Jules Bianchi Suffers Severe Head Injury

[Malbec]

We had a discussion some years ago about the removal of cars from the track. I had advocated using a winch to drag a beached/damaged/crashed car off the track. However one of the members here, an active marshall , commented that would be unsafe as a rule of thumb is that another car could come off at the same location.
Under the circumstances, Sutil's car could have been winched off the track had a 4WD equipped with a winch and a Marshall deployed when the safety car was on track to slow all cars down and the area of the crash had NO cars about to come near. We are talking about seconds to attach a cable to the stricken car.

Under NO circumstances should a JCB be on the track until all cars were stopped. Who the blooming hell gave the OK for the JCB to go onto the track? This is incompetence and stupidity of the highest order, and should be the subject of an inquisition, not to mention a huge, huge fine for the Organisers of the race.
The Japanese are great sticklers for any time table, be it train or ship; but not to advance the race time or even postpone the race because of the oncoming typhoon is simply caused by not wanting to lose face. Well, somebody should draw the Organisers attention that the result of their incompetence has now resulted in a trajedy far worse than merely loss of face!
I am more than just saddened by Bianchi's injury; I am disgusted at the stupidity and incompetence of the Organisers responsible for this incident.

Actually the organisers did nothing wrong and Charlie Whiting's assessment is I believe correct.

There was no guarantee that a rescheduled race would have been any safer given that the conditions at Suzuka were changing regularly. The unspoken and ironic thing here is of course that the very media outlets (especially TV) that are lambasting Suzuka for not rescheduling the race would also have complained bitterly at having to reschedule their own TV timetables. Had Suzuka been started in the morning at local time then it would have been broadcast in Europe (still F1's main TV market) in a complete deadzone around 1-2 am. As Vettel said in a Sky interview after the race about his own thoughts about rescheduling the race he responded that the journalist should ask her employers, after all the race organiser had commitments to the media that they would have been penalised for breaking and had more clout than the drivers or the FIA in this regard.

Were the weather conditions to blame? I'm sure the wet conditions contributed but the rain was hardly monsoon-like at the time of the accident. As Brundle commented we weren't seeing cars flying off on the straights as we do in serious wet weather conditions. Had Bianchi not gone off the safety car would not have been deployed. The only driver complaining about the conditions was Massa and we all know his love affair with wet weather driving don't we. Lewis and Rosberg stated that they saw no problems with the wet conditions other than the spray at the time the accident happened. Racing in Japan carries on through the typhoon season and they are used to handling races in such conditions, nevertheless what we saw at Suzuka was not comparable to what we saw at Fuji when the race was rescheduled or Sepang when the race was redflagged due to the torrential rain.

As for the JCB, what other sensible options are there for rapid car retrieval? The contours of the hills around the corner there with 130R just behind doesn't allow the placement of a huge crane. Your winch option is fine for a car beached on its own in the gravel except for the cable acting like a perfectly placed garrote for any drivers going in the same place, how does it help for cars that are punched deep into the tyre barrier?

Just to put things into perspective Bianchi was very close to Sutil when the latter went off. Bianchi then lost control exactly one lap later at the same spot. In that time (around two minutes) the JCB was already reversing back behind the tyre barrier when the Marussia went into it. The marshals were extremely efficient. They were also protected by double waved yellows. And here lies the rub, the truth that taste prevents people from stating too loudly. Had Bianchi followed the double waved yellow flag guidelines he wouldn't have been going at the speed he had been and the crash would likely have been far less violent had it occurred at all. He had been going at 200 km/h when Button at full race pace through the same corner was going at 230 km/h and others at 260 km/h in the dry. A mere 30km/h slower than full race pace in the same conditions is NOT in anyone's book complying with 'slow down and be prepared to stop'.

Racers are racers and I can fully understand why they do not comply with double waved yellows, however making them comply is the best way of sorting out this problem. Pointing fingers in hysteria will not resolve anything. Introducing racial stereotypes into the argument certainly doesn't help.