A short history of crash barrier technology in F1 

Chain Bear F1 I know I'm late but please answer!

Anton Adelson Im no expert like chainbear, but water is quite heavy, especially if barrel is as big as one tyre tower. Also imagine the delay when someone hits water barrels and marshalls had to fill them up again

I cannot find the video bout run off areas.

I was going to ask why that wasn't covered in this

Chain Bear F1 dude, you deserve every single penny your patrons give you..

Gunnar Greene or “oh you mean that tight, blind corner with a 500 foot drop on the other side?”

Snow banks do a awesome job for the winter rounds! The rally car probably the only race car I would not want to drive at speed with !

oof... hes goners..... Welp back to spectating the race! :D

You mean the people that are standing in the road?

The barriers are the idiots who stand along the track hanging over it lmao. Then again rally cars aren't going 200mph.

True

That guardrail was in a bad place. Abu Dhabi also has a concerningly placed barrier similar to it...

53g

Its been 2 months after the crash... time flies... cant wait to the 2021 season starts

That race was really more of a signal of a bad barrier for the type of area it was in. It would have been much better if the barrier Romain crashed into was a tire wall

I was looking for this comment

@@mesumnaqvi3411 yes, it's out job as engineers, to have fun demolishing these... Sorry "testing" them for all sorts of un thought of scenarios. To see what weight is best, for what part, of what corner, on what track, with what predicted weather, and what is dangerous, if said weather doesn't appear, or other weather arises. Driver crashes like Maldonado's are great for us to see what Can happen. When we get it wrong. Even something as little as, what the crews are setting their cars to, how low they will each be etc. Or, whether that barrier simply is not the best option available. So, as long as I persoanly don't have to fix the track, drivers who wreck the crash systems are my guinepigs (my humane subjects... We obviously do our best with the tolls available so that if something does happen, said guiniepig can walk away, perhaps just with a small purple spot on their arm or leg. But if the same type of crash happens twice. Where a barrier or safety device now becomes a danger to one or more drivers. Then we've failed at our job. Allowing you to say that :p And so God forbid, similar happens again. I belive, there have since been additional attachment hard points used, with loose cables, to help limit the distance they can move in future, but when any such feature is added. An intentional breaking point is added. Because if said amount of force is applied, then the driver should not be at the receiving end. So its better to allow the car to continue etc. I also belive, the attachment points between the same barrier points, have since been altered. To also help resist any twisting forces, which is what broke them. All stuff I get off to....

Lol, i thought so too

Read Macdonald

Thats Sainz 2015 sochi

BlastForward or safe enough *from* Maldonado!

I knew someone was going to mention that

Often the case IMHO. High tech isn't always the solution, but it always distracts people from looking to and accepting the solutions available to them. Futurism is the curse of the 20th century, nothing good comes of it.

@@jimcrelm9478 -typed from a smartphone

@@user-nu2it6kf2m not sure what point you are trying to make here

Really 😅

Theres no research it's called education

Hey man that hurts 😔 I try my best

Trystan Gibb I’m pretty sure a fair amount of research went into this video. Not much education in a history of crash barriers are there?

Gater Rater belted tyre wall should fix that.

I just had a few feet of grass and a row of tires 3 high. That was for karting. Got hit one day by a kart that spun in the rain. Was about 2 steps slow walking backwards. Stupid me forgot the kart rain tires useless on grass! Thankfully safety has improved overall in racing.

*tire*

Titre walls no safer barrier yes

@@dakotabalboa3322 not everyone lives in America. "Tyre" is correct everywhere else.

Grosjean"s crash was special cuz he ran into a guard barrier at high speed

Btw that crash was 56g

Yes I’m commenting 2 weeks after Grosjean’s horrific crash and astonishing survival, literally walking out of the flames into the arms of the world class first responders. Relatively new fan of F1 (3 years) and probably my favorite thing about it is the NASA-like cutting edge engineering; the safety features and measures always improving. That along with this young man’s brilliant moves made all the difference between what could have been a terrible tragedy; instead the world watched nothing short of a miracle.

Yea

Glad that it was on a side were there was no public also glad that Romain is ok, that crash is a good testimony in how safe F1 has turned, but stills not safe enough.

Lethal accidents in modern motorsports seem to fall in a couple of categories: - head injury from flying debris (Ayrton Senna, Justin Wilson) - basilar skull fracture due to sudden deceleration in a head-on collision (Roland Ratzenberger, Dale Earnhardt, Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin Jr.) - catastrophic monocoque/roll cage failure (Gilles Villeneuve, Gordon Smiley) - fire (Ricardo Paletti) - head injury from contact with an obstacle such as catch fencing pole or concrete barrier (Jules Bianchi, Jeff Krosnoff, Greg Moore, Dan Wheldon) The first category might be reduced by the Halo, although I suspect we will see freak accidents still claim lives occasionally. The second category has been greatly dimished by the HANS device. The third category has been addressed by better car construction and SAFER barriers. The fourth category has been almost eliminated by better track marshaling, fuel cells, and flame-retardant driving suits.

You have a very, very vague definition of "modern motorsports" when you're mentioning fatalities from a timespan of almost 40 years. Plus, deaths caused by fire certainly aren't a regular part of modern motorsports anymore.

RU-vid Only most of those are within the last two decades.

azarisLP Jules Bianchi didn't in fact hit anything with his helmet, it was the sudden deceleration which caused his brain to suffer severe injuries.

@@azarisLP I agree with you, but I assume that you consider the front right tyre of Ayrton's Williams to be flying debris, that clunked him over the head which was the cause of his death. It's a technicality, but the wheel was still connected to the car by a suspension strut. This isn't me saying your wrong, it's only a technicality.

lePierre1860 why did you go to RU-vid to work on your assignment?

Safe to say, wasn't the smartest thing to stop procrastination. I'm with you on this one.

still here tho :p

Guard rails are terrible if a car is coming at an angle more than 25 degrees

Jordan 51203 Agree!

The main reason I want this topic for a video is because I want to know why tracks like Phillip Island (FIA Grade 3), Zandvoort (FIA Grade 2) and The Bend (FIA Grade 2) are below Grade 1 even though they seem to have enough runoff and safety barriers

What about why Monte-Carlo and Albert Park are FIA Grade 1?

I think that the video could actually talk about Grades 1-3, so the full picture and context could be presented.

KG_Ralesong That's what I meant with my second comment

Have you ever heard of the term "research"? Plus I bet if he's into f1 and technically inclined most of it is basic knowledge for him just from years of contact with the sport.

You must be real fun at parties Renee

David Allen If you think talking about f1 barriers on a party is a good idea then youre the one whos not very fun to be around. And if you assumed that this one sentence gave you enough information to know how this guys general interaction with other humans is, then you are one stupid human being

@@Homanjer from a compliment to a fight. The internet everyone.

@@Homanjer wow. Just wow

Yeah im thinking about that

Max Verstappen 😂😂😂

@@andythespy *Max Crashstappen

@@mikespearwood3914 funny

Max Power A Video about Safety in F1 will always contain a (honorable) mention of Maldonado. That Guy will be a Meme for a long Time xD

The steel skin works to avoid bouncing a shallow collision back into traffic and frictionally stops the car, like a concrete wall, but with crushable foam blocks to absorb head-on impacts. Simple yet ingenious!

Yeah. Please let ITB test all of these on F1 2017!

Nascar is shit.

SAFER barriers were originally designed for Indycars though which are probably the closest thing to F1 cars when it comes to the speeds involved in crashes and they are comparatively similar cars so you'd expect them to work pretty well. They aren't perfect and things like tyre barriers and tecpro soft walls are better when you have a bit of runoff but in places where you have no room to extend runoff and you don't want to change the track (like Montreal as you said: they also use SAFER barriers in Baku and Interlagos as well as at Le Mans in the Porsche curves) then the SAFER barrier is the best technology available and vastly better than a concrete wall or armco. Indeed NASCAR originally wanted Indianapolis to take the original SAFER barrier down at Indianapolis for the stock car races since they were sceptical about whether or not it would work: the Speedway fought and it remained up and then NASCAR realised its effectiveness and the rest was history - and naturally NASCAR took the credit for the thing that they hadn't put any money into the development of.

Struggle Gaming I cut the section I'd written on SAFER barriers but I there are very few sections of track where they'd be that useful in f1 I think. In Canada you don't bit the barriers square on enough to warrant them imho. They take up a lot of track space, don't forget

they've replaced some of the steel guardrails with them this year and it sounds like they plan to replace the remainder with SAFER walls once the remaining armco needs replaced in a gradual way. Sure they don't need them for most of the track but its something to consider if you are replacing barriers - there are ways to install SAFER in the same amount of space as a regular concrete or steel barrier would use. Generally they shouldn't rush to replace the concrete barriers with them since like you say they generally wouldn't be useful - although recent years in Indycar and NASCAR have seen tracks have the same mentality and then freak accidents have happened involving the remaining exposed concrete walls they have which have either caused injuries (Kyle Busch at Daytona a few years ago) or got lucky so maybe that's the wrong mentality. Although like you say in the vast majority of cases there are better things you can use: the SAFER barrier was designed for the unique problems that oval racing pose and the need to have barriers that can absorb energy as well as deflecting cars in the same way that a normal concrete barrier can and for road racing you often don't have to do both of those things at once.

Chain Bear F1 SAFER barriers use up less space than TecPro or a tire wall. Nice videos, by the way! Keep 'em coming 😊

10/10 m8

Considering the design was built for a slower, but more massive vehicle, it does well on the North American circuits.

Safer Barriers were developed right here in Lincoln Nebraska.

Jeffrey Hueseman frankly, safer barriers were designed more specifically for IndyCar, seeing as they were developed mainly at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which are more comparable to f1 cars when it comes to crash physics. But i would say its probably the second biggest modern safety innovation after the HANS device. I almost hate to think of the drivers that wouldn’t be here without the safer barriers. But back to the point, they add more foam inserts for nascar events as, like you said, they are heavier cars. For Indycar events they remove pretty much half of the inserts.

Actually, SAFER barriers were designed for Indycars, which are only slightly heavier than a typical F1 car, but (on average) travel at much higher speeds. NASCAR adopted the design, and now it's found at tracks all over the USA, as well as international tracks such as Le Mans (in the Porsche Curves) and Baku (entering the pit-straight), among others.

Matt Ball Bonsai Grosjean: hold my beer

@@marcoroberts9462 Not sure how to judge the aging of this...

Sanjay Joseph it wasnt the shock from the impact that killed him it was a tie rod from the suspension that came up and whacked him in the helmet. Had he hit the wall a couple degrees left or right he would still be with us today

Zach, I do agree with the cause of death, that is immutable. The coroner noted that there were three severe injuries to the brain, all due to the wheel coming off, but might a tyre wall prevented the wheel from breaking off in the first place?

Sanjay Joseph suspension arms break with tire barrier impacts as well. What likely could have saved Senna was wheel tethers, which is why they were mandated shortly after the accident. (A Halo likely would have done the trick as well, maybe even the higher cockpit sides we have today... which were also introduced after the Senna tragedy). Additionally, there really isn't any way to fit much of a barrier there without making it narrow like a street circuit. Even before the '94 GP, people looked into the possibility of pushing the wall back further, but there is a creek behind it that is a pretty immovable limit for the architects and engineers.

I think a tyre barrier -- with a belt in front of it -- would have been better in the case of Senna's crash, though I think the best solution (at the time) would have been to move the concrete wall inwards to the track's edge, moving outwards again to take all available space on corner exit -- as the video comments here, runoff increases the angle of impact and Senna definitely left the track at a much shallower angle than he struck the wall at, even though he did slow down by the time he got to the wall. The same solution could have saved Ratzenberger a few hundred metres down the road, where the small amount of runoff at the kink was just enough to massively increase the angle of impact. With modern innovations you would be able to have SAFER barriers on these corners also.

Haha same, YT sure knows how to get views