Human brain can survive few seconds without oxygen, fighter pilot loses consciousness at 6-9 G because it is sustained for longer than seconds, and blood-oxygen supply was cut off due to been pulled to the other parts of body. On the other hand, his head didn't collide with other things and stops too suddenly (which is why you can knock people out, the brain suddenly hits the skull and you lose consciousness due to interruption of internal brain signals). The harness and the neck protection device (I forgot the name, sorry), protected his neck from snapping, in fact it is quite amazing none of his bones were broken. concussion
NASA has done tests of up to 75g the human body can survive if it is over a short enough time frame the briefness of the 50g peak likey actually helped him survive it better than if the energy has been dispersed over a longer time span.
This time. Things could have gone wrong even here. A piece of the fence might have not plowed up the halo and hit the helmet if there was a seam there or whatever. Or the driver could have gotten trapped if it hadn't gone so far through the fence.... A lot could have still gone wrong and we are fortunate that it didn't.
I understand there are risks in motorsport but without improving (or innovation) to safety then your favorite driver wont walk away from a crash. At the end of the day we all wanna be able to go home to our families.
@@Glitch315 lol said by a true millennial. I watched Schumacher's first race and I watched Senna die. Comments like that dont make your point, they make you look clueless. Grow up son.
It shouldn't be too expensive to add a 250 lbs handcart fire extinguisher to each marshal post. That way the little ones only need to last until the big one gets to the crash site. The ones I googled just now are $5,000 each, so ten or twenty around a circuit seems like a relatively small expense, in F1 terms.
Also better fire gears, at least for the fire firefighter in the medical car. Only the doctor seemed to have what it take go really go near the flames. And it was painfully ridiculous to have this guy strugling for 4 seconds only to unpin the extinguisher
The Marshall took a long time to take out the pin from the extinguisher, in fact it was Dr Ian Roberts who did it. They need to make sure the marshalls know how to operate the extinguishers
@@sonnduro it is possibly because of the glove. Anyway, it's not as if they feared a kid who play with this extinguisher. When you are inside the emmergency car, just remove the pin before the race even start
5:01 Having seen lithium and gasoline burn I can tell you that this looks like a petrol fire, not a lithium one. Lithium burns red and produces a lot of grey smoke, this fire burned red/orange and produced black smoke.
I never saw any fire, so I’m not a good person to tell u ur wrong or ur right but, because it was the night, don’t u think the brightness could have make an hypothetical grey smoke look black ?
@@imaduckinspace8138 you wouldnt get that huge and "calm" fire from that relatively small battery pack. It would be very energetic fire and you can also see that the location of batterypack is not nearby the safety cell
they're not claiming its a lithium fire. The thought is that the outer casing of the battery housing ruptured, the fuel then spilt onto the battery which was hot enough to ignite the fuel.
Glad Grojean is okay and not taking anything away from that, but no one seems to be talking about the fact that, AGAIN, Romain caused another dangerous situation. He was lucky not to have taken Kyvat into the wall with him. It was the 3rd corner of the start of the race with a crowded feild....why would he assume he could cut across like he did? Again, glad he is okay, but this seems to be another example in a long list of dangerous mistakes by Grojean and he was lucky not to have cost a life this time.
Yeah that’s one of the things I was worried about watching it live. And if the battery would’ve went up, makes you wonder if the magnesium parts might’ve flared up too.
@@heathen455 I don't think F1 permits magnesium alloys in significant amounts because of Jo Schlesser: I could be wrong but that incident was brutal and that was why. The lithium is energetic enough.
Ropponmatsu2 I was talking more about the wheels; where the fire from the Li battery would’ve burned so hot, I was just thinking it may have been hot enough for them to flame up, after all one of the cars did have a small wheel fire in the pits during the race just from the brakes getting too hot (I can’t remember which driver at the moment)
@@heathen455 Ditto. Magnesium fires were a big problem back in the day. Alloys raise the temperature at which it will ignite, but that fire must have been well in that range.
🎵if it's a possessive, it's just I-T-S 🎵 but if it's supposed to be a contraction, then it's I-T-apostrophe-S 🎵🎵🎵 scallawag🎵 EDIT: I got this wrong three times. Jesus.
You mean like Indy safety crews? F1 is so far ahead in so many ways of other motorsports, but still very archaic in many ways. You would think F1 would have what you suggest. Grosjean got very very lucky.
Aircraft typically have fire extinguisher squibs on board for the engines and auxiliary power unit. Although it might seem like a good idea to keep 1 squib on board a car in the event of a fire, I can only really imagine it being useful for an engine fire and not a situation like this where the fuel tank ruptured.
@@XenophonSoulis Helicopters can't carry very much weight. Don't tell me that next you want a Boeing 747 converted for forest fires to be ready to deploy for F1?
While that’s a good idea, the reason that they are at that angle is because that is meant to be an entry point to the track for emergency response vehicles
A couple of points I haven't seen mentioned as to what a close call this was is Grosjean's ability to get out of the car without being able to see anything. I have some fire experience and am pretty positive he released himself from everything by experience, memory, and staying calm. A rookie or less experienced driver might have failed to do so. Another point is that he went through the barrier and it looks like from the photos if he would have been 12' to 18" short of going completely through it, he might have been trapped, an unable to escape. Glad he's ok!
He went through it! He escaped through one of the side openings of the halo on the other side of the barrier, thus had to climb and jump over it. The halo does not only create a more or less save area around the head, it also allows to escape on three directions from that area. Stroll for example also escaped his flipped car through the side later on.
The FIA only certifies a Team if the driver was able to jump out in like 7 seconds so they are all prepared and all act like he did. There is nothing lucky or miraculous about staying calm and relying on your training. These are top notch race car drivers, they are all 100% prepared for such a situation.
There's a lot of training for the drivers and crew that we don't get to see on a regular basis. Training is how you get the muscle memory that it would take to get out of that car under those conditions. Now, if only they would do a better job of training the marshals, specifically the first one that ran over with an extinguisher, then stayed so far back it had zero effect.
He said, "I wanted to walk to the ambulance to show the world I was ok." What a fucking champ. I'm sure he wanted his wife and kids to see he was alive.
Yeah especially about burns. He said in an interview that his son was afraid he would severely burned all over his body. I'm sure that walk reassured him on many levels.
well he did an intervieuw and he at first couldn't get out and thought he was upside down and waited for mashals to come get him then he looked to the side and saw fire and then he got out getting his shoe off
@@rubenaerts752 yes but in the video of him getting out, you can see he attempts to get out, sits back down and then gets out. When he sat back down it’s because his noticed his shoe was stuck
@@ndsx6 no, I mean the view from the outside where it zooms in on the medical experts helping him out. If you look closely he struggles to get out at first and we now know it’s because his shoe was stuck
The video F1 posted today of Grosjean returning to the track somehow makes my room release an onion enzyme or something, my eyes would not stop watering.
I personally think the main issue is the fuel tank. if it didnt rupture, the fuel wouldnt leaked out and cover Grosjean in fire, creating a time limit in which a driver can survive
@lee plays bass Have you ever tried to ignite a few litres petrol? I did, it results in a fireball, but by far smaller and shorter lasting than the fire we've seen in the accident. And by 2020 regulations, only 250 Milliliter petrol are allowed to be outside the tank, so it's clear that the tank ruptured. It may not have ruptured completely, so some compartments may have stayed intact, but I would guess that at least 25 litres burnt, that's 100 times the amount that's allowed in a collector and any fuel pipes.
As far as the guard rail design, it shouldn't taper out to have an entry way for emergency to go on track. That should be as parallel to track as possible to have cars glance it the have the side taper into the track
This is correct. The trackside design was wrong here. Certainly not the place to be protected by an Armco barrier at an angle where a car spearing off track could hit it at an angle not far off head-on. That access road could surely have joined the straight nearer the preceding corner?; where cars won’t have accelerated up to such a high speed before they might spear off-track.
@@BungleBare the chute shouldn’t be placed at such an angle. Normally the opening is created by having the leading edge of Armco overlapping the second part which is about 15 behind the fist section. This creates an opening which is protected by the overlapping of the 2 sections of Armco. The only way to enter the opening is by pulling beyond the end of the outside section and backing in.
As an engineer, a car splitting in half can actually be considered a good thing (dissapating energy, removing mass from the survival cell and taking some of the momentum with it), preferably it doesn't happen, but freak accidents do. However, it should never break at a point where it exposes something as dangerous as a fuel cell. In my opinion, the fuel cell should always stay with the engine because of the fuel lines, another point where you don't want a breakage. So where a car is now designed as a survival cell which contains the fuel cell and an engine/gearbox/rear bolted to that, it should be designed with the fuel cell in the back bit and the designed breakpoint (the weakest point in an amazingly strong structure) should be between the fuel cell and the survival cell, with the fuel cell securely capped off.
That's exactly what I was thinking it was good that the car broke into two reducing the forces that the survival cell had to face. Also I think in the coming future the FIA will change the location of the battery cell its very risky to store fuel near lithium cell batteries. Also the way the barrier gave way could also be a good thing. There are physical limits to the ultimate shear and bending stresses a material can face.
@@mayank_makharia The barrier deforming was definately a good thing. However it should never have split open like it did, allowing the survival cell to go through it. Those three rails should stay together. One of the major things with the guardrail that needs to be addressed are the posts. They look too strong to me. It looks like one of the posts caused the car to break in the first place. If you make the posts in such a way that they will snap, the entire rail will function like a net in the same way they use in skiing. Each subsequent post breaking sapping some energy. But it will also allow the guardrails to deform more, allowing for a slower deceleration and reducing the forces of the impact on the driver.
Even then the battery pack wil burn the cells have been damaged and short circuited which wil cause a chemical reaction like a domino and keep burning cell for cell battery for battery
A battery pack can burn for hours, it can reignite 'spontaneously' after a while, I'm not sure what the periode is but it remains a fire hazard for quite a while.
@@petiertje but it wasn't on fire. It was an intact case that was unbolted and placed in isolation. There is no evidence of a fire and even less a thermal runaway event. People are terrified of battery packs like they are magic. The fire was a few kg of fuel. There is way more energy in the fuel than the battery pack.
The people complaining about the marshal with the fire extinguisher that was far away spraying at the flames know nothing about fighting fires. He first has too cool down the air around the flames before going near it otherwise he is compromising his own safety.
Now that Grosjean is alright can we start talking about how his clumsy move across the track was a contributing factor to the accident? Circuits are so expansive that you can't protect for every bad decision a driver makes.
The angle of the barrier to the road is an angle that needs to be addressed. Not only here but other circuits, the energy of the impact could have been better dissipated. Well done to everybody involved, with there swift actions they definitely saved the life of RG.
This⬆️. The big factor that no-one in the media seems to be discussing. If it hadn’t been in the line of Grosjean’s exit from the track then the barrier wouldn’t have been an issue. Even a shallower angle and/or greater distance away from the side of the straight would have helped.
The barrier in Bahrain was behind a bit of runoff so the car going in an unconventional angle hit the barrier almost head on. Monaco is really narrow, there is no runoff anywhere on the circuit. There is no way for a car to hit an armco barrier head on simply because there is not enough space for the car to put itself in a weird angle. The car would just slide as expected. The only places where a car could go head on at full speed (Sainte Devote and Nouvelle Chicane) have tyre barriers, and the right hander before the hairpin has a small runaway zone. Edit: Also Monaco's barriers are not conventional guardrails afaik, i think they have some sort of foam, at least in some places. I remember when Maldonado wrecked the barrier into the track causing a red flag, obviously you cant do that with an armco.
@@asyedan5172 There are few places in Monaco you could get the speed to slam into the barriers with the same force... only round the chicane after the tunnel is where it could if you're brakes are stuffed and you don't have control at that point.
A harrowing thought would be what if the car hadn't gone through as far as it did. And instead the barrier rested on top of the Halo, and acted as a ceiling. Are drivers able to slip out of the side of the Halo?
The NASCAR/Indycar safer barrier system is a better system for these less likely areas, they absorb energy and also provide a solid area that makes full penetration less likely. The biggest problem is that they can take longer to repair than F1 rules allow.
Why is no one talking about Grosjean himself and why he turned so sharply into Kvyat? Im not saying he is at fault, but certainly his visibility (like everyone else in the cockpit of an F1 car) would have been severely limited. Surely they should be improving the situational awarenes of drivers in the cars.
In one of the other frame by frame videos it seems like he was so focused on the slow moving traffic ahead of him and the opportunity for the big pass on his right that he simply forgot where Kvyat was. Definitely a mistake on his part but so happy he made it out relatively ok.
I agree, he did swipe from one side of track to other quite agresively, that was what caused it, so either that was pure mistake by driver doing that or it is visibility issue. I'd say the visibility to sides and in mirrors are way too limited for drivers in any case. On the other hand in this situation Kvyat was quite far behind - he wouldn't seen him at his side anyway, only in mirror.
"Barrier Failure is the Chief Concern" How the use of an Armco Barrier at a world class F1 facility is beyond me. Given the terrible history of Armco barriers in F1 and that Murphy's Law always applies to something as dynamic as motorsports, the engineer who approved its use should be fired.
Grosjean did a great job getting out too , he's one fit bloke to cop a 50 g knock lose a boot and still climb out over the Armco . My point is that grosjean saved the day on his own , most of the safety measures worked against him
@@bradwatts8222 To say "most of the safety measures worked against him" is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. You have absolutely no understanding of physics or engineering do you! Is he fireproof and immune to gravitational forces? Engineers as have been constantly studying crashes and engineering solutions for F1 cars (exclusively for those cars) for 75 years and Grosjean benefitted from nearly every single ounce of engineering brilliance and dedication.
Assuming the the barrier was the same. If it was a proper tyre or wall, the deceleration would've been dispersed differently. Arguably, this is the worst case that this accident could happen. A wall, wouldn't have been penetrated, meaning the car probably stayed in tact, meaning little to no fire, and a much easier time for Romain to get out of the car.
@@CzornyLisek if the barrier didnt brake the car hadnt stopped from 220kmh to 0kmh in 1meter. He hit the barrier at like 30 degree angle maybe. It had been violent but not as violent as stoppning in 1 meter
Grosjean stayed conscious (which I wouldn't have believed) and got out. The only issue was a few burns. All caused by how the accident happened. Who knows how things would have turned out with tyres or different barriers? The system worked, it wasn't ideal but nothing is when stopping abruptly from 130mph
I’ve taken the piss out of Vettel for his driving a lot in recent years, but I have a lot of respect for the man when he calls out the questions surrounding the crash about the barrier and how the car could have ended up like it did. I’m sure the FIA and whoever will answer these questions in time, but they need a prominent member of the sport to bring them to the forefront publicly. I’m glad everything went as well as it did for Grosjean when it could so easily have gone so wrong.
I will call Vettel out on his interviews though. After the race, he said that he hadn't really seen the accident properly, but earlier during the red flag, he was glued to the TV replays.
Thank you I thought I was the only person with common sense enough to know that the first person there with the fire extinguisher was doing literally nothing I've been commenting that everywhere and nobody seems to agree.(I am an exp firefighter It was getting on my nerves that everybody was saying that the first guy on the scene was a hero when he literally did nothing)
But was it due to a faulty fire extinguisher or because he didn't want to come close enough? like I have the same opinion as you. But comparing the first fire extinguisher with the second one it seems to me that the second fire extinguisher was stronger than the first (in the fact that it could travel much further). With that said, I'm not fire expert, so IDK if that seems to be the case only because the second guy was closer to the fire and actually reached it that we see it as going further or that the first guy didn't get as close as it should to get that going.
This is the first thing I said when I saw the accident happen. Guy standing 30 feet from the fire while he's suited up and has a fire extinguisher. I am not a firefighter but could easily tell he wasn't doing shit.
There’s a reason he was stood as far away as he was. He was directly exposed to the fire, yes wearing some overalls but no helmet or breathing apparatus etc, so he would’ve been inhaling the smoke, and also face the searing heat from the fire. The second firefighter was much more protected from the Armco, allowing him to get closer to the fire. There was also the wind, the first firefighter had the wind blowing against him, the second had the wind which helped his extinguisher travel towards the car. Also, these types of fire extinguishers aren’t designed to be used on a fire of this scale. They’re mostly liquid based, designed for small crashes - e.g like strolls car in maranello, or for cooling overheated brakes etc. Small, focused areas to stop any fires but not damage the rest of the car. They wouldn’t put out a fire this large with two small extinguishers, nor would they do a great deal - they would start to evaporate before reaching the centre of the fire, particularly in the case of the first firefighter. So before you say he did a shit job, try it yourself. See how close you’re able to get, with that type of extinguisher and see how good you do.
Grosjean had a Niki Lauda and François Cevert crash all rolled into one, and the car went 'is that all you've got'. The answer is F1 cars are tough as Fk.
Something I haven't seen many people talking about is, I think the reason it split like that was because it hit the posts in the barrier, acting like a kinfe.
Yes, that's why guard rail type barriers usually arent allowed.. honestly was surprised f1 would even race somwhere that uses those type of barriers. Most forms of auto sports, atleast in america use solid concrete walls or a safe impact barrier made of concrete, steel, and foam
I dunno, if the barrier doesn't fail the car doesn't split and just bounces of or slides down he barrier. Still a big crash but no fire and romain races this weekend.
The barrier is designed to deform and push road cars away from solid objects or oncoming traffic. An F1 car is not a road car, and so the deformation was produced in an unexpected direction - but it still deformed, taking a significant amount of energy, which is good. The barrier failed in a fairly predictable way - once you put an F1 car at that angle, which hadn’t been considered. Anything to spread the load across multiple strips of Armco rather than between two strips will be a benefit - the tyres and belt installed are an easy way to do that.
You media people don't really listen to other media outlets do you So far most formula 1 engineers have mentioned the car is designed to rip in half it's literally held together by five bolts FIVE
@@charamia9402 that’s what they are looking at because the fuel cell is made of Kevlar and rigorously test the durability so they are looking into why the fuel cell split and ignited.
@@charamia9402 the fire came from a canister that holds a cpl liters of fuel that's between the fuel cell and engine. If the fuel cell failed and caught fire there would have been a much larger dispersal of fuel especially since the tank was full.
I love the way the improvised tyre barrier is just breezily brushed over. The awkward question is why something so simple and cheap was omitted in the first place.
Absolutely. It is the angle of the barrier to the track, the design of the barrier being three pieces not one piece and the lack of normal decelerating devices such as the tyres and belt that are now there which are the main discussion points IMHO. In fact, if there had been the tyres and belt there, it would have been a routine shunt. There may be some small tweaks they can do to the car, but all that energy has to be dissipated somehow. The nose penetrated next to a post which stopped it too quickly for its structural integrity to withstand.
@DRIVER RIDE That thought never occurred to me. How does a tyre wall look "Bad?" It's just there, as in, part of the track furniture. It's just so lazy it's been left off.
@@amxboxer This effectively *was* a corner - Or the exit from one, as Grosjean was driving to the outside of the racing line using the extra speed he could see he had over his teammate, who was stuck in the jam of cars on his left.
My Dad works in the guard rail industry and he told me that guard rail is not meant for head on hits it's more suited side on impacts. But it can also handle angled impacts like rear or frontal influenced tank slappers but as aforementioned no complete head on or front on impacts
The real question is why did they think something that was designed for motorway use would work for formula cars everybody has seen these barriers on the side of a highway but our cars have a much larger frontal area than a formula 1 car
Usually these barriers are in places for side impacts, for a crash of this type tire barriers are usually used, but that section of track is a straight so they just considered it safe enough, they have fixed it with 2 tire barriers now in the run off which would have been enough to prevent this.
I agree. Also, F1 cars are much lighter than your average vehicle you’d see on the highway. An average sedan can weigh around 2000kg while F1 cars are regulated to 660kg (both numbers are without drivers). This means the posts are less likely to break when an F1 car hits them since they weigh so much less.
@@pedrorequio5515 Its not just that. Armco barriers are actually better than tire walls on side impacts, because the Armco has a smooth surface for the car to slide against. The tire walls don't, they have the circles of the tires creating ridges, that means that if a car glances a tire wall it is much more likelly to get caught on it and pull the wall along with the car. Glancing blows vs head on crashes are very different beasts, with the first you want a solid surface with little deflection so the car stays against the wall and slides to a stop without coming back to the circuit. (concrete, armco.) With the second you want the opposite, the wall should bend and absorb the energy as much as possible so it can catch the car as gently as possible. (SAFER, Tecpro, tire walls) The circuit designers came to the conclusion that a side crash was more likelly than a head on crash in that area, so they installed Armco.
@@-ragingpotato-937 I know that, but that particular section of the run off is more likely to get a front or angled impact that side because it turns to the road, the side ones are mostly right except that portion where it all happen, and I guess I was proven right because they did just that.
@@mikedebruyn if they are fully protected by fire retardant clothing, yes. That would give them enough protection to enter the fire and stay there for at least 10 seconds without getting injured. That's enough time to at least confirm the location of the driver and give assistance
@@kujiro_x8099 In a good situation maybe. But that clothing is not convenient to walk in. How many marshals that need to have a certain amount of conditioning, training and wanting to take a chance for their own life going into a fire around the track do you want?
@@kujiro_x8099 A bit of food for thought on your discussion here; While fire retardant clothing does provide protection, it does not stop the heat essentially cooking you if you were to be entering a fire of that scale. What I think would have been better in this scenario would be a thermal imaging camera so they're quickly able to see the driver and the source of the fire. Secondly, more in-depth training to the marshalls about fire fighting with portable extinguishing equipment would be beneficial.
Fact: this is the second year in a row that a car in either f1, f2, or f3 that a car had split in half in a crash, and we all know what was the first one...
@@fuzzy1dk in fact its designed to do so, the entire car will sacrifice itself with crumple and splitting all to protect the central driver survivor shell
Not sure if this was mentioned in another one of your videos, but the ever increasing weight of the cars has the potential to make these crashes more violent.
the weight limit is there to ensure safety requirements are being met though. If you reduce weight you inevitably reduce the structural strength of the car.
I don't envy the investigators' jobs. Even thinking about what happened, let alone what could have happened, is still sending iced water down my veins.
The marshal with the extinguisher who was on Grosgean's side of the barrier was a disgrace. He stood at distance from the burning wreckage and sprayed the contents on the surrounding sand which could not have ignited.
I wondered how many extinguishers that they had at the crash site. Using one to water the weeds could have been the difference between a good and very bad outcome.
@@EscapeMCP If there were weeds there his actions may have been barely excusable. Maybe he has a glass phobia or there isn't enough sand in the desert.
When I saw the fireball my first assumption was that it was grosjean. It was only a matter of time before something big happened to him. I still remember him intentionally spinning around the center of the track at turn 4 in the 2018 Spanish gp opening lap. The guy was a liability. Its amazing he never killed anyone. Pastor Maldonado without the win.
Regardless the explanation or what happened I’m really happy that Romain is still alive. I was very nervous and sad when I saw the crash live and was on the verge of tears.
The barrier deforms to stop cars coming back on track and god for bidden hit by another car, fire extinguishers are good interim but if he was caught then they would need foam from a fire engine , I’m surprised there wasn’t one there by the easy access
2 or 3 of those quick airport fire trucks with the roof mounted foam cannons staged around the track would be a good idea. Maybe introduce a new "red flag" for cars to just stop on one side of the track incase of a major fire to allow the trucks to get there.
or even a medical car like car that has a driver and 4 firefighters with real good fire extinguishers and a hose with a tank in the bank so that while maybe 2 are instantly fighting the fire the other 2 can get the hose out.
Just imagine if the top barrier piece was bent right over the exact middle of the halo. He only got out because the car was angled a bit off to the side, giving him room to crawl out of the halo.
@@danepatterson8107 that survival system would have meant jackshit if the ONLY exit out of the car was blocked and he couldn't get out, that fire proof suit can only last so long before he starts getting burned alive. He was lucky that the bent part of the barrier right next to the cockpit wasn't directly on top of him.
@@CJMVector321190 Indeed. It was lucky that Grosjean could get out of the car, if he couldn't, given how long the car was burning before they finally put it out, he might not have survived. And this wasn't even the entire fuel load on the car burning, what if it was the entire fuel load on fire? Fire response needs to be faster and more effective, that's for sure.
I'd be interested to see the ride height of the nose against the barrier as I wonder if the nose went between 2 horizontals and peeled it open to a degree also
I just looked up the fia technical regulations and it looks like nosecones are typically around 300mm (12 inches) from the ground. I wonder if the barrier had 12 inch rails on it?
I thought that the front of the car with Romain had gone through the barrier and so after the accident he was on the inside of the barrier. So when he climbed over the barrier he was going on to the track side. From the diagram in this video it appears that both front and rear stayed trackside of the barrier. And if my thought is correct it is also so lucky that his car was going so fast that it went all the way though the barrier. Not so good to be stuck underneath the armco with a fire and marshals having problems operating the fire extinguishers. I wonder if they had to pull a pin out of the fire extinguisher first. If so then perhaps they should remove the pins at the start of the race and replace them at the end.
i think is meant to break in two like that . there is an explanation why the pagani huayra breaks in two in case of a high speed impact, when i saw the accident it remained me of that, so i wasnt that shocked of the split of the car
My geuss is that the barrier post was too rigidly planted, likely due to rain-dry cycles and traffic from the access road compressing the soil around the post footing. That post should have broken free instead of acting like a post and shearing the car in half. That particular barrier is also at a higher than normal angle to the track. It could easily be redesigned to be more parallel while still allowing the access road.
so, true, they spend i think a 150k or so on a front spoiler alone, why cant they fit the whole track in those better barriers? i think if it even comes close to saving a single live once, its worth it
in this case, it was explained in the video, this area wasn't supposed to be hit with this angle and speed, armco barriers are cheaper and, all in all, it's just guiding the way for emergency vehicles. This crash is full of certain circumstances.
Superb Video! I was very much into watching Formula 1 as a child and teenager from 1997-2007 and stopped watching for 13 years. I think Corona brought me back to the sport as I was so bored in homeoffice that I searched for old races on youtube. And now I am in love with it again and it feels like coming home. Little did I know that there are fanastic Channels like yours out there on RU-vid. It upgrades the experience of following formula 1 a lot. I guess if RU-vid would have been there in my childhood I had been an absolute motorsports maniac. Keep it going and thank you for your time to produce this high class content.
That car was a bullet fired at metal, it did its job. Otherwise all that energy would of went through the car and driver. Burnt hands are better than all those g forces. Don’t forget it’s not the fall that kills you it’s the sudden stop at the end!
Felt like I was the only one to notice that the Marshall behind the barrier was not actually helping, good on The Race to point that out cause it seemed very overlooked
I would suggest the fire extinguishers need a re-design. Sometimes, including this crash, you see fire marshalls running towards the flames only to stop and somewhat fumble with the fire extinguisher to get it going. Seconds matter, so how about something better?
Extinguisher have safety for reason. Also usually require a bit of force to use. And then add clunky clothes, stress and that marshals quite likely were volunteers.
I'm glad that marshall who came from the other side was noticed. I would imagine that they don't have many fire extinguishers compared to the size of this accident. Wasting one watering the ground could have been critical.
Good video. It is still so surreal that this happened. I hope the findings of this accident will further improve the safety and that Grosjean recovers as fast as possible.
There should be no guard rail type barriers around any track. They are outdated and dangerous. Plus all barriers everywhere around tracks should have rows of tires or another type of cushion barrier in front of it.
But if you see the race itself there are a number of drivers who get outside of the track but manage to return back onto it after going very close to the barrier. Those cars would have all hits those tires your proposing. So that means that all barriers would have to be put 1 meter further away as well.
Angle. I think it is all in the angle the nose of the car hit the barrier that created this chainreaction. It was too steep an angle because the ARMCO inclined towards the track for that service-car opening. In my opinion this opening should be before a corner, not right after because of drivers that drive like Grosjean.
Great points guys. One thing i dont see anyone talking about is the helmet and specifically visor. Romain is a lucky lad in so many ways, brave too. But looking at the guardrail pole that was bent cant help me but to think of what would have happened if it was simillar to massa's incident. The visors are they tough enough to handle those kind of forces? The reason why i am so specific about visors is because that is the only part of the drivers body that is not covered by any fire proof clothing and are exposed to all sorts of debris flying around. just imagine if melted visor is in romains eyes or even the part that flew off of strolls car before impact is heading straight to him.. wow. luckily hes safe and thats most important.
After Massa’s injuries due to flying debris (suspension parts) at Hungaroring, the FIA mandated a smaller eye opening for the helmet. Unfortunately the actual visor is made only of polycarbonate, so it’s not going to be able to withstand much heat, nor any kind of major impact. Driving is a VERY visual skill, so they can only limit the drivers view so much by making the the visor smaller. Obviously a solid helmet would be ideal for keeping the head protected, but it would cause some issues with our vision! 😆
@@medic53067 I mean I totally agree with you on your points but still we should work towards finding a solution and this is one that needs to be improved. No matter what else we improve if we have a situation like massa it doesn’t matter right ?
@@knightriderkar All joking aside, I agree, but materials like that are either obscenely heavy I.e spacecraft glass, and prohibitively expensive. We need scientific minds to create some sort of material that has properties similar to glass (heat), and carbon fibre (strength) and is obviously see through.
He went underneath the main 3 barriers, ( that have no vertical structure ), so the three barriers can easily be lifted up by the car... then in a horizontal slide, he went into the vertical pole that keeps the barrier up... that hit him just between the fuel tank and the engine, thus rupturing the connections. if you want I can make a full analysis of it, as it was really clear what happened... Btw, to put in tires in that corner, as it is now, is not a great plan, as the driver would bounce back onto the track. The corner should be wider and have some gravel. The angle of that barrier coming back to the track should be way later on the straight to keep momentum going...
Is it me or does it sound a little daft to attach the big bag of fuel, no matter how strong, to the one bit of the structure that you don’t really want on fire? Surely a better move would be to make the end of the survival cell without the fuel tank so that should the car break apart like this, as much of the flammable parts are in one half and the driver is in the other?
When I first saw the video of the crash during the race, I thought for sure that the driver had died. I was shocked to see him stand up and jump over the fence.
The more pictures I see of this the more amazed I am that there was enough room for Grosjean to climb out of the car. The top section of Armco looks like it more or less caps the exit route through the halo. It'd be interesting to know what gap was left on the other side of the barriers that he escaped from. Its also easy to see that the centre section of Armco failed through the centre of the bolt holes where it was attached to the next piece along. This must have succumbed to the massive concentrated forces from the relatively small frontal area of the front of the chassis hitting it. I initially thought that the car's nose would have effectively prized two layers of Armco apart and guided it through the gap but its actually burst through the metal.
This was the first time i almost cried from watching sports. They would have been happy tears for Grosjean surviving and the good work everyone did to save his life.
@@mrbungle3310 50-60g is not what you really want; the idea is to reduce the forces acting on the driver, either by deflecting the car so the energy can be released slowly later (as the car scrapes along), or absorbing it through deformation (tyre walls, carbon fibre and bent steel). A barrier holding more than that kind of force might as well be a concrete block, it'll kill more often. I was most surprised by the WAY it deformed; some movement to "catch" the car, but then it opened up and swallowed it whole. I'm thinking reinforcing plates behind the horizontal gaps between the three levels would limit the chance of that, but I'm sure the FIA will be doing better modelling of impact forces than me. Maybe at that angle a less "failed" barrier would have increased the g force, so it's possible this was the best outcome, we just don't know yet.
@@mrbungle3310 Whole-heartedly agree! We've just got to be careful about what "better" looks like; we put automation into aircraft to avoid pilot error, and despite all the redundancy and failsafes we still got crashes caused BY the automation; the law of unintended consequences is unforgiving. The barriers WILL be made better as a result of this. We'll see the results next season, "coming to a circuit near you" :)
@@andyowens5494 its hard to have safety protocols for "freak" accidents. f1 track safety is very smartly rolled out in the sense that they take into account the possible angles a car will be at during a race. armco barriers are designed in areas where a car will make contact from the side and thus it will "roll" along the barrier dispersing impact and damage. this is at the end of a long straight where the barrier is angled along the straight in a way to stop a car that will most likely enter the barrier from the side due to a steering issue or running wide etc. grosjean contacted the armco barrier almost STRAIGHT on in a part of the track where it would be thought nearly impossible for a car to hit it straight on due to the geometry at play. if you look at the rest of the tracks on the calendar there is almost NO armco barrier at a part of the track where a car would potentially hit it straight on. tire barriers are more common there. thats WHY the barrier failed, its not meant to take 50+gs straight on. it would be almost impossible to have the correct safety device at every possible corner and every possible angle a car can hit it. again what happened to grosjean at THAT SPECIFIC part of the track was a freak accident meaning it would be almost impossible to predict his car would hit at the angle he did. grosjean i dont think saw kyvat to the right of him and he attempted a quick passing move by jerking to the right and then attempting to pass the car in front. however kyvat was there and grosjean CERTAINLY wouldnt have made the move if he saw him, they touched tires making grosjean go airborne for a second (with his steering wheel input hard right ) and when the tires hit the pavement again he was slingshot into the barrier at the angle of his tires, almost straight on.
The fastest I have ever driven myself was 190 km/h, so I can't even imagine the violence of a 221 km/h crash that instantly stops me to a stand still. It's a shocking occurrence, but also a sign that F1 safety is incredibly effective, all while enabling the cars to perform this good in racing. Very glad Grosjean didn't end up a second Nikki Lauda.
I wonder if this crash will bring back in race refuelling as a safety measure. Sort of a "Ok, the fuel tank can be ruptured in certain circumstances, so carrying 110kg of fuel at the start of the race is dangerous, so you can only start with 50kg and have to be careful when topping up."
@@jimmitchell6000 I have but that's not my point. I'm saying it could prove to be safer if they don't have the cars carrying all the fuel around. I'm sure they can have a punch of fire engines ready to go in the pitlane, far better than the extinquishers the marshalls have.
Thats not true. The tracks are constantly upgrading the barriers, berms and runoff areas. Alot of the time it comes down to money...the impact absorbing barriers are super expensive so in what are deemed non critical areas you’ll find bare Aarmco or rows of tires...I expect that will change now as another person said “ if its on the track, it’s critical”
The question whether a driver is/is not stuck in the car in an accident like this is the most important. The track personnel were not able to deal with the fire and that's fact.
I believe the second marshal who was 'nowhere near the flames' 05:45 , had just run back from running away from the crash itself. If you watch, he runs away to avoid the debris but then instantly turns around, comes back with a fire extinguisher, and does something.
From what I've seen(very shortly in another video, I didn't examine it too much) from birds eye view of the area, I don't see why they can't push that particular access road back some to increase the distance from the track limit to the barrier
Which would also give more room for a tire wall barrier before the Aramco barrier, thus potentially avoiding some risk of crashes bouncing back onto the track
It's because the track has variable layouts. This is the F1 layout, but other series run different setups at the track. Different layouts put the risk of crashes at different points and they have to do the best they can for where to put safety equipment and marshal stands that cover every configuration. This was a weird weird place for a car to crash in this layout. It wasn't a simple crash. A Racing Point car went off into turn 2, and stayed off for the chicane of turn 3, he then rejoined on the straight after turn 3. That forced all the cars left to avoid hitting him, pushing a Alfa car off the track. Grosjean in trying not to go off and also hit the Alfa that just went off on the left came across and hit Kvyat which sent him into the wall on the right. It all started because whoever was in the Racing Point car rejoined illegally into the pack during traffic. I do not know who that Racing Point driver was, but he caused two incidents. Which is why the wreck is just so weird, it was well after the turn, but one bad driver sent everyone scrambling to get out of the way in a place that should have been safe. Which btw is also freak'n weird. In any other wreck I would know who the hell that driver is from Racing Point. His name would be everywhere for merging illegally. But everyone got so caught up in Grosjean's wreck that happened seconds later to assess penalties for the leadup to it. Even after the wreck the wreck itself subsumed the leadup, so someone is going to get off free for dangerous driving. As it is all I know is that it's a bright pink car.
@@michaelholloway5646 yeah I watched the replays, I believe the rp was stroll but not 100% sure. Thanks for the info about the track layouts though, it makes sense. I guess I had just remembered seeing emptiness behind the barrier is why I was wondering mostly
The other issue is track design. Why the barrier for the service road juts out into the run-off area towards the track at such an angle. Maybe it should join the track a little further along the straight section at a shallower angle.
That type of barrier has to be changed. They have never really been safe, just cheap and convenient. This is the 21st century. Surely we can find a safer solution than guard rails that have been used since the 1940's. If its as simple as placing some old tires and conveyor belt next to them then lets do it.
The type of barrier isn't a cheap/convenient choice, it's a decent barrier for the position it's in. The crash Grosjean had was one nobody could have foreseen or thought to small a chance to consider adding safety feature at that location for. As is the case with many of these kind of accidents, knowledge and awareness are there once it's already happend. I do agree with you, the barriers around circuits F1 races on should be of the highest available standard.
@@petiertje Although I agree that it's not generally a bad choice, every part among the track has to be considered as a possible point for an impact, and that cars might be deflected in an unusual angle is nothing new, and must be considered. They now added two rows of tires, which sounds reasonable given the distance to the track limit - if a car makes it that far, it's likely better to absorb its energy instead of trying to deflect it.
That type of barrier is ok for a straight. You don't want a soft barrier (like tyre barriers) when the cars are expected to hit with a shallow angle. The problem of this crash is that the angle of that barrier in that position is wrong, the barrier should be more parallel trough the track allowing the cars that are going to crash to slide and slow down in a longer distance.
Armco barrier absorbs energy by gradual deformation and failure. If you look at the experimental footage from 3:06 you will see how the support pillars fail: this is designed into them. It allows the force to be shared among other vertical pillars, and along a greater length of barrier. This only works when the angle of incidence to the normal is above a certain value. In this accident it looked as though the angle was too small - approaching along the normal. Even so, why did the vertical nearest the point of entry not shear off? Had it done so there would have been reduced g as the barrier deformed. The main concern is the use of two rails. Why is the rail designed in two sections rather than a single one? I posit that it is to reduce manufacturing costs rather than to improve safety.
You dont have to move it. You just change where it breaks. It's obvious when you think about it. Why would you want the fuel staying with the tub? Keep it with the engine and not only does the fire move away from the driver theres less chance of any fuel being split by severed lines etc. Make the fuel cell part of the power unit.
@@stivi739 I think the point he's making is that the fuel cell should attach to the engine instead of the chassis, so that if a crash like that happens again the broken fuel tank goes with the back of the car and away from the chassis. It might actually be designed that way, but the crash just broke the car in an unexpected manner.
One thing NO ONE is talking about, the HUGE crack in the upper leg area of the survival pod/cockpit. It looks like, from the photos I've seen, the crack/failure was initiated at where the HALO mounts at the front. That mount NEEDS TO GROW to better spread those forces out across the survival pod/cockpit. Personally I think the HALO titanium casting should be expanded with a second ring just under the cockpit driver opening and then have multiple mount points all around that ring into to the survival pod/cockpit. If YT comments could have images, I'd post a quick sketch.
Biggest problem is they have made the cockpit enclosed for driver safety, this has taken away the ability to see what is alongside the car (open cockpits allowed the driver turn their head to the side to see) if proximity sensors were fitted to the car, this could have potentially have given Romain some indication of the car alongside him that he couldn't see in his mirror
Why they don't have blindspot (curved) mirrors is beyond me. Most cars have them now and cars have a much smaller blindspot to cover with such a mirror. This isn't the first time we've seen drivers not know that a car was on their inside. With a curved mirror, they could get a much better idea of what is around the car.
I think the real danger here was the risk for entrapment, a car should never penetrate a barrier like that, if the car hadn't penetrated the barrier the it never would have experienced a bending moment and most likely never would have split in half exposing the fuel tank or battery, due to the packaging constraints I think it will be difficult to move the battery and fuel tank away from each other but other bits of protection would help
The second marshal with the fire extinguisher the right thing by releasing his extinguisher early. Opening it up on a fire too close can cause the fuel to spread and flare back on the extinguisher operator. There’s no point in getting too close before using your extinguisher and having a second casualty.
