Post here all non technical related topics about Formula One. This includes race results, discussions, testing analysis etc. TV coverage and other personal questions should be in Off topic chat.
In this instance, and this season there are a few areas I've felt need addressing.
Marshalls on track - as you've said, this has been happening too often this year, and it's not acceptable, Masi needs to address this. All of the incidents this year lay with him, from authorising marshalls to push the haas across the pitlane entrance in Monza to when he opened the pitlane with a tractor on the track a few races ago.
Fire preparedness - it seems the equipment provided to deal with a fire is not fit for purpose. Silly little fire extinguishers with pointless safety pins (not needed during the race) are not good enough, the fire marshalls need to be fully equiped to deal with big fires, even if they are rare.
Unprotected barriers - as you've also mentioned, there's no reason to have an exposed barrier like this, tyres with a belt across the front, it's an easy fix!
Stranded cars - there have been several instances of poor recovery of stranded cars this season. There are various factors here such as drivers continuing when they shouldn't, like Perez did in the last race, or drivers just unable to get cars to a suitable position to allow marshalls to back them in to a marshalls post. Why can't we have a crane at each marshalls post that's capable of reaching over the barrier and lifting the car out of the way? Monaco is a great example of how they do this.
What's an acceptible false positive rate for all proposed automated systems and what's an appropriate tolerance to bound that false positive rate?
F1 cars already have a multitude of sophisticated sensors and they work fairly well most of the time, would you concur ?
But to expand on your question: If there's a false positive for proposition #2 (automated spotter warns of a car alongside where there is none), I don't see how a driver would lose anything.
For #6, you could tie the system to VSC, so everyone slows down together, preventing a slow car / fast car situation.
Hard to say, I'd guess we get in the order of 1-2 sensor failure per race across all cars (going from onboards and fail switch adjustments). From memory we have had I'd say 3 drs failures this year across all sessions. Have we had a vsc system failure yet? Not sure? Let's say my memory is plus/minus 50% accurate.
I guess to make any system sufficiently reliable to not compromise a race/session (and to dwarf memory error bounds) id want two orders of magnitude less failures than that - at least personally. That way it should be 1/20 event per season event approximately.
But that's because I'm the type of engineer that does this sort of defensive design napkin stuff on day 1.
Paint red lines in the more extreme run-off areas and hand out no-blame, three-race bans for crossing them. Yellow areas too, with instant disqualification for entering them.
Drivers are taking far too many liberties with the safety systems that are in place. The need to be reminded of their responsibilities in the matter.
Yes, maybe your penalty propositions are a bit on the heavy handed side, but drivers rejoining the track dangerously have been a recurring theme, and certainly driving standards regarding this should be reviewed.
I'm a 365 motorcyclist. I don't own a road car. I've been knocked down by cars - clearly in the wrong - four times in the last two years. On the fifth occasion I was on my sidecar outfit and it took the whack from the 4WD that T-boned me leaving me still with all limbs attached.
It's human nature. People feel safe and they take risks; people feel vulnerable and they take more care. F1 drivers too and if they don't take more care they need to be shown the door. By team bosses that are fed up loosing starts.
For me the main one is the barriers. An audit of what construction/material of barrier is most suitable for what parts of a circuit. Yes Grosjean's accident was freakish and uncommon, but it still highlighted although the safety measures are very good, it's still bloody dangerous and you can't plan for everything. Better/more appropriate barriers and barrier layouts take pressure off marshalls, medical cars and all the other things which came into play. However, these things do need looking into as now they know this could happen to a car, someone needs to be there within 10-15 seconds, regardless of where on track it is.
Is it as simple as just upgrading all armco so it all overlaps like reptile scales rather than with any gaps between the panels? That way there's no way a car can do what Grosjean's did and it's 'just' a deflection crash and likely nothing like what we saw. If that means repositioning of some camera points then so be it.
In this instance, and this season there are a few areas I've felt need addressing.
Marshalls on track - as you've said, this has been happening too often this year, and it's not acceptable, Masi needs to address this. All of the incidents this year lay with him, from authorising marshalls to push the haas across the pitlane entrance in Monza to when he opened the pitlane with a tractor on the track a few races ago.
Fire preparedness - it seems the equipment provided to deal with a fire is not fit for purpose. Silly little fire extinguishers with pointless safety pins (not needed during the race) are not good enough, the fire marshalls need to be fully equiped to deal with big fires, even if they are rare.
Unprotected barriers - as you've also mentioned, there's no reason to have an exposed barrier like this, tyres with a belt across the front, it's an easy fix!
Stranded cars - there have been several instances of poor recovery of stranded cars this season. There are various factors here such as drivers continuing when they shouldn't, like Perez did in the last race, or drivers just unable to get cars to a suitable position to allow marshalls to back them in to a marshalls post. Why can't we have a crane at each marshalls post that's capable of reaching over the barrier and lifting the car out of the way? Monaco is a great example of how they do this.
Totally agree re: stranded cars. There needs to be emphasis on pulling off the track safely and in a logical position where you have enough warning- like Perez did.
They also need to tighten up on flagging unsafe cars and penalising teams who don't bring in a damaged or unsafe car at the earliest opportunity. Leclerc a couple of times springs to mind.
they would have to be either seated or resting alongside the vehicles at all times during the race, and they must be able to be deployed easily to the track. however, you need to take into account that during the start of a GP all cars are packed together, in the middle of a GP they're spread all out, so they can become a hazard on the track, and can only be applied in the case of a SC or RedFlag.
Good point. You'd hope / expect that a car on fire would be an instant SC at the very least but more likely an automatic red flag, even if the driver was out of it and safe before it became a big fire. A car on fire isn't just a risk to the driver, of course, but there's enough stuff in it that it represents a serious risk to people nearby. An exploding car wouldn't be a good thing for anyone.
If you are more fortunate than others, build a larger table not a taller fence.
These are my personal views...... first of all, it was a combination of car design and barrier design which created this unusual accident. it was noticable that the nose of the car went through the barrier at its weakest point...the horizontal "joint" between first and second tier of the armco. so, the nose is at a height where it can cause armco to fold up and down, something that armco is not designed to do. so really, if armco is to be used , it should be produced in 1 m deep panels which then has no weak point. but the accident shows that the strength of the nose cone is undisputed. secondly, when the front of the car came to its sudden halt, the residual lateral g force due to weight of pu, caused the 4/6 bolts joining the pu to the monocoque, to shear. whether it was the actual bolts that sheared, or failure of the carbon fibre monocoque, remains to be seen
as an interim measure, and if the armco is not replaced a further layer of armco should be affixed on the outside to cover the horizontal joint. that would prevent a similar car intrusion
of course, nobody can have a definitive answer until after the investigation, but those are jut my thoughts....right or wrong !
These are my personal views...... first of all, it was a combination of car design and barrier design which created this unusual accident. it was noticable that the nose of the car went through the barrier at its weakest point...the horizontal "joint" between first and second tier of the armco. so, the nose is at a height where it can cause armco to fold up and down, something that armco is not designed to do. so really, if armco is to be used , it should be produced in 1 m deep panels which then has no weak point. but the accident shows that the strength of the nose cone is undisputed. secondly, when the front of the car came to its sudden halt, the residual lateral g force due to weight of pu, caused the 4/6 bolts joining the pu to the monocoque, to shear. whether it was the actual bolts that sheared, or failure of the carbon fibre monocoque, remains to be seen
as an interim measure, and if the armco is not replaced a further layer of armco should be affixed on the outside to cover the horizontal joint. that would prevent a similar car intrusion
of course, nobody can have a definitive answer until after the investigation, but those are jut my thoughts....right or wrong !
I believe (may be wrong in this) that the armco barrier is designed to deform to absorb some of the impact.
A 1mtr section would not allow it to deform. Of course everyone expected it to deform horizontally not twist in such a way as to create a gap.
When arguing with a fool, be sure the other person is not doing the same thing.
A ban on the in-race replacement of front wings might help - though it would have to be accompanied by stronger use of the black and orange 'meatball' flag. How many drivers would risk poking one up the inside then?
I think the next logical step in safety would be to make the fuel cell even safer. They should not rupture or leak but that had to be at least a few litres of fuel burning around Grosjean. Imagine if this had happened when Kubica chrashed, it would have been fatal.
A lot has been said already. I feel it’s very important to stress that the barrier is NOT designed for head-on contact and assessing it/trying to redesign it as if it should be better in that context is incorrect.
A lot has been said already. I feel it’s very important to stress that the barrier is NOT designed for head-on contact and assessing it/trying to redesign it as if it should be better in that context is incorrect.
It is an adequate solution for its purpose.
Exactly. At some stage, a barrier is there primarily for third party safety.
These are my personal views...... first of all, it was a combination of car design and barrier design which created this unusual accident. it was noticable that the nose of the car went through the barrier at its weakest point...the horizontal "joint" between first and second tier of the armco. so, the nose is at a height where it can cause armco to fold up and down, something that armco is not designed to do. so really, if armco is to be used , it should be produced in 1 m deep panels which then has no weak point. but the accident shows that the strength of the nose cone is undisputed. secondly, when the front of the car came to its sudden halt, the residual lateral g force due to weight of pu, caused the 4/6 bolts joining the pu to the monocoque, to shear. whether it was the actual bolts that sheared, or failure of the carbon fibre monocoque, remains to be seen
as an interim measure, and if the armco is not replaced a further layer of armco should be affixed on the outside to cover the horizontal joint. that would prevent a similar car intrusion
of course, nobody can have a definitive answer until after the investigation, but those are jut my thoughts....right or wrong !
This is eaxctly my thought. A third strip of steel (or whetever it is) to sit on top of and between the two existing ones should make sure what happened with Grosjean's car can't happen again. This sort of arrangement (excuse the rudimentary look)
Current
}
[
}
New
}
[ }
}
I can't make the brackets actually overlap to demonstrate it, but I'm sure it's clear what I'm trying to do!
These are my personal views...... first of all, it was a combination of car design and barrier design which created this unusual accident. it was noticable that the nose of the car went through the barrier at its weakest point...the horizontal "joint" between first and second tier of the armco. so, the nose is at a height where it can cause armco to fold up and down, something that armco is not designed to do. so really, if armco is to be used , it should be produced in 1 m deep panels which then has no weak point. but the accident shows that the strength of the nose cone is undisputed. secondly, when the front of the car came to its sudden halt, the residual lateral g force due to weight of pu, caused the 4/6 bolts joining the pu to the monocoque, to shear. whether it was the actual bolts that sheared, or failure of the carbon fibre monocoque, remains to be seen
as an interim measure, and if the armco is not replaced a further layer of armco should be affixed on the outside to cover the horizontal joint. that would prevent a similar car intrusion
of course, nobody can have a definitive answer until after the investigation, but those are jut my thoughts....right or wrong !
This is eaxctly my thought. A third strip of steel (or whetever it is) to sit on top of and between the two existing ones should make sure what happened with Grosjean's car can't happen again. This sort of arrangement (excuse the rudimentary look)
Current
}
[
}
New
}
[ }
}
I can't make the brackets actually overlap to demonstrate it, but I'm sure it's clear what I'm trying to do!
Are you looking to tie the strips of armco together vertically?
A floating post could do that. Like the other mounting posts linking the strips but not driven into the ground. That should allow the barrier to still stretch and absorb energy while minimising the potential for gaps to develop during an impact.
