Jules Bianchi Suffers Severe Head Injury

[SGWilko]

The is video available of the incident. Do not search for it unless you really feel the need to see it. Some do, and I understand that. I needed to know more and I have seen it. What is clear is all the guards or rails or whatever around a tractor would be useless, it would just destroy a car in a different way. They have spent millions making the tracks and the cars safer, then jeopardize it all by allowing such vehicles to be on the wrong side of the barrier. It may be a minute chance of occurring, but the outcome I have just watched is unacceptable. A better way has to be found. As a side note, it is incredible we don't also have a bunch of dead marshalls.

Caution again if you want to watch the video, you cannot unsee it

The trouble is, the only reason Jules car hit the truck is due to a an extreme freak coming together of circumstances;

Jules car was travelling at significant speed, this being in fading light, heavy rain and double waved yellows - why so fast?

The truck was reversing into the trajectory of Jules out of control (but moving nose forward in a straight trajectory)Marussia

The rear of the truck had a sloping overhang, cruelly just at the height of an F1 cockpit.

As harsh as it might sound, this is a dangerous sport. We should not lose sight of the fact that a marshall was killed last year (I think) in Canada.... we carried on then, is this to be seen as any different than another sad but freak accident?

[donKey jote]

It looks like F1 has squashed all the video that's out there. I found four or fice of them, but they were all bland screens that say "This video contains content from Formula One Management, who has blocked it on copyright grounds."

Not all. At least not on Spanish sports newspapers sites.
balls :/

[Roamy]

there needs to be a huge shakeup at the top of F1 - It was stupid this race was allowed to progress when the rains arrived again Plus the did not even listen to one of the top drivers. This great sport is turning to SH!T !!!!!!

[AndyL]

there needs to be a huge shakeup at the top of F1 - It was stupid this race was allowed to progress when the rains arrived again Plus the did not even listen to one of the top drivers. This great sport is turning to SH!T !!!!!!

Most of the field was still on intermediates when the incident happened, so it surely can't be the case that the conditions were fundamentally unsafe.

[Mark]

For those who do want to see the video there's a one here. http://m.liveleak.com/view?i=818_1412603603

[MrJan]

For those who do want to see the video there's a one here. http://m.liveleak.com/view?i=818_1412603603

Horrible, horrible incident.

TBH though I'm not surprised that we've seen someone hit a recovery vehicle, it's just so tragic that it was in such a way. To my mind there has been an issue for a long time, one is that these telehandlers are allowed to go trackside while the race is live. Whilst most of us don't want to see a safety car, they do exist for a reason and would have stopped this from happening. The other is that the drivers routinely ignore the flags. In the UK a yelow flag is defined in the MSA Blue Book as:

"Yellow flag – Waved: Great danger. Slow down considerably. Be prepared to suddenly change from the projected racing line, or take other evasive action including stopping if necessary"

Drivers clearly haven't been doing this for years, and now one of them has paid a very heavy price for it. There isn't a great rethink to be had here, just get back to drivers actually following the rules and stewards enforcing them.

As for the rain...well it was a factor, but if Bianchi had followed the rules, no problem. There's no big rethink to be had on that front in my mind.

[Daniel]

The trouble is, the only reason Jules car hit the truck is due to a an extreme freak coming together of circumstances;

Jules car was travelling at significant speed, this being in fading light, heavy rain and double waved yellows - why so fast?

The truck was reversing into the trajectory of Jules out of control (but moving nose forward in a straight trajectory)Marussia

The rear of the truck had a sloping overhang, cruelly just at the height of an F1 cockpit.

As harsh as it might sound, this is a dangerous sport. We should not lose sight of the fact that a marshall was killed last year (I think) in Canada.... we carried on then, is this to be seen as any different than another sad but freak accident?

I disagree. It's an easily avoidable incident.

Someone mentioned canopies on the race thread, I actually don't see this as something a copy would have helped with. BUT there are two things which people have touched on.

1. Why was he going so quick in a yellow flag zone? If he wasn't so horrendously injured he should be getting a race ban. He needlessly endangered his life and the lives of the trackside workers.
2. Where was the safety car? Where was the full track yellow? By having a zone of yellows you still reward a driver for driving quickly through the yellow flags....

I'm sorry, but this is the typical motorsportforums F1 forum way of dealing with it..... ie it doesn't happen all of the time so it's termed as being a freak incident so do nothing and hope it doesn't happen again. It happened to Brundle before, once is too many times for this sort of thing, twice is just a joke. It's not going to kill the sport to have safety cars more often and be harder on drivers who are driving faster than they should be in these sorts of conditions, it might have already killed a driver to not be harsher though......

[WUff1]

Really horrible accident - the Marussia even lifts the tractor and turns it about 90 degrees. Very, very heavy impact.
If Bianchi would have touched the back of the tractor with his head directly, he would have been dead before the wreck standing still. Hope he survives - and in a more livable way than it is feared of Michael Schumacher ..

[truefan72]

According to French newspapers Bianchi has suffered another cerebral haemorrhage after the surgery and now has to be given artificial respiration ...

oh my, not good news
fingers crossed...

[steveaki13]

Wow that was a horrible impact. Even more than you have in your mind before seeing it.

I noticed Brundle looked very shaken by the incident. Having had almost the same accident himself in 1994 and ever since worrying about that happening.