jb229
New Reader
11/29/20 10:32 p.m.
triumph7 said:
In reply to adam525i (Forum Supporter) :
The concrete would probably have been better. The cars are tested for frontal impact into a solid surface, as it was the nose of the car split the barrier instead of being stopped.
Frankly in that kind of impact, I'd prefer concrete and SAFER or at least tires 10/10 times. Tires work best for sportscars and GT, though, because it wasn't but a few weekends ago that an F2 car (I think it was Ghiotto in Sochi) went nose-under a tire barrier as his car burst into flames. ARMCO is made for taking glancing blows but it doesn't have the strength to stand up to the Gs of a direct hit and at that point it's just extremely stiff shrapnel.
As far as Grosjean coming to Indy next year, it was only rumors so far but I would have expected it to be road-course only anyway even before this. Indycars are, as F1 folks enjoy noting at every opportunity, slower than F1 cars on road courses.
adam525i (Forum Supporter) said:
Just a couple more thoughts on my post, a bouncing car coming off a solid wall probably would have spread the fuel around more resulting in a bigger fire but less concentrated around the driver which is good. A bouncing car can also lead to crashes like we saw at spa last year in the F2 race.
We saw three things in this crash that are unusual in F1.
1) The car hit armco, not a concrete wall, covered tire wall, water filled barrels, or other advanced safety barrier tech
2) the car tore in half.
3) fuel sprayed everywhere and created a fireball.
I think it's not an unreasonable hypothesis that (1) resulted in grabbing ahold of the nose of the car which created a lot of torque on the chassis when the back end (with all the heavy bits) wanted to keep going, thus causing (2) and ultimately (3). Hitting a concrete wall (which we've seen F1 cars do numerous times) probably would not have broken it in half, and would probably not have created a fire. F1 cars are designed to handle solid impacts with disintegrating crash structures.
I'm sure there will be a big investigation into what happened and there will be recommendations that come out of it to improve safety and reduce the chances of it again. I thikn there's a good chance that one of those recommendations will be to deprecate the use of armco in some places where it was considered acceptable before this crash.
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
I was going to post the same thing, but one thing to add- at that location, absent of a Safer Barrier- if the concrete wall was solid into the ground, there would be some protection before it, OR the wall would be moveable.
Either way, the wall would take some of the impact energy along with the car's base design to absorb the energy of a direct hit onto a wall.
One other thing to add- the burns to Grosjean- while he would have been badly burnt, it would take some time to get life threatening burns- I don't know the spec, but the suits are required to provide protection of a direct fire for a specific amount of time. So while the fireball and fire was spectacular, the time he was exposed was reasonably short. And that can be attributed to Romain not being badly injured in the accident- so that he was conscious and able to remove himself.
Thank god Grosjean was okay, I think the safety of a modern F1 car and suit/safety equipment, reason why you spend the money on safety.
wae
UberDork
11/30/20 8:23 a.m.
Just saw confirmation that Pietro Fittipaldi is going to be driving this weekend instead of Grosjean.
In reply to wae :
That crash will be the last time Romain drives an F1 car,lousy way to end a career but sure beats being the last time he did anything.
kevlarcorolla said:
In reply to wae :
That crash will be the last time Romain drives an F1 car,lousy way to end a career but sure beats being the last time he did anything.
Yeah, it does kind of suck for him. But since he's OK, I think it's worth pointing out that he went out in a very Grosjean way, in an accident that he caused. 
I saw another video that said he hit the Armco at 137 mph!
Pretty incredible he wasn't knocked unconscious or even dazed to the point he wasn't able to get out of the car. I think he was in the car for 9 seconds after impact, and in that time burned his hands, feet, and melted his visor.
84FSP
UltraDork
11/30/20 10:16 a.m.
Read something about him being in the cockpit for 28 seconds in the flames. That must have been the most terrifying 28 seconds of his life.
84FSP said:
Read something about him being in the cockpit for 28 seconds in the flames. That must have been the most terrifying 28 seconds of his life.
For sure. I wonder what his visor/tear offs were like in that heat and smoke.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
And he had no damage to his face. Amazing. One of the videos in the article pointed out that they have an oxygen system to breath- I forgot about that. It would be interesting to hear Romain's debrief to see if he used it. But it also goes to show how important it is to practice getting out of the car asap- I'm still kind of in awe of the scene of him trying to back out of the hole- then the rescue team saw that, and beat back the flames so that he could get out.
In reply to Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) :
LMAO, indeed an astute observation.
137 MPH impact... probably good the ARMCO did give way a bit as a more sudden stop might have knocked him unconscious.
And looking at that one picture of what he had to crawl out of - another reason why it pays to be small as a driver in F1.
84FSP said:
Read something about him being in the cockpit for 28 seconds in the flames. That must have been the most terrifying 28 seconds of his life.
He wasn't exactly lazy about extricating himself.
I'm impressed that he doesn't have lung damage.
I haven't read the entire thread since yesterday's race so sorry if this was already mentioned. If you watch the slightly overhead slow mo video from farther down the straight it looks like the car went through the barriers and then the next post to the left *CUT* the car in half. It wasn't torn apart by the torque of the accident. Romain is lucky that the car penetrated as far as it did because if it hadn't he probably would have hit the post with his body. Maybe the safety cell would have survived, but the G load on his body would have been a lot higher.
Well, the wife dictated that I would have a top of the line fire-suit, etc after watching that live and I have to agree. I should've had one anyways - with my exocet outside and inside are words that don't mean a lot. Just glad he got out in a hurry.
Jay_W
SuperDork
11/30/20 2:19 p.m.
^This. The overhead shots show, I think pretty clearly, that the car hit one of the vertical posts that was supporting the guardrail and that was the knife that cut the car in half. We've seen these cars hit walls every which way and *not* do this, remember that one a few years back I think it was Imola or maybe Monza, where the car kinda flew right over the gravel trap and went into the wall sideways? IIRC it was at about 160 and the driver walked and the car mostly intact.
I'm thinking that this barricade design is a Bad Idea for this application. I also think todays' F1 cars are near the top of the list as one of the safest conveyances on earth.
accordionfolder said:
Well, the wife dictated that I would have a top of the line fire-suit, etc after watching that live and I have to agree. I should've had one anyways - with my exocet outside and inside are words that don't mean a lot. Just glad he got out in a hurry.
Yeah, my own suit is pretty old. I think it might be time to buy a new one.
Basically, it will be interesting to read F1's analysis of this accident. They will go much deeper than our speculation has- Ross Brawn has already mentioned that. He also pointed out that the fire was not really the size of 100kg of fuel, but more a few kg- so he does not think the fuel cell ruptured.
They will look closely at the halo damage, the burns on his hands, what happened to the shoe, how the fence did what it did, etc- all in great detail to make sure the safety is at the pinnacle of the art.
I'm not sure I agree with the "A couple of liters of fuel". That flashed off a tremendous amount of gasoline in a big rush, plus the fuel cell, or what I think was the cell directly behind the safety cell, looked badly deformed, which could be from the heat, or that was the area that took the impact. I think it might have squeezed quite a dose of fuel out of ruptured lines, or the filler, or something.
Maybe didn't lose all 110kg, but it lost more than two liters to my eye.
DeadSkunk (Warren) said:
Grosjean has been rumoured to be talking to teams about running Indy cars. I wonder what will be going through his head after this incident.
He was probably glad the answer wasn't "The guardrail."
In reply to accordionfolder : I posted this up on one of the vintage racing pages; for several year I was taking the race cars to one of the local school days. One year one of the kids asked me about my suit and how long can you be on fire. My reply was "13 seconds" there was a rather long pause after I made than comment. I actually practice getting out of both of my cars. I can do either car in just under 4 seconds.
I also have steps pre-bail; bottle, power, belts & wheel.........then bail.
In reply to Streetwiseguy :
The fuel cell in inside the safety cell. If there was more than a handful of kg of fuel, then someone has some pretty sizable fuel lines. If the fuel cell was breached, and fuel was pouring out, it would have been a lot more fuel coming out, which would have meant a much worse fire.
We will see how this is resolved, that's for sure.
alfadriver (Forum Supporter) said:
Basically, it will be interesting to read F1's analysis of this accident. They will go much deeper than our speculation has- Ross Brawn has already mentioned that. He also pointed out that the fire was not really the size of 100kg of fuel, but more a few kg- so he does not think the fuel cell ruptured.
They will look closely at the halo damage, the burns on his hands, what happened to the shoe, how the fence did what it did, etc- all in great detail to make sure the safety is at the pinnacle of the art.
I read that as well, that the fireball we saw was essentially the "surge tank" that feeds the engine, and it's fed by the big tank.
