Alonso's Crash

[kptaylor]

Yeah, I doubt the100g claim.

(From http://www.braininjury.com/injured.shtml)
How much force is necessary to cause permanent brain damage is under study, and hence still unclear. Over the years, professional boxers suffer permanent brain damage. The force of a professional boxer's fist is equivalent to being hit with a 13 pound bowling ball traveling 20 miles per hour, about 52 g's. Plopping down into an easy chair can generate up to 10 g's. So, it seems that somewhere between 10 and 50 g's is the threshold to permanent brain injury. This does not mean that accelerations over 50 g's have to cause permanent brain damage. Football players are subjected to 200 g's, and Indy race car drivers have been subjected to 80 g's without permanent injury, but they were wearing helmets.

[Shrieker]

Whatever it is, it was not the wind. You might have a chance convincing a 5 year old with that tho.

[SectorOne]

Not with 30g measured in the car and 16g Impact measured at the helmet. You get a concussion with 100g or above.
I am pretty sure there was some kind of helth problem before.

High lateral G corners a the most likely place to run into problems, if there is any health issue.

For me the most likely Scenario is Alonso felt he was losing awareness, then he tried to slow down, and pulled the car to the side.
In that moment he passed out, so he could not stop on the side of the track, but crashed.

By the way: hard concrete walls at the side of the track are not the worst idea if a possible Impact is at a flat angle. For sure it is better than classic tyre barriers, which would stop the car rather hard, instead of guiding it along ist way.

Forget about the concussion, it doesn´t even matter in the big picture.

How a driver can slow down, flick down two gears then TURN right until he hits the wall for no apparent reason should be the real mystery here.
He´s going slowly (relatively), supposedly catches a wind while on the left side of the track and makes no effort to turn left at any point until he hits the wall hard.

It´s fishy as hell what happened before the impact. Maybe he had some kind of epileptic event where he panicked and wanted to park the car, passed out while slowing the car down and hit the wall or some kind of electrocution locking all his muscles in the turn-right position.

It just doesn´t make sense that he would make no effort to counter-steer the wind because it´s a subconscious thing.

[dren]

Whatever it is, it was not the wind. You might have a chance convincing a 5 year old with that tho.

I've been blown out of my lane on the interstate driving 75mph before. A gust that causes a tire to step off the track isn't too hard to believe, especially when several drivers said the driving was difficult due to the wind.

[Shrieker]

Not to declare a pissing contest, but I ride a bike and have crossed an intercontinental bridge multiple times on heavy winds. Yes it does throw you off to the next lane. However, the way it's been described I don't believe Alonso's crash was to simply blame on heavy winds.

[dren]

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I should place no credence in anything said by ex drivers or TV journalists

the most respected doctor in this field , the late lamented prof watkins is on record as saying that drivers shoudn't race for a month after a concussion , so I am pleased to see alonso doing that , especially as it is not the first time for him

unfortunately in the past some drivers haven't followed this advice

It is especially easy for him to make the decision knowing that the car likely won't finish the race anyway.

[radosav]

Don't forget that Schumacher had so big brain injuries from accident that would most people describe as minor fall !

[acosmichippo]

Sooooo...............


This guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... VYp1ZqLLAM


Crashed after loosing control.....


because of the wind.....



Ahaaaammmm......

I think what a lot of the wind deniers are not considering is that maybe Alonso had already lost (or nearly lost) control, and then a strong tail/sidewind pushed the car over the edge. In other words, wind was not the only cause, but the straw that broke the camel's back.

[dren]

If it wasn't the wind, I don't believe it was the car. It was most likely something to do with Alonso.

It didn't happen to Button. The team continued to drive during the rest of testing with the same car. If it was a shock they would have done an extensive root cause analysis to determine how it happened. I don't believe something like that would have taken place over night.

[Richard]

He´s going slowly (relatively), supposedly catches a wind while on the left side of the track and makes no effort to turn left at any point until he hits the wall hard.

Slow? It was his fastest lap of the test, he was at 215 kph. Vettel thought it was a lot slower but that's the peril of an eye witness.

We don't know he made no attempt to turn left, we just have one still image. How do we know he wasn't see-sawing the wheel?

As for some contributory incident, perhaps the car has some quirky sensitivity that was caught by the wind, or perhaps brake by wire resulted in a slew to the inside of the bend, etc etc. Or perhaps it was just one of those odd quirks in life without any unusual factors - a dull boring off track moment with unfortunate consequences.

In a nutshell, while the trajectory is unusual there are lots of normal boring reasons that could be contributory.

Obviously the press get excited about improbable causes that have never happened before, for which there is no precedent, for which there is no evidence, and former F1 drivers passing judgement on something they haven't seen.

[SectorOne]

Slow? It was his fastest lap of the test, he was at 215 kph. Vettel thought it was a lot slower but that's the peril of an eye witness.

Actually it was his slowest lap of his test, because he never crossed the finish line.

Tobias Grüner AMuS ‏@tgruener 15m15 minutes ago
Alonso entered T3 at 215kph, braked, shifted 2 gears down & stayed on line. Running 135kph outside T3 exit he suddenly turned right. (1/2)

This is entirely consistent with Vettel´s original comment.

We don't know he made no attempt to turn left, we just have one still image. How do we know he wasn't see-sawing the wheel?

Alonso hit the wall on the inside 3sec later (105kph) without avoiding action (why?). Car deceleration 31g, earpiece measured 16g. (2/2)

It´s clear Tobias here has his hands on telemetry (directly or indirectly), there´s no way he would be able to give out this detailed information about the events otherwise.

I genuinely doubt he would sit at work making all of this up then put it on Twitter.

In a nutshell, while the trajectory is unusual there are lots of normal boring reasons that could be contributory.

¨
Yea but the wind theory while Alonso had backed off is like saying there´s a corner in the world you can only take if you enter it above a certain threshold. Otherwise the car would just understeer off the circuit.

And it still doesn´t explain the turning right. Why is he turning right?
There´s no reason for him to turn right until he hits the wall.

He´s on the left side of the track, starts turning hard right, goes across the whole racing track until he hits the wall.
Makes no sense.

edit: i get that "sh*t happens" sometimes and freak accidents happen but this one... there´s something missing here because the wind does not address all the issues.

[R_Redding]

A 600watt shock or 100kw shock as I have seen elsewhere is PURE BS for a number of reasons.

First....
Watts are a unit of power , So for a theoretical ERS DC operating voltage of 600 Volts DC (max peak 1000v : rule 5.12-5 ) and using the **NAKED Human body Model of 1500 Ohms (ignoring the capacitors reactance for DC) which gives a current of :

V=IR so 600v/1500ohms = 0.4 Amps

and Power = VI so 600 x0.4 = 240w.



240w is the maximum power that Alonso could have taken.. 0.4 Amps through his body .. He's now dead. To get 600w the DC bus voltage would have to be 950V .. which is way too high considering the 1000v peak maximum.


Second..
Alonso was wearing his racing suit and gloves , while sat cocooned in a carbon fibre tub that would be at the same potential due to the Faraday cage it forms. His impedance to a shock voltage would be significantly higher than the human body model used to calculate shock currents.

Thirdly.. Alonso has head issues from the impact ...If he had been shocked in the head area he would have be convulsing the same way ECT patients do when treated.

Fourth.... If Alonso had recieved a shock greater than 50-100 milliAmps ,from the steering wheel or tub through his body... He'd be dead.


Rob

** In both JS-001-2012 and MIL-STD-883H the charged human body is modeled by a 100 pF capacitor and a 1500 ohm discharging resistance.

[hollus]

Guys, acceleration... where? In a sensor in the car? Where in the car? In the helmet? Where in the helmet? Maybe inside the skull?
Acceleration in which direction? For how long?
If one cannot answer all of the above, one can not evaluate the severeness of the crash.

[stuartpengs]

This one does like like it's going to run and run.

For what it's worth (very little, I agree), I've never been comfortable with the McLaren explanation. Sure taken in isolation I guess it's conceivable to explain away each of the bizarre circumstances that occurred before, during and after this crash, but all together there's just too much that doesn't add up.

Take the impact and lack of damage to the car for instance; we've read on here that lateral impact on the axle could explain the lack of damage to the car, but the car wasn't only traveling 'laterally'. Suggesting a 30g impact from a virtually undamaged just doesn't add up. Then you got 'alleged' relatively slow speed of the accident, the 'alleged' lack of any attempt to correct, unconsciousness, prolonged hospitalization, suggestions from Ron Dennis that he didn't actually suffer concussion, the cause of the accident being a gust of wind (this is Alonso we're talking about here), the fact that he now won't be driving in Aus

Yes, any one of those could possibly/probably be explained away in isolation, but all of them together. with arguably one of the best F1 drivers at the wheel? I think, given Alonso's right to privacy when it comes to any medical issues, it's understandable that there's a lack of information. I'm convinced there's more to this than meets the eye.

That said, I hope he makes a rapid recovery, and is fit and healthy for Malaysia.

[FrukostScones]

Guys, acceleration... where? In a sensor in the car? Where in the car? In the helmet? Where in the helmet? Maybe inside the skull?
Acceleration in which direction? For how long?
If one cannot answer all of the above, one can not evaluate the severeness of the crash.

ALO's earpiece sensors measured 16g, for how long and in what direction it wasn't reported.

AMUS