Quote Originally Posted by MrJan View Post
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.
Yes, I feel for all those reasons that this can hardly be put into the 'freak accident' category. What happened to poor Henry Surtees was a 'freak accident'. This is not.

With the exception of Brundle's mishap, I can't think of another similar incident in an F1 race. Why has this happened now? Well, it's very hard for any layman to come to a hard conclusion, but I too would suggest that driver behaviour in relation to flag signals has deteriorated. Without wishing to conflate two current issues, maybe the increased reliance on pits-to-car communication is partially to blame? It does seem true that F1 drivers (I don't see the same thing happening in other formulae) are more likely nowadays to miss or ignore flag signals.