Photo: GP2 Media Service
After both Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger tragically lost their lives at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994, Formula 1 got safer. Not just single seaters, but also circuit layouts, crash barriers, the whole lot.
Despite slower Formula 1 racecars, safety cars that are more intrusive and softer barriers than ever, competing in the king motorsport isn’t a walk in the park, not even if you go slow like rookies always do.
Take Jules Bianchi as a prime example of what I’m trying to say. At the Japanese Grand Prix in October, the French driver overcooked corner 7 of Suzuka in the rain and crashed his Marussia F1 into a recovery vehicle, with car sensors recording 92 Gs on impact.
Needless to say, the 25-year-old driver wasn’t going banzai in such a heavy downpour and under yellow flags, but the wet grass accelerated him at an even higher velocity into the crane-like recovery vehicle.
"During the 2 seconds Bianchi's car was leaving the track and traversing the run-off area, he applied both throttle and brake together, using both feet... Bianchi's helmet struck the sloping underside of the crane. The magnitude of the blow and the glancing nature of it caused massive head deceleration and angular acceleration...”
It’s a lengthy document, but it discloses another interesting fact about Bianchi’s crash - the accident happened at 126 km/h (78 mph), with the 700 kg (1,543 lbs) F1 car hitting a 6,500 kg (14,330 lbs) crane.
“There is simply insufficient impact structure on a F1 car to absorb the energy of such an impact without either destroying the driver's survival cell, or generating non-survivable decelerations,” tells FIA. #KeepFightingJules
Take Jules Bianchi as a prime example of what I’m trying to say. At the Japanese Grand Prix in October, the French driver overcooked corner 7 of Suzuka in the rain and crashed his Marussia F1 into a recovery vehicle, with car sensors recording 92 Gs on impact.
Needless to say, the 25-year-old driver wasn’t going banzai in such a heavy downpour and under yellow flags, but the wet grass accelerated him at an even higher velocity into the crane-like recovery vehicle.
Exactly two months since that accident, Federation International de l’Automobile safety bigwigs finished investigating the high speed crash and they are adamant Jules Bianchi is the only one to blame for it.
The Formula 1 governing body highlights: “Bianchi did not slow sufficiently to avoid losing control at the same point on the track as Sutil... Bianchi over-controlled the oversteering car...""During the 2 seconds Bianchi's car was leaving the track and traversing the run-off area, he applied both throttle and brake together, using both feet... Bianchi's helmet struck the sloping underside of the crane. The magnitude of the blow and the glancing nature of it caused massive head deceleration and angular acceleration...”
It’s a lengthy document, but it discloses another interesting fact about Bianchi’s crash - the accident happened at 126 km/h (78 mph), with the 700 kg (1,543 lbs) F1 car hitting a 6,500 kg (14,330 lbs) crane.
“There is simply insufficient impact structure on a F1 car to absorb the energy of such an impact without either destroying the driver's survival cell, or generating non-survivable decelerations,” tells FIA. #KeepFightingJules
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