Jonnycraig wrote:turbof1 wrote:Jonnycraig wrote:
Maybe I'm missing the point, but Sainz has crashed at the fastest part of the track with very little speed scrubbed off at the point of impact, and been left completely uninjured. He literally could've and would've walked back to the garage if it weren't for the understandable abundance of caution by medics. The Tecpro has absorbed so much energy that a car impacting head on at 150+mph has 'only' partially breached the single skin metal barriers behind.
As seen with a very similar impact for De Jong at Spa, the Tecpro being lifted as it absorbs energy in neither track, nor car specific. Only needing to replace a small piece of barrier when a car hits head on at that speed and the driver completely fine is a best case outcome in all respects.
I think the most important issue is that the Tecpro barrier could have hit Sainz his head or perhaps even worse: squeeze his head between the barrier and back of the cockpit. Don't get me wrong: I'm hugely glad that none of that happened, and that the barriers did their job actually.
So the point is that the crash exposed a very vulnerable point, which luckily did not mattered this time. It's not one thing contributing to this, but several: a low nose, rake, and the issue that breaking the suspension lowers the nose further, and probably a weakness to this kind of submarining in the shape of the tecpro barrier.
As seen in the GP2 race now, the low nose of an F1 car is a red herring, as King's car threw the Tecpro upwards, as De Jong's did in Spa. It's not car or track specific, merely single seater specific.
Strangely enough this happened to me recently while go-karting. I was pushed out on a corner and the techpro barrier came up over the front of the kart and pinned my head against the roll loop, resulting in my head stopping the kart.
Here is a summary of the issue as I see it:
1. The barriers like techpro are designed to move with the vehicle to gradually show the vehicle (good)
2. To accomplish the above goal the barriers are only held down with their own weight
3. Attaching the techpro's down would cause additional safety issues as it would cause less movement and hence less deceleration room, additionally if they were held down whatever is holding them down could cause further risk to the driver
4. Making the techpros heavier would add additional risk of head trauma if the barrier impacts the driver helmet
5. They work great for closed cockpit vehicles as the risk of submarining is negligible.
I wish I had a solution to propose but I don't. The techpro barriers are very good at slowing deceleration of a vehicle, however they seem prone to submarining due to the nature of their design. Overcoming the above challenges are difficult to do w/o reducing the effectiveness of the barriers main goal of slowing the vehicle gradually.
As we saw with Carlos the barrier actually was lifted over his head by the shape of the barrier and the car.
at your fanboyism.
what fanboyism?