Comments on: Video: Fernando Alonso’s Fuji crash onboard

By: sam

sam — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 00:06:14 +0000

If this were on YouTube, it wouldn’t last a second.

I agree with doctorvee about the Fuji TV coverage. Immediately after the Japanese race was over (several months ago) I made a post in here about how I felt the coverage was awful.

I’m wondering if someone can tell me what Webber was saying after the wreck.. couldn’t hear over the Italian voice-over.

By: milos

milos — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 04:55:45 +0000

The DVD seems to be worth it …

I wonder how long it will take before this video is taken down

By: alan

alan — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:51:12 +0000

great racing and proper wheel to wheel stuff from masa and kubica – well what points out of ten for the organisations coverage? – 2 – they were there and they showed the winner – great to see different perspective of a race

By: M Smith

M Smith — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:03:34 +0000

The Kubica/Massa was amazing! I could watch that for ages!

Alonso’s accident looked like unavoidable aquaplanning, he was on track, then suddenly under braking, experienced massive oversteer and went straight to the scene of the accident.

The team radio clips straight after the Vettel/Webber crash should be good to hear (without the Italian voice talking over it, of course.)

By: SoLiD

SoLiD — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:43:22 +0000

You hear Alonso going on the throttle, maybe a bit early…
but that’s pure aquaplanning, it was sooo wet..can’t do anything about it.
Can’t blame Alonso for the crash, he has proven to be great and not a crasher!
(last year (2006) he used 1 chassis all season)

By: M Smith

M Smith — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:21:05 +0000

Looks like a great DVD review, already preordered it!

By: doctorvee

doctorvee — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:49:45 +0000

This just underlines for me how terrible the direction of the Japanese Grand Prix was. And it is, every single year, without fail, the worst coverage of the year. Given that FOM are now responsible for the world feed at almost every race, I cannot fathom why they don’t also take control of the Japanese Grand Prix, because it is by far the worst coverage. Before I had assumed that the only reason we hadn’t seen footage of Alonso’s accident or indeed Webber and Vettel was because the footage didn’t exist. But it did exist — we just weren’t shown these two hugely important incidents by the awful Fuji TV director. What a shambles!

By: Sri

Sri — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:09:54 +0000

Interesting point that you made Keith. For once it will silence people who claimed “Alonso couldn’t handle his car, when Lewis could”.

By: Tommy B

Tommy B — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:00:52 +0000

The Massa and Kubica battle I can watch that over and over and over. Most enjoyable bit of racing I’ve ever seen!

By: Keith Collantine

Keith Collantine — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:55:11 +0000

Martin Whitmarsh had this to say at the time:

Both our drivers were hit from behind today. Unfortunately for Fernando he was hit harder than Lewis. The floor was very badly damaged and flapping around, the rear pick-ups were damaged.

We could see in the data that he had lost a significant amount of downforce and the overall balance of the car, so the likelihood of him aquaplaning was always going to be greater than it was for anyone else out there. He was going to battle on.

We don’t know in truth, there may even have been a mechanical failure. There’s no evidence of it at the moment, but he’s been hit quite hard, and maybe he had a problem. Even if he hadn’t, it was quite understandable that he was driving a real handful of a car. He lost approaching 10% of the downforce, a sizeable amount.