfortunate circumstances which could not be reasonably predicted.

That's not to say that mistakes weren't made and with the benefit of hindsight things would be done differently. It's not to say that the cars and facilities can't be safer but the main lesson to take from today is that recovery trucks are not designed to be crashed into.

That shouldn't even be a lesson which needs learning but the question now is how to manage that risk in the future.

It's relatively unusual to have two cars having almost identical accidents in exactly the same place. But wet conditions increases that risk and history shows that there is a precedence.

It's important that the marshals should always respond to accidents as normal but perhaps in conditions like those of today where there is more chance of multiple cars having the same accident on the same lap the sporting regulations ought to mandate use of the pit-limiter in double yellow zones.

This would not prevent cars spinning off the road in these conditions but it would significantly reduce the speed of the cars in the zone where there are marshals and recovery vehicles present and therefore the risk in these circumstances would be reduced.

We saw with Ericsson during the aborted first start that drivers can loose control in the wet at very low speeds... But at lower speeds they are less likely to hit something or at the very least the driver has more chance to regain control and any accident would be much smaller.

#ForzaJules

There are now pictures on Twitter of Bianchi still in the car and it clearly shows the reason for the differing pictures regarding the state of the car... it was utterly destroyed, but the engine cover (which must have somehow been still relatively intact) must have been placed loosely back on the car afterwards to be brought back to the pits.

The chassis and rear bulkhead (the bit the roll hoop and airbox attaches to) is intact, but the roll-hoop itself has gone, which shows the severity of the impact. There is no obvious deformation of Bianchi's helmet from the angle, but you can't see the side of the helmet which must have taken the bulk of the impact.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/05/2014 04:04PM by gav.

Yes so he seems to have gone both into the tyres and into the tractor at around the same time from how I interpret the image

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X (@ed24f1)

I saw an 8 minute video recorded after the ambulance left the scene. They had some 20 marshalls milling about trying to clean up the crash site and put the car back together.

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