Formula One fatalities.

[xpensive]

A tragic thread I know, but as Mario Andretti said after Ronnie's death, "Sadly, this is also part of motor racing."

But please fellow members, let's keep our dignity, no gory images it you will.

I found this piece on the web on Jochen Rindt's death at Monza in 1970;

Jochen Rindt. Won the F1 World Championship in 1970, despite being killed at Monza. He was so far ahead in the championship, that noone could overcome him by season end.

Rindt had shown up at the Italian GP, expecting to be driving Lotus's older (and Rindt's more favoured chassis) the Lotus 49. Instead, Colin Chapman had gone against Rindt's wishes and only brought the newer, less stable and refined Lotus 72. Chapman gave Rindt an ultimatum...drive the 72, or don't drive, and risk losing the championship. Rindt chose to drive, and in practise, under braking for the Parabolica, the car snapped left, head on into the barriers. Rindt had failed to secure himself properly and was thrown down into the car. He was given the last rites at the crash site, but it is unclear whether he died on impact or lying at trackside.

The man never got to see the trophy he would ultimately win, and his Finnish supermodel wife Nina would never marry again, saying that no man could ever replace him.

[WhiteBlue]

I don't see the point of this thread, but that may be just me. If we had reason to discuss the safety implications it would make limited sense to me. But I doubt that we will see posts about anything else but driver fatalities and those are at least two decades into the past. So what we will get will be another nostalgic thread about fallen heroes, historic F1 racing and nothing of technical relevance I fear.

[xpensive]

Again, as I tried carefully to point out, it will be a very tragic thread, but to my mind with relevant technical issues.

It's up to the moderators if they allow it to ride, if not I will of course accept, understand and support their judgement.

[xpensive]

Gentlemen, the very idea of this thread was not to trigger argumentation, rather to get a historic view of where motor racing has gone sadly wrong, sporting- as well as technically-wise, I'm certain that WB can see that if he thinks about it?

[GitanesBlondes]

It's chilling to think that had Jochen opted to sit out at Monza, and raced the final race, he would have still been world champion and been alive to see it.

The one that always stood out to me fatality-wise was Tom Pryce at Kyalami in 1977. In so far as it can be said that every driver fatality is sad, the bulk of them were due to mechanical failures, or driver errors...Tom sadly was not. Simply down to marshal Frederik Jansen Van Vuuren attempting to put out the flames on Renzo Zorzi's Shadow, and not paying attention to cars coming down the main straight. Tragic career cut short due to something that could not even be termed a pure motor racing accident.

The flipside though is that marshaling has come a long way since those days, which is nothing but a good thing.

[autogyro]

Sorry but I cannot see how a thread about F1 fatalities of the past brings much to your suggestion for a debate on FI's current failings.
It does bring back some very difficult memories for some of us.
I agree that safety developments over the years have been one factor in emaciating the sport.
However to argue against safety is not justified.

[xpensive]

The great Peter Revson was killed on the same track only a year earlier, also in a Shadow, this time to mechanical failure.

Tony Southgate:
"We were using titanium quite a lot on the DN3, which was quite a new material then. Titanium is finicky, it has to be machined smooth and the surface polished, and a ball joint which had some coarse machining on it had failed. There was only one layer of Armco and the car, instead of being deflected or stopped, had gone right under as far as the cockpit. I felt personally responsible. It was a very difficult time. The glamour of Formula 1 had gone, replaced by a sort of loneliness. You just had to work on. Of course I replaced all the titanium components with steel before the next race."

[GitanesBlondes]

Sorry but I cannot see how a thread about F1 fatalities of the past brings much to your suggestion for a debate on FI's current failings.
It does bring back some very difficult memories for some of us.
I agree that safety developments over the years have been one factor in emaciating the sport.
However to argue against safety is not justified.

If anything, it shows the evolution of technology with regards to F1.

Sure the memories are difficult to revisit for some, but regardless of personal feelings, it remains a stark reminder of reality in a sport that has become quite content to disregard much of reality in recent times. To see men risking life and limb in the hope of achieving glory by pushing machines to their engineering limits was simply spectacular. While there are those that take offense to it all, remember, these men died doing what they loved more than anything in the world. The lessons to be learned on both sides of the coin are immense.

[GitanesBlondes]

The great Peter Revson was killed on the same track only a year earlier, also in a Shadow, this time to mechanical failure.

Tony Southgate:
"We were using titanium quite a lot on the DN3, which was quite a new material then. Titanium is finicky, it has to be machined smooth and the surface polished, and a ball joint which had some coarse machining on it had failed. There was only one layer of Armco and the car, instead of being deflected or stopped, had gone right under as far as the cockpit. I felt personally responsible. It was a very difficult time. The glamour of Formula 1 had gone, replaced by a sort of loneliness. You just had to work on. Of course I replaced all the titanium components with steel before the next race."

Peter Revson's loss was quite tragic. He was a guy who had little reason to even go racing with being an heir to the Revson fortune.

That's quite incredible that something that seems as trivial as coarse machining causing a ball joint to fail, would have such an impact on the outcome of his crash.

[xpensive]

But this is also the entire idea of this thread, to understand the technical nature of motor racing, I hope we can all behave.

When Ronnie died at Monza in 1978, his feet were virtually unprotected, just look at the front of the Lotus 78;

[Lycoming]

Gentlemen, the very idea of this thread was not to trigger argumentation, rather to get a historic view of where motor racing has gone sadly wrong, sporting- as well as technically-wise, I'm certain that WB can see that if he thinks about it?

In that case, don't limit it to F1, don't limit it to fatalities; in the last 4 years, there are many examples of where motor racing has technically gone very wrong safety wise. It would be more useful to talk about some of the more recent incidents. Some people these days are of the opinion that F1 is too safe. I disagree; I think we've been quite lucky and that there have been a few close calls in the past few years.

Just a handful of things we can talk about in more detail:

2009 - Massa's accident. Helmet specs were upgraded after that, for good reason.

2009 - Henry Surtee's accident. Less likely in F1 (today, at least) because of the ridiculously strong tethers mandated, but still a very real danger in lower classes of open wheel racing and even F1.

2010: That first lap accident at Abu Dhabi. Schumacher very narrowly avoided having his head taken off by the force india. Reason number one why closed cockpits should be mandated, as they will be for LMP1 cars starting 2014. I'm seriously not certain that the low nose regs will be enough to prevent this type of accident.

2011: Allan Mcnish's crash. The fact that he walked away basically unscathed is a testament to Audi's engineering, but that incident could have been very nasty. First of all, notice how the car skipped across the gravel trap barely losing any speed; this is why some gravel traps should be replaced with paved runoff, despite the objections of martin brundle and others. Second, notice the tire that comes falling back down about a second after the car comes to a rest. That kind of thing kills people.

2013: Sean Edwards and Allan Simonsen. Both apparently victims of pool track design; Simonsen hit the armco at a point where a tree was right behind it, so he basically hit a tree at over 100 mph. The tree should be removed, or a tire wall or something added to the armco, since it is a very high speed section of the track (exit of tertre rouge). Edwards similarly went off on a high speed portion of the track, hit a section of armco with only a few tires in front to absorb the impact. Circuit design still matters.

[GitanesBlondes]

Gravel traps are still better for motorcycle racing Lycoming.

A lot of people forget plenty of circuits host racing other than F1, and motorcycles are a big one. Tarmac runoff is far more dangerous to motorcycle riders than gravel is. Many of the circuits that have tarmac runoff only, are a good way for motorcycle racers to wind up killed. They need to be slowed down quickly if they come off a bike, and tarmac increases the chances of the rider being taken all the way into a tire barrier.

[notsofast]

...achieving glory by pushing machines to their engineering limits...

That's the key question, isn't it? How do we make F1 safe, and at the same time, how do we keep F1 as a sport where drivers push their machines to their engineering limits. Lately, we haven't seen cars being pushed to the limit all that much, at least not for an entire race. Lots of people have voiced their frustration here, but I'm afraid there are no easy answers.

[xpensive]

Bruce McLaren's deadly crash at Goodwood in 1970, reportedly the entire rear bodywork of his CanAm McLaren M8D came off.

The only image I can find, doctored obviously;



His own car failed him, from what I learned, but didn't a similar thing happened to Jaques Villeneuve with the first BAR?

[GitanesBlondes]

...achieving glory by pushing machines to their engineering limits...

That's the key question, isn't it? How do we make F1 safe, and at the same time, how do we keep F1 as a sport where drivers push their machines to their engineering limits. Lately, we haven't seen cars being pushed to the limit all that much, at least not for an entire race. Lots of people have voiced their frustration here, but I'm afraid there are no easy answers.

Well regarding the cars not being pushed to the limit much in recent times, there is an easy answer to that one but this isn't the topic to rehash the tire debate.

In any event.

Brands Hatch, October 24, 1971. Jo Siffert suffered a fatal crash when the suspension on his BRM P160 broke some laps after a coming together with the Super Swede at the start of the race.



Broken suspensions were responsible for a number of fatalities. Patrick Depailler suffered a similar issue on his Alfa Romeo in the Ostkurve at Hockenheim in 1980.