Formula One fatalities.

[Lycoming]

carbon fibre - a substance light and strong enough that wasn't a massive fire hazard

Compared to what, magnesium? epoxy based composites are not good things to burn, and even if they don't actually catch on fire, if they get hot enough, they start to give off some nasty fumes.

[xpensive]

Gentlemen, at the beginning of this thread I asked for all of us to show some dignity as this is a sensitive subject.

The debate on the last few pages is not xactly what I hoped to read, in particular regarding wishes of sex and such,
so please behave and compose yourselves if you feel urged to debate if the audience wishes to see gory details or not.

Season's greetings all.

[SectorOne]

It is drama. F1 or even motor racing has always been about drama, if it weren't, you wouldn't see F1 today trying to create contrived drama in order to spike ratings.

that´s entertainment you are talking about. Drama is a bit more specific then entertainment.
They want to increase the entertainment but not necessarily the drama.

Drama and glamour go hand-in-hand with grand prix racing. That's why I always highly recommend people look at the historical attitudes towards grand prix racing so people don't realize the history of the sport starts with Mosley and Ecclestone. Those two clowns have so many believing the drivel that pours out of their mouths every time they open. Look at how the fans viewed grand prix racing during the pre-war era.

Yea anyone who studies GP racing´s early history will come to the conclusion that the human mind was incredibly primitive and the reason for the lack of safety wasn´t to improve the show but because they simply did not know any better.

Also FYI, today's formula rarely sees drivers bringing the car to the absolute limit because it is counterproductive currently.

Just the last three years have been particularly bad but looking at modern F1 as a whole the majority has been flat out racing. Let´s call the Pirelli era a "phase".


But to get back to the point. If today´s drivers were born back in the day, they would still be racing.
They don´t have to really stare death in the face everytime they race and i think we should be quite thankful for it.

[autogyro]

But to get back to the point. If today´s drivers were born back in the day, they would still be racing.
They don´t have to really stare death in the face everytime they race and i think we should be quite thankful for it.

I do not agree, many modern drivers do not have the mind set to face such danger so no comparison can be made.

[gary123]

But to get back to the point. If today´s drivers were born back in the day, they would still be racing.
They don´t have to really stare death in the face everytime they race and i think we should be quite thankful for it.

I do not agree, many modern drivers do not have the mind set to face such danger so no comparison can be made.

Perez is one of those drivers who would not have problems running in the old F1.

[Manoah2u]

But to get back to the point. If today´s drivers were born back in the day, they would still be racing.
They don´t have to really stare death in the face everytime they race and i think we should be quite thankful for it.

I do not agree, many modern drivers do not have the mind set to face such danger so no comparison can be made.

nonsense, just look at various accidents recently. enough drivers still deal with death. Dan Wheldon for example. Henry Surtees. And the list would go on. Kubica's extreme F1 crash could easily had a different outcome, there's no doubt at the moment of crash he stared death right in the eyes, and repeated such with his Rally crash.
Don't underestimate danger in motor racing.
F1 cars are still extreme machines going 300+kmph. The slightest thing can turn control out of control.
Look at webber flying through the air. If there had been a metal post or bridge right above the track he could have slammed right into that. He could have been steered out of direction into the walls upside down.
Rosberg slammed into a dangerously out-of-reality HRT that was far off F1 acceptable standards [totally worn car].
Schumacher almost had a car straight into his helmet in Bahrain.
Alonso almost had crazy grosjean's wheel right into his head.
These are all so very close to the edge. It could have been just the tiniest of difference that mean life or death.
Not to mention these tire dangers. Again, if alonso would have been a bit closer to Perez he might have had steel or kevlar belting slamming right into his helmet - would his helmet be up to the violence of the energy packed in a tire explosion?

F1 drivers of now are first of all athlettically far far more advanced then drivers before. And with the speed and pressure on the drivers, I can say it's respectless to think they aren't up to the task. Drivers today are smarter. They won't step into a car without a helmet. Just look at Webber without helmet in Brazil. you can't even drive that machine without a helmet properly.
They're smarter then just playing with death.

motorsport shoudn't be a roman gladiator arena like it's only entertainment when death is a part of it. A human life is worth far more than that.

I don't know if it's age or people get blunted over the years, but it's like people start having less respect for life just because they're not confronted with death so much. Do we need another Senna accident for people to respect life? No.
Vettel doesn't have to die in a horrible accident just because people think the game is too safe.

If the neck protection wasn't introduced back then, Jos Verstappen would have been KILLED the same way as Senna during the 96 belgian GP. The HANS devices today are to protect the drivers. To what? to protect them from injury, harm, death.
The safety is in place because death does lurk around the corner.
Evidently, it's not as dangerous as it was in the 50's. But it doesn't make you more or less man stepping in a car with a seatbelt or a car that will impale you on the slightest bump.

It sickenings me that people dare to almost call the sport boring because there isn't life threating situations every race.
But if you'd just google a bit, there are plenty of motorsport deaths the past years.
In the Canadian GP 2013 a marshall was killed because he got run over by a trackside car. Not delving into the actual accident, what it does show is death is around the corner at anytime, especially when people lack or don't respect one's or another one's safety.

Remember that camera guy catching the loose wheel in the pits? he could have easily been killed right on the spot.

F1 had a turbulent history of death and accidents. What happened to senna should never happen ever again.
It happened because there wasn't enough attention to driver safety. If the lack of respect to driver safety comes back,
or isn't handled adequately , death will return to the sport. and that's unacceptable.

If some sort of protection is needed to protect the driver from a wheel possibly slamming into his head, then so be it.
The noses of new gen f1cars may not be pretty - but atleast it will minimalize the risk a driver is killed by a car slamming into his head by the way the cars' constructed.

anybody having the balls and disrespect to driver life may feel free to step into a car without airbag, without crumbling zone, without a roof, without a seatbelt, without proper brakes, without proper tires, and go driver on the freeway in heavy rain. let's see what man you really are then. better think of that when you fasten your seatbelt or your kid's seatbelt.
other people's life, that includes F1 drivers, are valuable too, not just our own lives.

[munudeges]

Compared to what, magnesium?

Errrr, yes, that's one of the things that comes to mind.

Carbon fibre was night and day compared to any other material used before and meant a car could have a high speed, high G force crash and where the driver had a pretty reasonable chance of staying in one piece and surviving. John Barnard, albeit somewhat indirectly, was responsible for saving more driver's lives than pretty much any other person.

[GitanesBlondes]

It is drama. F1 or even motor racing has always been about drama, if it weren't, you wouldn't see F1 today trying to create contrived drama in order to spike ratings.

that´s entertainment you are talking about. Drama is a bit more specific then entertainment.
They want to increase the entertainment but not necessarily the drama.

Entertainment comes out of drama, this is nothing new. You could go back to Ancient Greece and look at the dramatic plays that were put on for the entertainment of the people. But as it pertains to real life, people rely on drama to be entertained and real life drama is always far more entertaining than contrived drama. Whatever the case, drama sells in a sporting atmosphere as it fleshes out whatever the participants are doing into something far more.

Yea anyone who studies GP racing´s early history will come to the conclusion that the human mind was incredibly primitive and the reason for the lack of safety wasn´t to improve the show but because they simply did not know any better.

Primitive? Ridiculous. That's the sort of modern mentality I abhor as it attempts to label another time by way of modern thinking. Trying to label the people who lived then as a bunch of troglodytes to score points isn't the sort of thing I feel comfortable in partaking in as one day people in another era will look back upon us with the same idiotic thoughts. There is a saying that, "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there."

But to get back to the point. If today´s drivers were born back in the day, they would still be racing.
They don´t have to really stare death in the face everytime they race and i think we should be quite thankful for it.

There's no way of knowing that they would still be racing, or whether they would have ever desired to pursue it professionally.

[timbo]

Primitive? Ridiculous. That's the sort of modern mentality I abhor as it attempts to label another time by way of modern thinking. Trying to label the people who lived then as a bunch of troglodytes to score points isn't the sort of thing I feel comfortable in partaking in as one day people in another era will look back upon us with the same idiotic thoughts. There is a saying that, "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there."

I would not say people's mind "was" primitive. I'd say it IS primitive. There are bunch of things which become obvious only on hindsight, I don't think anyone can argue against that.
The technologies and safety standards were indeed very poor. And we can see exactly how people learned from accidents.
My question for you GB is what you propose to do with what we learn?
Would you argue that we must abondon the technologies and standards which made racing safer than it was?

There's no way of knowing that they would still be racing, or whether they would have ever desired to pursue it professionally.

Yep, so it can't be argument against modern racing.

[cossie]

no just Indy car, it's not far away from another Weldon

[strad]

Manoah2u
Lotta ifs there.
IF a frog had wings.....
I have avoided this topic because I know the arguments and wrath my sentiments evoke, but I tell you now that when F1 lost the danger of imminent death lurking at every race it lost part of it's very essence all the way back to pre-war years.
Facing the danger and the risk of death was in fact part of the attraction for many drivers after both world wars.
The world and racing have been sanitized and sterilized to where people honestly think everyone riding a bicycle should where a helmet and that racing should be safe.
Should we take reasonable precautions? Of course, but we've gone too far. Even the foremost champion of the safety movement Jackie Stewart, has said we've gone too far.
Safety yes...emasculation no.
edit:
You can save the derisive remarks,,,I've heard them all

[GitanesBlondes]

Primitive? Ridiculous. That's the sort of modern mentality I abhor as it attempts to label another time by way of modern thinking. Trying to label the people who lived then as a bunch of troglodytes to score points isn't the sort of thing I feel comfortable in partaking in as one day people in another era will look back upon us with the same idiotic thoughts. There is a saying that, "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there."

I would not say people's mind "was" primitive. I'd say it IS primitive. There are bunch of things which become obvious only on hindsight, I don't think anyone can argue against that.
The technologies and safety standards were indeed very poor. And we can see exactly how people learned from accidents.
My question for you GB is what you propose to do with what we learn?
Would you argue that we must abondon the technologies and standards which made racing safer than it was?

I would do away completely with tarmac runoff areas, and the FIA's moronic standards for grade 1 status which results in numerous tracks being dumbed down, or horribly designed new circuits. Make the tracks so they again punish for putting 4 wheels off instead of the out of bounds being tarmac.

What's more thrilling to watch anyway?

Guys cruising around wide tracks with no risk involved, or watching Robert Kubica hit the apex which happens to have a house there?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6imD6_ppMjk[/youtube]

I remember when tracks used to be for men.

[timbo]

I would do away completely with tarmac runoff areas, and the FIA's moronic standards for grade 1 status which results in numerous tracks being dumbed down, or horribly designed new circuits. Make the tracks so they again punish for putting 4 wheels off instead of the out of bounds being tarmac.

Ehm, so you make such sweeping statements only over tarmac run-offs?
There's a bunch of ways to deal with it, and there are still tracks like Montreal or Suzuka on calendar. And I don't think all new circuits are horribly designed. In fact I enjoyed Turkey a lot, India and Korea are not that bad, and COTA is simply brilliant!

[dren]

Not sure if any of you watch Nascar, I'm not a fan but I caught this crash live. The safety nets kept the cars on track, but they still allow pieces into the crowd. 30+ spectators were injured but the drivers all walked away fine.

[xDama]

I would do away completely with tarmac runoff areas, and the FIA's moronic standards for grade 1 status which results in numerous tracks being dumbed down, or horribly designed new circuits. Make the tracks so they again punish for putting 4 wheels off instead of the out of bounds being tarmac.

What's more thrilling to watch anyway?

Guys cruising around wide tracks with no risk involved, or watching Robert Kubica hit the apex which happens to have a house there?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6imD6_ppMjk

I remember when tracks used to be for men.

+100