2017 F1 Random Discussion Thread

Justin Time · PostPosted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:21 am

Ian-S wrote:

Massa - possible, but the spring might have either gone through the gap, or been deflected down into his chest....

Wilson - possible again, but the nose was coming down from 100 foot in the air and had 40kg of lead in it, would Halo had stopped that? Hopefully we'll never have to find out.

Bianchi - even the FIA stated Halo would have been unlikely to have made a difference, so nope...

Surtees - highly likely, but then had Palmer not scrimpt on the budget of the cars and used wheel teathers like every other formula was at that time (and if I remember correctly, allegedly like Williams had advised him too) then Halo wouldn't even be considered as a tool to save his life since the wheel tether on the other car would have prevented the flying wheel from being a projectile in the first place....

It's impossible to tell if Halo would have made a difference, or in Massa's case, even made things worse, what the FIA should do is stop mucking about trying to re-invent the wheel just so they can say 'pioneered in F1' and swallow their pride and go with the already tried and tested system in use in the WEC, I think they call them canopies, or closed cockpits or something like that, if they're intent on this path then just do it, I dare say it might even peak the interest of kids if the cars look something like their hotwheels car and there's no rule to say you can't have an open wheel closed cockpit car as far as I know.

But no, that's too easy...

Or, they could just leave open cockpit racing as it is. Nobody forces the drivers to take part in open cockpit racing. If one deems it too dangerous, there's the wonderful WEC as an alternative.

Ian-S · PostPosted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 10:40 am

That is my core view too (seems Indycar has taken that view too and if anybody should be wanting closed cockpits after a raft of head injury induced deaths, it's them), but it seems like most things nowdays the agenda is going to be pushed ahead regardless of what the majority want, if so then they might as well do it properly.

webbsy · PostPosted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 11:22 am

That is my belief as well, hence why I asked before if there is a waiver form they sign to participate.

LucasWheldon · PostPosted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 2:22 pm

looks like they are trying to make the competition appealing for people who doesn't like dangerous stuff and so

just like Nelson Piquet once said "people often come to the track to see crashes, nobody goes there expecting nothing to happen, maybe just an old lady that stays the entire racing praying for nothing serious to happen"

gkmotorsport · PostPosted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:01 pm

Ian-S wrote:

Wilson - possible again, but the nose was coming down from 100 foot in the air and had 40kg of lead in it, would Halo had stopped that? Hopefully we'll never have to find out.

I'm not disagreeing with your overall point, but I'm sure various IndyCar people at the time indicated weights between 10kg and 20kg.

FWIW, the FIA research people (Autosport published parts of it recently) said that their modelling indicated that the halo would have protected Wilson and Surtees, based on the known data of those accidents, would possibly have protected Massa (they simulated the spring at a large number of possible trajectories), and would have been of no use whatsoever for Bianchi.

IndyCar are all for some kind of protection, but don't see the halo as being useful because the central join would be no good on almost any oval in terms of visibility.

gkmotorsport · PostPosted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:09 pm

On a related note, I really would love to know if similar comparisons were made for high cockpit sides - I can only think of a few contemporary crashes where they would have directly helped.

I read an extract from Sid Watkins' first book yesterday, where he described how an (unnamed) team principal sought him out to complain that 'his' padded cockpits had cost the team 1,000,000 quid in extra development costs. Watkins told him to take it out of his driver's 7 million salary

Ian-S · PostPosted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:10 pm

You could be right on the weight, not gonna dispute that.

Unless the FIA reconstructed those accidents exactly, the 'research' is little more than one persons, or a groups opinion and nothing else, I'd lay money on them throwing a wheel at a stationary car and calling that an accurate reconstruction, when we both know that's not accurate at all, I mean isn't that what they did with the canopy before dismissing it?

gkmotorsport · PostPosted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:11 pm

webbsy wrote:

That is my belief as well, hence why I asked before if there is a waiver form they sign to participate.

Even if there is (in the same way as the 'Motorsport is dangeous' disclaimer, it wouldn't protect the FIA in the event of negligence, which is basically the core of the Bianchi case.

Gaara · PostPosted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:32 pm

Yeaa motorsport is dangerous, but there's a huge difference between acceptable dangers like hitting a barrier if you go off and unacceptable like the circumstances of Bianchi's crash.

codename_47 · PostPosted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:56 pm

Ian-S wrote:

That is my core view too (seems Indycar has taken that view too and if anybody should be wanting closed cockpits after a raft of head injury induced deaths, it's them), but it seems like most things nowdays the agenda is going to be pushed ahead regardless of what the majority want, if so then they might as well do it properly.

Actually, pretty sure I read Indycar will be testing their own version of the screen before the end of the season

At best we'll get 1 season of the new great looking cars before they throw something in front of the cockpit

Make no mistake, single seater racing is being phased out
I firmly believe after they have the cockpit covered, the next area they'll gun for will be the open wheels

Gaara · PostPosted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:58 pm

codename_47 wrote:

Ian-S wrote:

That is my core view too (seems Indycar has taken that view too and if anybody should be wanting closed cockpits after a raft of head injury induced deaths, it's them), but it seems like most things nowdays the agenda is going to be pushed ahead regardless of what the majority want, if so then they might as well do it properly.

Actually, pretty sure I read Indycar will be testing their own version of the screen before the end of the season

At best we'll get 1 season of the new great looking cars before they throw something in front of the cockpit

Make no mistake, single seater racing is being phased out
I firmly believe after they have the cockpit covered, the next area they'll gun for will be the open wheels

They'll still be single seaters though. :flag:

RtN · PostPosted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 10:10 pm

gkmotorsport wrote:

Ian-S wrote:

Wilson - possible again, but the nose was coming down from 100 foot in the air and had 40kg of lead in it, would Halo had stopped that? Hopefully we'll never have to find out.

I'm not disagreeing with your overall point, but I'm sure various IndyCar people at the time indicated weights between 10kg and 20kg.

FWIW, the FIA research people (Autosport published parts of it recently) said that their modelling indicated that the halo would have protected Wilson and Surtees, based on the known data of those accidents, would possibly have protected Massa (they simulated the spring at a large number of possible trajectories), and would have been of no use whatsoever for Bianchi.

IndyCar are all for some kind of protection, but don't see the halo as being useful because the central join would be no good on almost any oval in terms of visibility.

This is the same FIA that holds Jules Bianchi entirely responsible for the fact that he is dead, yes?

I don't trust their findings any further than I could throw them. Surtees is the only recent accident where the halo is guaranteed to improve the outcome. IIRC the nosecone in Justin's accident came down almost vertically on his head, and the 'ring' of the halo is quite wide (wider than the cockpit). Might have just gone straight through the middle.

Ian-S · PostPosted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 12:36 am

I'm not a 100% convinced halo would have been guaranteed to make a difference to Surtees, simply because I've carried one of those wheels and they are bloody heavy, but I do think of all the examples given he was the only one whose outcome could have been different, but then as I said, if the cars had had wheel tethers, we wouldn't even be talking about it as an example.

Gaara · PostPosted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 1:21 am

Would have saved De Villota because the halo would have taken the brunt, not her helmet. But since it was just straightline runs at a private test they might have left it off.

Ian-S · PostPosted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 1:27 am

Not likely, the tail lift hit her in the face above her right eye, look at the photos of halo and compare the height of the drivers, the tail lift would have just gone through the gap, the central part wouldn't have been able to protect her because of the angle and where she hit the truck.

All of these examples are pointless because in most examples there were existing measuress that may have prevented the deaths, not putting lead weights in the nosecone, using wheel tethers, telling the poor girl how the clutch worked instead of assuming she knew etc. etc.

This whole thing reminds me of NASA not knowing how an astronaut could push a button while strapped in his seat, and talking of spending millions on inventing a new system, when a ball point pen was all that was needed.

webbsy · PostPosted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 4:22 am

Gaara wrote:

Would have saved De Villota because the halo would have taken the brunt, not her helmet. But since it was just straightline runs at a private test they might have left it off.

Hmm. Trying to use the argument that the Halo might have saved her when she smashed into the back of a truck at a private test is a stretch too far. You know what might have saved her? Not putting some one who had absolutely no right what so ever to ever be driving one of those cars.

LucasWheldon · PostPosted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 4:29 am

I guess the main responsible for her crash is the test ban. If she raced in a proper racetrack that bizarre thing wouldn't had happened

free the tests to avoid bizarre incidents

gkmotorsport · PostPosted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 6:28 am

LucasWheldon wrote:

I guess the main responsible for her crash is the test ban. If she raced in a proper racetrack that bizarre thing wouldn't had happened

free the tests to avoid bizarre incidents

In fairness, teams commonly used airfields and drag strips for straight line testing even when testing was unrestricted. It's massively cheaper to hire a runway or Santa Pod than it is Silverstone.

gkmotorsport · PostPosted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 6:30 am

Here's the FIA presentation, btw - I guess we can thank Liberty for this; Bernie would never have allowed it!

Turns out they modelled a whole bunch of accidents, many of which I didn't even remember. Also particularly notable is that the system can take 15x the static weight of an F1 car. When you add motion into this it would obviously reduce drastically, but the maths is pretty straightforward on this.

(WARNING: Contains Charlie Whiting talking about things)

I think it is a little unfair of most of us to automatically throw our (mostly amateur) opinions about, given the amount of study that has clearly gone into this. Laurent Mekies has a master's in mechanical engineering, and the people actually working on the studies and design probably deserve the benefit of the doubt. I don't think the 'It won't even work argument' is particularly viable.

mclaren2008 · PostPosted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 7:11 am

I want to see them launch a wheel into it

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2017 F1 Random Discussion Thread

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