Comments on: Closed cockpits aren’t a perfect solution – but they may be an improvement

By: Sam Oz

Sam Oz — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 01:05:33 +0000

My preliminary thought is that this is quite silly from a risk management perspective. I’m sure some one with the stats could work out the formula but based on my 20 something years watching open cockpit motor racing the likelihood (amount of races in history Vs. amount of incidents of Massa’s type) is quite low and the consequence is also low (most likely consequence, not worst case consequence) due to existing controls such as helmet, HANS etc. If putting in place further controls because of silly damage control, knee jerk reaction bureaucratic freaks only heightens the risk of other hazards… Well it’s just all gone mad over a risk that was quite low to begin with!

A lot of people blame safety people for this sort of over-the-topness, but are wrong to do so. It’s people in much higher places that know nothing about safety and risk that force safety people to come up with these things. Everyone’s always answering to someone else a little higher then themselves, and they are always asking, “so, what are we doing about this?”. This ends up going down the food chain till it rests on the shoulders of the safety person to “do something”, even if it is not really necessary for something to be done due to the inherently low risk.

All management see is there is an accident, perhaps a very public accident, something HAS to be done- we HAVE to be seen to be ATTEMPTING to improve.

This is not safety gone mad – its bureaucrats!

By: Keith Collantine

Keith Collantine — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 00:48:18 +0000

Participants in motor sport are all aware of the risks involved. They acknowledge them, and decide whether to compete or not. If the drivers choose to drive inherently dangerous cars, then that’s their choice.

No-one’s denying that. But you could use the same argument against any safety innovation. Why this and not crash helmets or fireproof racing suits?

I believe that there is really no need to get rid of open wheel racing

That’s not what’s being suggested here.

By: Crispin

Crispin — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 21:21:40 +0000

Participants in motor sport are all aware of the risks involved. They acknowledge them, and decide whether to compete or not. If the drivers choose to drive inherently dangerous cars, then that’s their choice.

Personally, I believe that there is really no need to get rid of open wheel racing, or introduce windscreens, as if the windscreen shatters from say a wheel hitting it, then the doctors and marshalls will have to deal with a potential for shattered glass or plastic that’s embedded itself in the drivers throat, etc.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:20:47 +0000

My deepest apologies and sympathy goes to the Surtees family, but sadly it was a freak accident and nothing more, people are overreacting i think becasue do we see accidents like that everyday in motor racing? No we dont so why should things be changed dramatically because of one incident? It’s like Massa’s accident in Hungary, it was just a case of him being in the wrong place at the wrong time and it was just awful bad luck that spring was bouncing on the racing line at the time. A closed cockpit isn’t the solution, the obvious argument is if the driver needs to get out quickly then a closed cockpit will make this difficult, a couple of people mentioned on here about KERS chemicals poisoning the drivers if the KERS explodes, also wouldn’t a closed cockpit affect the aerodynamics pretty bad? I think the best solution is a wind screen (or another name for it being deflector shield) at least this way the drivers have more protection and can get out the car quickly if they need to. Also to the people saying death can be avoided in motorsport i dont agree with that, it can and should be minimized but it will never be diminished. Death can happen in other sports like rugby or football so i dount death can be stopped in motorsport.

By: Filip

Filip — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:22:55 +0000

There’s been a lot of talk about wheel tethers.
I don’t really know how relevant the following is to this conversation, but I’ll give it a go.
I was watching the Kubica accident videos and saw a part fly of the car, but was held with some sort of a tether.
You can see that part fly above Kubicas head at 0.06 of the first video.

http://gregorymoine.com/accident-de-kubica/

I’m kinda thinking it’s a bargeboard or something?
So, are they secured to the car like the wheels are or?

Filip

By: Benalf

Benalf — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 19:48:48 +0000

In order to help with solutions we have to discuss different risks in separate ways. What happened to Massa only required a protective windshield; not a big one; just enough to reduce the chance of frontal, front-lateral strike; that way, you still have the lovely open cockpit F1 car….
For something that hits from above or from behind (such as another car climbing on top of the other) the situation is more complicated and a solution is not straightforward. Usually objects hitting from above will be more heavier (wheel, car floor, suspension, etc) so if it is contact, there’s a good chance for life-threatening injury because the neck will be laterally displaced or pushed downwards… Let’s see what the FIA will do if they really want to attack this issue

By: CD

CD — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:49:58 +0000

I was about to point it out to you Keith.

By: Spud

Spud — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 18:07:20 +0000

Oh For God’s Sake.

By: marc

marc — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:44:14 +0000

Famous last words…

By: Keith Collantine

Keith Collantine — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 13:55:14 +0000

Since this was written Massa has had an accident caused by a piece of debris striking his helmet. The choice of image for the article three days ago was an incredibly unfortunate coincidence:

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2009/07/25/felipe-massa-crashes-heavily-after-being-struck-by-debris-during-qualifying/

Thankfully it seems Massa is OK.