Motorsports Thread

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Beebo

Firm and Fruity
Location
Hexleybeef
Grosjean is the main factor in Grosjean incidents. The man is a liability. Fast as hell, but he drives like he's playing a videogame. I've said for a while now that it's only a matter of time before he kills someone on the track.

Lucky, lucky man, to walk away from that. Better drivers have died from less destructive crashes.
It’s possibly his last F1 race. Haas haven’t renewed his contact and there are only 2 races left.
 

Beebo

Firm and Fruity
Location
Hexleybeef
I still think they're ugly. As are the new style nose cones and the raised cockpit sides. I really do miss the clean lines and balance of late 80s / early 90s single seaters.

BUT...
My favourite clean lines car was the Benetton. The drivers head is so exposed. Compared to modern cars. You can hardly see the modern drivers inside their cockpit cocoon.

3780482E-F198-45B3-8967-25FD3B0F2807.jpeg
 

classic33

Leg End Member
In the slow motion shots before the crash, watch out for the piece flying towards the right front tyre.
 
Location
Kent Coast
In a lighter vein... does anyone follow Bad Obsession Motorsport on You Tube? They've recently run a series where they bought a second hand Citroen C1 and adapted it with a Citygo race pack to enter the mini races for C1/1008/Aygo cars in the 2020 series.

What a breath of fresh air to see enthusiasts with mechanical skill getting together to have fun away from the stupid money of F1.

... and as for Project Binky and the Lescargot conversion... lots to see if you haven't seen any of it! Have fun.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHvBHWBzzB7NyU5tIiEZHBg

I really enjoyed the Citycar Racing video series, even more than their usual mechanical antics.
 

Beebo

Firm and Fruity
Location
Hexleybeef
The last time an F1 car split in two was in 1991.
The last time one caught fire in a crash was in 1989.
The last time a car pierced barriers in such a way was 1974.

So something went very wrong. Did the car break up before the barrier or because of the barrier?

Next week they are racing at Bahrain again. I would want every inch of the barrier system checked before racing again.
 

Bonefish Blues

Banging donk
Location
52 Festive Road
It was being talked about as a head on crash, but it was at what, 45 degrees or so, and yet pierced it and seemingly the rear rotated and tore the rear away. As said, something was fundamentally awry here - similar crashes have happened without these consequences.
 
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Deleted member 26715

Guest
It’s possibly his last F1 race. Haas haven’t renewed his contact and there are only 2 races left.
Logic would be to ask him to stand down & bring in their new drivers 1 race each, just to get it under their belt.
Karun analysed this in some depth - it may be causative, a distraction perhaps, but at the moment nobody knows for sure.
From my untrained eye I don't think so, I think he saw that the way forward was blocked &the returning Alpha Tauri was just going to make it worse, decided to go right & either didn't see Kvyat or presumed he would give him room, but he had no chance to.
It was being talked about as a head on crash, but it was at what, 45 degrees or so, and yet pierced it and seemingly the rear rotated and tore the rear away. As said, something was fundamentally awry here - similar crashes have happened without these consequences.
137Mph & 35G was recorded, how Grosjean's organs survived that is amazing, but as the the barrier was coming out into the track at that point I can see it being head on, although to rotational skid marks left appears to suggest it was rotating. The weight of the car is 740Kg with another 100Kg of fuel, not sure what else they could put up as an alternative, they replaced it with concrete blocks, but what would have happened if he had hit concrete at 137mph? I suspect there would have been leg damage.

All those involved in F1 safety aspect need a big pat on their backs, they saved his life yesterday, but they can't afford to sit on their laurels, I was very disappointed with the marshals, one came from the marshal post with the extinguisher already fired & wasted most of it, one ran across the track, not sure if it was the same one then just stood & didn't use his extinguisher until the medical car arrived.
 

Bonefish Blues

Banging donk
Location
52 Festive Road
137Mph & 35G was recorded, how Grosjean's organs survived that is amazing, but as the the barrier was coming out into the track at that point I can see it being head on, although to rotational skid marks left appears to suggest it was rotating. The weight of the car is 740Kg with another 100Kg of fuel, not sure what else they could put up as an alternative, they replaced it with concrete blocks, but what would have happened if he had hit concrete at 137mph? I suspect there would have been leg damage.
A couple of things:

Humans have survived up to 83g in test.

re angle vs head on - I froze this at 6secs:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc_x1RS_DXo


Penetration was the fundamental issue here IMHO - that car should have been deflected as was the design of the barrier and thereby dissipated its energy by spinning down the track. It he had hit concrete at 45 degrees, then better minds than mine would be able to work that one through, but one doubts that his life would have been in the balance in the way that everyone initially thought we had a fatality on our hands yesterday.
 
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Deleted member 26715

Guest
Humans have survived up to 83g in test.
Wasn't aware it was anywhere near as high as that
re angle vs head on - I froze this at 6secs
It's very difficult to determine, at 3 seconds he is perpendicular to the barrier, which appears to be just before impact

560964


560965

everyone initially thought we had a fatality on our hands yesterday.
Yes, Sky had left that camera angle & were at the end of the straight, you saw the fireball in the distance, I didn't expect whomever it was to walk away from it.

They will have higher definition footage than us, they will be able to go frame by frame, but I also feel there was more than a couple of litres of fuel going up there
 

Bonefish Blues

Banging donk
Location
52 Festive Road
I don't know how much fuel was involved tbh - I do know a fuel burn is deeply impressive, having seen a relatively few mills go up a couple of times (US woman starting a BBQ with it was particularly worrying for the Brits gathered around it, and we'll not discuss the time I personally did something deeply foolish :blush: ) - there's part of me wonders that if the whole of the c100kgs of fuel load had gone up, anything could have been done?

My point re the angle of impact is that at 130-140 mph, wheels locked, a car cannot change direction, it can only rotate around its own axis. It should have speared off that barrier such that we were only briefly mentioning Grosjean having another avoidable accident this morning.

Edited to correct fuel load error
 
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Deleted member 1258

Guest
I don't know how much fuel was involved tbh - I do know a fuel burn is deeply impressive, having seen a relatively few mills go up a couple of times (US woman starting a BBQ with it was particularly worrying for the Brits gathered around it, and we'll not discuss the time I personally did something deeply foolish :blush: ) - there's part of me wonders that if the whole of the 160kgs of fuel load had gone up, anything could have been done?

My point re the angle of impact is that at 130-140 mph, wheels locked, a car cannot change direction, it can only rotate around its own axis. It should have speared off that barrier such that we were only briefly mentioning Grosjean having another avoidable accident this morning.

I did wonder if it was just what was in the fuel lines that went up
 
I think if you smash enough 800kg objects into enough miles of steel armco, at enough different angles and speeds (in the 100-150mph range), eventually there will be a bad outcome; it's probably not practicable to test every car design vs armco section vs velocity vector.

So of course they will look into it and hopefully find a root cause, with a preventive action that can be rolled-out to other armco (or alternatives/replacements). But it is fundamentally a dangerous thing that these drivers do :sad:
 
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