Should f1 run coupes?

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Originally Posted by Daniel

I'm being painted as someone who wants to eliminate every single danger that exists in motorsport, I'm just saying that we should react to the accidents that do happen and try and minimise the risk that we have.

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'We' of course being the racing experts (actual ones, not armchair experts), designers, engineers, series organisers and drivers, not the collective bunch of ignoramuses on internet forums that we undoubtedly are. 'We' are also not the likes of Legard and Allen, who saw a bandwagon passing and jumped on it both feet first.

The collective bunch of ignoramuses that 'we' forumers are can pontificate about what should and shouldn't be done until the cows come home. It doesn't mean that most or any of it is either a) sensible or b) able to be adopted.

This thread is descending into this. http://xkcd.com/386/

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Originally Posted by Daniel

Of course if Dan's car hadn't hit the fence he'd still be alive, that's the whole point!!!!! If not for his car being sent flying he would most likely still be alive today. If you stop people flying in the first place then the catch fence could be made out of TNT and they could be racing in Baghdad and it would be safer than the race on Sunday.

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This is the F1 forum Daniel.

In F1 they would not be racing on ovals, not doing 200mph, not going to hit a fence and wall. Even they did go flying through the air at 200mph, the likelihood is on the high-speed tracks, they would spectacularly fly through the air, barrel roll and come to stop in a mess, but the safety of the driver has been achieved.

It angers me that you are relating F1 to IndyCars. The series are not similar in any respect.

If anything the current F1 standards of safety are impeccable and should be looked at by the likes of IndyCars, rather than F1 trying to learn from accidents outside of the sport. It is ridiculous.

You can get a nasty head injury playing football - it happened the other day to a League Two player in England. Should all footballers wear helmets just in case? Or play non-contact football?

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Originally Posted by Daniel

It's funny that the very sorts of people who love Jackie Stewart seem to be the same ones who are against improvements in safety.

the comment below on Joe Saward's blog kind of says it all for me http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2011/...ch-post-massa/

I completely agree with that 100% and I very much suspect that anyone who disagrees probably has issues with me rather than the actual idea I'm advocating.

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Perhaps we've reached a plateau.

I think, and perhaps others as well, find that a death every few years is an acceptable statistic and put it down to freak accidents unlike JYS day with deaths left, right and centre.

It took years for JYS to change attitudes of many people within the motorsport fraternity but we live in the mass media, health & safety era and judging by the consensus we've reached the plateau or perhaps it will take - and no disrespect to Dan Wheldon - a truly great driver of iconic status/universal appeal to change attitudes as with Senna and Dale Earnhardt.

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Originally Posted by Bezza

This is the F1 forum Daniel.

In F1 they would not be racing on ovals, not doing 200mph, not going to hit a fence and wall. Even they did go flying through the air at 200mph, the likelihood is on the high-speed tracks, they would spectacularly fly through the air, barrel roll and come to stop in a mess, but the safety of the driver has been achieved.

It angers me that you are relating F1 to IndyCars. The series are not similar in any respect.

If anything the current F1 standards of safety are impeccable and should be looked at by the likes of IndyCars, rather than F1 trying to learn from accidents outside of the sport. It is ridiculous.

You can get a nasty head injury playing football - it happened the other day to a League Two player in England. Should all footballers wear helmets just in case? Or play non-contact football?

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I see, so it's impossibly for an F1 car to come together with anther car and fly into a wall or into the scenery......

Well I take back what I said then.....

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Originally Posted by wedge

Perhaps we've reached a plateau.

I think, and perhaps others as well, find that a death every few years is an acceptable statistic and put it down to freak accidents unlike JYS day with deaths left, right and centre.

It took years for JYS to change attitudes of many people within the motorsport fraternity but we live in the mass media, health & safety era and judging by the consensus we've reached the plateau or perhaps it will take - and no disrespect to Dan Wheldon - a truly great driver of iconic status/universal appeal to change attitudes as with Senna and Dale Earnhardt.

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Why should we stop here though? No one wants to ruin the racing and slow the cars down to motorway speeds or anything but do we really want to look back at the death of a driver in the future and say that we could have prevented it fairly easily, but chose not to because we thought we'd reached the plateau?

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Originally Posted by Andrewmcm

'We' of course being the racing experts (actual ones, not armchair experts), designers, engineers, series organisers and drivers, not the collective bunch of ignoramuses on internet forums that we undoubtedly are. 'We' are also not the likes of Legard and Allen, who saw a bandwagon passing and jumped on it both feet first.

The collective bunch of ignoramuses that 'we' forumers are can pontificate about what should and shouldn't be done until the cows come home. It doesn't mean that most or any of it is either a) sensible or b) able to be adopted.

This thread is descending into this. http://xkcd.com/386/

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The thing is the racing experts have decided that there is too much of a risk of these sorts of accidents and investigations are ongoing into canopies (in F1) and IndyCar have enclosed rear wheels to help stop cars flying into the barriers and as SGWilko pointed out "grating themselves" to bits against the catch fence. So it's not just an "armchair expert" like myself as you seem to suggest. It is funny that you'd make such a clearly misguided statement when what's actually going on in the real world suggests that some forms of high level motorsport are looking into these safety features and evaluating their feasability and in some cases implementing actual changes on cars next year.

A few people on here clearly don't like me or perhaps just my views, but the truth is that the actual racing world seems to have seen the same dangers and is thankfully looking into it rather than just accepting that people should die.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

I see, so it's impossibly for an F1 car to come together with anther car and fly into a wall or into the scenery......

Well I take back what I said then.....

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You must be a nightmare for your partner, because you never listen! You have taken the bits you want out of my statement there.

You ignored the 200mph on an oval bit - just the flying through the air.

In most tracks, there is significant run-off to slow the cars down and allow big accidents to lose energy.

On tighter tracks, there is generally less speed involved - such as Monaco.

You really cannot compare the two.

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Originally Posted by Bezza

You must be a nightmare for your partner, because you never listen! You have taken the bits you want out of my statement there.

You ignored the 200mph on an oval bit - just the flying through the air.

In most tracks, there is significant run-off to slow the cars down and allow big accidents to lose energy.

On tighter tracks, there is generally less speed involved - such as Monaco.

You really cannot compare the two.

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Of course there is less chance of this happening in F1. But as we've seen in countless incidents F1 cars will ride over each other.

I'm not saying there is a risk of an F1 car crashing on an oval because that simply doesn't happen, the point is that F1 cars can ride over each other too and once a car gets up in the air there's no telling what will happen.

On street circuits like Valencia or Singapore, with the closing speeds the cars sometimes have, there is a very real chance of one car flying and being chucked into a catch fence, of course on an F1 track that angle is usually going to be a bit more acute (which is safer) than the oblique angle that cars on an oval track tend to hit the catch fence at, but it's still a danger, and one that could be eliminated with very little impact upon the sport.

http://www.ausmotive.com/F1/2010/Eur...r-flips-05.jpg
It doesn't need to be a high speed impact either.
http://answers.bettor.com/images/Art...-jpg-41042.jpg

It seems like it'll take a death in F1 to make people see that this danger is inherent in all forms of open wheel motorsport, not just on ovals.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

The thing is the racing experts have decided that there is too much of a risk of these sorts of accidents and investigations are ongoing into canopies (in F1) and IndyCar have enclosed rear wheels to help stop cars flying into the barriers and as SGWilko pointed out "grating themselves" to bits against the catch fence. So it's not just an "armchair expert" like myself as you seem to suggest. It is funny that you'd make such a clearly misguided statement when what's actually going on in the real world suggests that some forms of high level motorsport are looking into these safety features and evaluating their feasability and in some cases implementing actual changes on cars next year.

A few people on here clearly don't like me or perhaps just my views, but the truth is that the actual racing world seems to have seen the same dangers and is thankfully looking into it rather than just accepting that people should die.

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I said 'we' referring to the collective 'we', not 'we' as in 'you, Daniel'. Glance back through the posts since Sunday - I have also stated that something should be done regarding the specific set of circumstances which surrounded what happened on Sunday.

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Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1

I agree with everything but your last point. As Mario Andretti has said (in response to similar suggestions elsewhere): http://twitter.com/#!/MarioAndretti/...49225826062336

I think someone said earlier in the thread that Dan Wheldon saw the accident happening ahead and might have seen it as an opportunity to make up places. That might be right, but if it was he wouldn't have been the only one of the drivers to think that way, and the money would have made no difference.

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I agree. There was a pretty vile article in one of the papers this week (which I shan't give the dignity of a link) speculating whether the prize on offer was a contributory cause in the crash - needless to say some of the comments were quite ignorant.

From my dealings with racing drivers in many different catagories, the moment the helment goes on your motivation is beating the guy in front. Not the prize money, not the trophy, not the championship, not your team. Just winning.