Chinese GP 2010 - Shanghai

[The Local Ride]

High Res of Buemi crash.
http://vimeo.com/10972890
BBC chaps said that the wheel tethers withstand about 5000 kg of load.

[RacingManiac]

I just woke up and saw about Buemi's accident. I guess wheel tethers are uselss when the upright actually explode into nothing.

Fixed...

STR said the part the tether attaches to on the upright broke.

[Giblet]

Corrected.

I thought the wheels came apart from the video. Still scary.

[RacingManiac]

That part there is no doubt...good thing it happened in a straight line and he somehow managed to bleed off a lot of speed...

[roost89]

High Res of Buemi crash.
http://vimeo.com/10972890
BBC chaps said that the wheel tethers withstand about 5000 kg of load.

From that video I got the moment, or as least as close to it as I could, where the happening occurs:

After a play-pause tap.


What interests me is the right wheel seems to turn into the car (probably already broken the uprights by then).
By the time I can press play-pause the other side disintegrates! Super-fast destruction there.
I wonder if he shifted the brakke bias rearward during the slide...possible?

[WhiteBlue]

At the end of the video you can see the wheels run up the debris fence some 15 m up into the air and continue to travel into the far distance. There are some people out there but luckily nobody seems to get hurt. If this had been in Italy the place would have been crowded with non paying spectators. These 13 inch wheels have tremendous bounce to them.

[RacingManiac]

The toe link probably is the first member to snap(weakest) so I am guessing the wheel will just turn towards wherever the support is missing. As soon as the wheels break off though, the front brake circuit is severed and front master will just go to the floor so all brake pressure(minus bending of the bias bar) will go to the rear circuit anyway.

[Pandamasque]

I just woke up and saw about Buemi's accident. I guess wheel tethers are uselss when the wheels actually explode into nothing.

I think they aren't connected to the chassis anyway. Since the whole suspension went kaput the wheels were free to fly off.

[The_Man]

I have never seen anything like this. Its like someone pressed a button and the wheel went "boom"(I am not suggesting someone did). There has to more to the analysis of the failure, as in why did both he upright pick-ups fail. So many time in formula one we have seen people loose their wheel and the other wheel be dragged along with the car later. These suspension components specially are designed for stiffness so they have a huge factor of safety to failure.

Either it is a complete design failure in that case the car should have never have made it to that corner(straight rather). Or it was a something to do with temperature sensitivity of the new material used. As the wheels got hotter the component weaker and finally gone!

Still hope we find a good explanation for the perfect spectacular synchronization for the 2 failures.

[roost89]

The toe link probably is the first member to snap(weakest) so I am guessing the wheel will just turn towards wherever the support is missing. As soon as the wheels break off though, the front brake circuit is severed and front master will just go to the floor so all brake pressure(minus bending of the bias bar) will go to the rear circuit anyway.

The toe link probably is the first member to snap(weakest) so I am guessing the wheel will just turn towards wherever the support is missing. As soon as the wheels break off though, the front brake circuit is severed and front master will just go to the floor so all brake pressure(minus bending of the bias bar) will go to the rear circuit anyway.

Thanks, that explains a fair bit.

I didn't know about the toe-link being the weakest part and didn't think about severing the front brake circuits.

I just woke up and saw about Buemi's accident. I guess wheel tethers are uselss when the wheels actually explode into nothing.

I think they aren't connected to the chassis anyway. Since the whole suspension went kaput the wheels were free to fly off.

The wheels are connected to the chassis by a tether. Supposed to stop the wheels from flying off and away from the car if it crashes. You can see it in some crash videos, where the wheel flops on its side or is trailed along by the car.

[The Local Ride]

The issue was raised in FP1 regarding a large bump in the circuit on the entry to turn 1. One of the Lotus managed to damage the diffuser after hitting it about an hour into the session. Quali shouldn't see this being much of a problem but full tanks at the start could potentially see a few problems. What do you guys think?

[multisync]

I love the way he tried to steer away from the barrier-Perhaps a more experienced driver would have notice the front wheels missing?

[WhiteBlue]

The issue was raised in FP1 regarding a large bump in the circuit on the entry to turn 1. One of the Lotus managed to damage the diffuser after hitting it about an hour into the session. Quali shouldn't see this being much of a problem but full tanks at the start could potentially see a few problems. What do you guys think?

They will not be able to do anything about the bumps. The circuit is build on a swamp. They stabilized the ground with millions of stakes and covered it with huge expanded polystyrene boards. They used up the whole Asian supply of styrene for a year. So if there were quality issues with the ground work leading to some of the EPS boards sinking away they have a very heavy repair job on hand which will take weeks to perform.

[spinmastermic]

At the end of the video you can see the wheels run up the debris fence some 15 m up into the air and continue to travel into the far distance. There are some people out there but luckily nobody seems to get hurt. If this had been in Italy the place would have been crowded with non paying spectators. These 13 inch wheels have tremendous bounce to them.

The right front wheel goes straight for the camera man. Lucky bastard nearly got his head taken off.

[Richard]

Shame RB and TR can't share tech content any more. Otherwise those parts Buemi was testing would be perfect for Vettel's race set up.