Track vehicles need clearance/traction so side skirts that would have any effect aren't realistic.ScottB wrote:The issue seems to be that his car went partially / fully under the truck, so why not fit some sort of 'side skirts' to track vehicles so that cars can't fit underneath them if they slide off?
Secondly, given the conditions, with one car having already aquaplaned off at the corner, might it have been safer to simply leave it there? Another car sliding off was always a possibility, and it hitting the truck, or even a marshall, as a consequence of that. I remember a particularly wet Brazil race a few years back where there ended up being several cars slid off at the Senna S corner and they were just left there each time.
Obviously that's hindsight at play, but presumably an F1 car hitting a stationary F1 car is probably better than hitting a truck, or a marshall, so I wonder if that might change policy going forward.
Hitting a stationary F1 car would be just as devastating. An example of what that might look like is Alex Zanardi's crash. Cars are designed for specific types of accidents - high speed into tyres, spins, flipping over. They aren't designed with a 150km/hr front to side impact or front to rear impact in mind. Those are supposed to be prevented by use of removing vehicles/safeties.
Nobody seems to be questioning why Bianchi was going so fast into a yellow in the rain. I'm not blaming Bianchi here, but until the incentives of going too fast in yellow zones are removed, drivers will continue to go too fast into yellow zones.