The wierdest Wings I've seen yet (you never know what comes next)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mikeall

Fair enough if there was one supplied, but runoff is fundamentally critical to deciding when cars are cornering too quickly and ignoring it would be ridiculous for the FIA and its public face. As far as I can see from my engineers point of view (simplifying everything until it makes sense) the factors affecting damage to a car are the speed it is going, the amount of run off there is, and how much the car is slowed down. At the moment I'm not quite sure about the exact relationship between kinetic energy, work done on a component of the car and damage to the component. However I have an exam on fracture mechanics in the next few days so hopefully I will understand it more soon...

PLease come back and let us know when you have finished swatting up on your fracture mechanics before your exam.

There is one thing that you may have overlooked - accidents do occure where there is no runoff. For instance, JV's accident at Albert Park when he was launched into the safety railing. Also, cars do run over each other, and do smack into each other at rather high speed sometimes. There have been other instances of quite high speed accidents in F1. The classic case would be Monaco.