Are F1’s new combination kerbs safe?

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The combination kerbs in use at Monza last year

I’ve mentioned here before my concern that the new combination kerbs being used on several F1 tracks could cause an out-of-control car to fly into the air.

The kerbs were installed at Monza ahead of last year’s F1 race. Yesterday at the circuit a Formula Two driver hit one of them and flew across the track at head height.

Nicola de Marco struck the combination kerb on the first lap of the F2 race. It pitched his car into the air as it crossed the track and, had there been another car on the track at that point, de Marco’s car would have hit it at head height.

It’s not hard to see how a similar accident could happen in F1 – we’ve already had two similar crashes year: Kamui Kobayashi’s at Melbourne and Vitantonio Liuzzi’s at Shanghai.

An out-of-control car is always going to be dangerous but if it strikes a kerb which springs it into the air its driver is powerless to slow it down and it had the potential to strike another car in the place its driver is most exposed.

The combination kerbs are effective at stopping drivers from cutting corners because of the raised section which discourages drivers from running across them. They kerbs are also being used at some corners in Melbourne, Singapore and the new section at Silverstone.

Do you think the kerbs are safe enough? How could they be improved? Have your say in the comments.

This low shot gives an impression of how high the kerbs are (click to enlarge)

Combination kerbs

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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93 comments on “Are F1’s new combination kerbs safe?”

  1. Looked potentially nasty. I do wonder about those F2 cars – if anything bad is going on, it seems to happen to them worst.

    *Pedantry alert* It wasn’t Marinescu, he’s in a white and green car and is still there at the end of lap one. Think it might have been Nicola de Marco.

    1. You’re right, I was looking at the grid for the second race! Changed it.

      1. and superbikes?the kerbs are the same f2 drivers are just too many and not very experienced

    2. I agree about the FP2 cars. The footage a few weeks ago, where a car flew over the in car cam from behind was spectacular, and frightening.

      Now argument about the curbs, it’s simply a matter of time, that’s not a place we want to be.

  2. I think the kerbs should be removed or drastically lowered,far too dangerous.

  3. I’m not sure it this would have a similar effect [any physics experts in?], but why not do the total opposite and dip the kerbs into the ground?

    To clarify, keep the major element of the kerb on the same level with the race surface, but where these giant lumps are, create dips. It would certainly discourage kerb over-usage as running a tyre into one would probably obliterate the underside of a car/suspension, but wouldn’t have quite a ‘ramp’ effect’ if a car hit it in the same way as we’ve seen so far this year.

    I dunno, playing with ideas. Whatever the way, they are certainly looking more dangerous. Whatever happened to those tyre stacks at the apexes of the old Monza chicanes? Were they seen as being too dangerous?

    1. It’s a good idea, but would probably cause suspension faliure. Which isn’t much safer really, more bits.

    2. If two cars are racing close to each other and the one in front goes into it by mistake, it would probably slow the car down so much that it would destroy the suspension and the car following it for no fault of its own.

      1. But surely, isn’t that what could/would happen with the current type of kerbs?

        1. No. The moment the car goes into that bump, the suspension will be destroyed, slowing the car down massively. The guy behind won’t even have a clue of what happened to him.

    3. I had a similar idea to this one, though it’s more like a trench with it’s vertical walls painted yellow to make them visible.

      Or what about good old fashioned barriers, starting at the apex of the first corner leading around the exit of the second. Any car which goes out of control in the fashion we’ve seen will just hit it while the pack goes by unmolested on the other side.

    4. spanky the wonder monkey
      25th May 2010, 15:08

      it would depend on the speed of the car as to what happens. if the car is going fast enough, they will simply float straight over as there is sufficient rise in the first part of the kerb to give the necessary trajectory. if they are slower, then the wheels will dip in and ramp back out the other side, giving a similar effect to the raised kerbs, albeit with the car getting airborne a meter or so later than with the current kerbs. add in the effect of slip and you can potentially rip wheels off in the process.

      knock flat apex markers may be sufficient to do the job. hit one with the front wing then it will probably damage the elements sufficiently that the car will need a replacement, but not so catastrophic that you get out of control cars flying around. won’t help with non-winged formula though.

      police stinger mats would also do the job nicely, but a bit extreme perhaps ;-)

  4. Saying that I didn’t realise those tyre stacks just fell apart if struck hard enough:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gghDxw8SX8

    I can see why we don’t have them anymore.

  5. UneedAFinn2Win
    23rd May 2010, 9:47

    Make the second bit out of an absorbent material that gives way under the weight of the tire, slowing it down. Some type of foamy rubber with high ridges.It would deter cutting corners just as much as the current system but sudden oversteer is safer than going airborne.

    1. I think in Bahrain they’ve built a particularly abrasive tyre destroying kurb. I think if the drivers all thought the tenth provided at the kurbs would mean no grip in three laps they’d avoid the kurbs.

      1. MouseNightshirt
        23rd May 2010, 13:09

        I like that – cutting kerb hurts tyres badly. That would discourage most I reckon.

      2. Best solution I’ve heard yet. I’d go with this one.

      3. @Scribe: Couldn’t agree more, gets my vote

        1. Mud, lots of mud. That will slow them down.

    2. I was thinking that exact thing.

  6. It seems completely paradoxical to me to go paving the insides and outsides of corners to allow drivers to cut across in emergency situations and then put high curbs or sleeping policemen to stop them doing it.

    If you don’t want drivers cutting corners, stop this paved runoff rubbish. Off track should be off the road. Just use minimal width curbs and have grass all the way up to the track. A driver going off will most likely damage his front wing in the grass and drag a whole load of dirt onto the track and mess everyone’s race up. Hey presto, no more cutting corners.

    1. That’s very true, actually. I was wondering the other day why on earth we have these random extensions to the race track.

      T7/8 of Catalunya are prime examples of this excessive use of what I don’t think is the track.

    2. Not to mention sliding into the wall going 200km/h. You have no control over you car on grass.

      1. Tarmac has the advantage of giving the driver a chance of regaining control or at least slowing the car down before hitting any walls.

        However, the immediate vicinity of the track needs to be unpaved, low grip and unpredictable or else it just becomes and extention of the race track.

  7. They obviously do it to stop cars cutting corners. How about using a system that deflates or damages the tyre (but not spikes/knives/etc for obvious reasons!) and then leave it up to the driver to decide if he wants to take a shortcut or not.

    1. At Paul Ricard the runoff zone has been a particularly abrasive kind of tarmac for years. If you go too far off the track your tyre will be damaged. I’ve never understood why this system hasn’t been implemented at other F1 tracks.

      1. completely agree. sounds like a good plan.

  8. This is only really an issue at chicanes, so for me the answer is to re-profile the chicane so its not possible to straight line it.

    I hate chicanes!

    I like the idea said previously of lowering the inner kerb below the track height, or using drag inducing materials.

  9. Why do they needs kerbs at all? Just have the track, then when the track ends, have grass or gravel. That’ll stop drivers cutting corners and no-one will be pitched into the air. The worst that will happen is that the tyre will lose traction on the grass, and the driver will spin, which is punishment enough for corner cutting.

    I’ve always seen kerbs as a track extension, but if you want more area on the apex of a corner for cars to use, why don’t they just extend the track slightly and lay more Tarmac down? They should just simplify it all. The area is either racing surface (Tarmac) or a punishment-for-being-off-the-track surface (grass, gravel, whatever). Super safe Tarmac run-offs only entise the drivers to essentially cheat by using it (see the GT1 cars at the new Club corner a few weekends back, or Kimi Raikkonen at any Belgian Grand Prix ever), and kerbs can end up either ripping the underside of a car apart, or throwing it up into the path of another driver’s jugular. Grass never hurt nobody, apart from some pride and ego due to spins on its slippy surface.

      1. Not sure what exactly you’re getting at there, Hey. I think that crash would have been equally as violent, grass, tarmac or gravel.

        1. “Why do they needs kerbs at all? Just have the track, then when the track ends, have grass or gravel. That’ll stop drivers cutting corners and no-one will be pitched into the air.”

          That’s what he’s getting at.

          You can not stop cars being pitched into the air regardless of what you do.

          1. Sorry for being too flippant, but it was just the comment about “Grass never hurt nobody” that I had to respond to. Ajokay’s general point that grass might be a good inside-/outside-corner surface strip is OK, but not in general for a F1 circuit surface.

            Grass is soft enough to be dug into, but hard and heavy enough to really grip a car and tear chunks off it. It can make rolls or run-offs much much worse, which is especially not OK in open top racing. Tarmac is too hard to dig into in the first place. Gravel traps are loose, so they don’t violently grab the car while slowing it down as much as grass does.

            I immediately thought of Villeneuve because his car landed on grass and got ripped to shreds. Who knows? Maybe if he’d have landed on tarmac his car would have lost a wheel or two on landing and just skidded on its lid until it stopped. Maybe not. Maybe Kubica’s Montreal crash might not have been so bad if he hadn’t lost all control bouncing over grass to begin with and then been ripped up rolling over it before having a relately calm slide across the track.

            Now obviously I started with a passing response to one part of a reasonable general point, which is now more massive than it was ever meant to be, but to say that grass never hurt anyone was an outstanding comment for me.

            Of course, the surface properties of grass are very useful. It’s just the earth underneath that’s the problem. So only logical conclusion from my musings is that all grass on F1 circuits be immediately replaced with Astroturf.

            Wait, that can’t be right…

          2. I think the point is that grass can be dangerous when cars get airbourne – gravel too.

            In Villeneuve’s fatal shunt, the Ferrari landed nose down on the grass and dug in, with the result being the driver subjected to massive deceleration. That played a big part in the damage caused to both car and driver. Had the Ferrari landed on tarmac it might not have stopped so suddenly, giving the driver a better chance of surviving.

            Grass and gravel are both relatively uneven surfaces, which means that even cars in a flat spin can dig in and roll.

          3. “You can not stop cars being pitched into the air regardless of what you do.”

            Correct.

            But.

            If you put a ramp on the inside of a corner (aka… these new kerbs) and a single seater car with a whisker of ground clearance runs over it, what’s going to happen? Yes, well done, it’s going to launch.

            If you have a nice, well kept grassy surface on the inside of a corner, and a car puts a wheel or two over it, or runs across it completely, what is likely to happen? The car will slow, it’ll lose traction. It might skid or spin, it might get away with it. Either way, it’s highly unlikely that that car will launch into the air like said F2 crash above.

            That’s what I was getting at. Sure it’s not perfect for the run-off area on the outside of a fast corner, but neither do I think tarmac or gravel is. What would you suggest? Cotten wool? bouncy castles? acres of candy floss?

            And don’t go replying to my thoughts of ‘grass never hurt nobody’ with a video of Gilles’ fatal crash, because that is, quite frankly, a stupid thing to do. As Jack Payne said, his landing would still been as equally bad on gravel of tarmac, and the grass had nothing to do with him having the accident at all. He was pitched over another car, and then the poor design of early 80’s cars, with the driver essentially sitting in the nosecone, along with the seat being ripped loose, and chicken wire for guard rails is what killed the poor guy.

          4. The rest of your points are decent. And maybe Villeneuve isn’t the cleanest example I could have picked. But just for the record, I totally disagree about thinking grass didn’t make his crash much worse.

            I mean it’s fine for us to disagree about how much grass contributed. But to think that suggesting that grass was a contributing factor was “stupid”? Honestly?? I would have just let it go, but seriously, you’re going to have to do some gardening or something.

            I propose an experiment. Run down a hill with you hands tied to a pitchfork. While running, drop the end of the pitchfork onto the ground. Do this once on tarmac and once on grass. Note which one a) decelerates you faster and b) breaks your wrists. Then come back and tell me its stupid to suggest that grass might have had something to do with Gilles being ripped out of his car.

  10. How about replacing the kerbs with gravel trap ? This would slow down the cars without the flight launch.

    1. Wouldn’t that just throw gravel onto the track, causing more problems for all the drivers.

      1. Why dont they put illuminated ice instead of those high cerbs and astroturfs. No seriously! It would be much more affective to have a 1 meter wide strip of ice at the side of the track rather than just about anything else, also it can be completely flat and illuminated by coloured lights under the ice it would look amazing. And the refrigeration couldn’t leave a huge dent in the multi-million budget.

        1. Bernie? Is that you?

          1. Yes, and I want it completed ready for 2012. In Abu Dhabi, Silverstone, Nurburgring, Sepang and Monza in particular. And there should not be any technical problem for whom a salution could not be found!

  11. Marc Connell
    23rd May 2010, 10:18

    I thought kerbs where designed so you can skip them, and if you go to far you hit “the wall” some people call it which tell you your being stupid by cutting to much of the corner.
    I prefer this, you have a chance to go over the kerb but you dont have the chance to cut the corner completely. But i do agree there stupidly high. At the first chicane at monza, i think they should remove the first one or lower it alot and leave the 2nd one where it is. Same for the spanish GP at the new chicane there. Remove the first but keep the 2nd, infact redesign the 2nd kerb so its smoother.

  12. The idea of the kerb is to prevent drivers from using them at all. F1 drivers are now pretty safe in the cockpit of an F1 car, even more so in recent years thanks to lobbying from David Coulthard.

    I think the above accident was an example of inexperience. I cant see an F1 driver doing the same. Those kerbs would wreck the suspension and probably cause a puncture too. They seem to work as a deterrent…

    1. I know F1 drivers are meant to be the best, but mistakes happen, How many times have you seen a driver lose it for seemingly no reason? Or cut across a corner, or go wide.

      You have to allow for errors when you design things.

      1. Now that Piquet has gone, not too often really. Almost all of the incidents this year have been mechanically related rather than driver error.

      2. Hamilton Monza 2009 last lap :)

  13. Why not just put spikes there instead, completely shred the tyres – that will soon put a stop to corner skipping!

  14. Have a really long backing ramp on the non-track side of the chicane hump. That way it’s less like hitting a sleeping policeman and bouncing into the air, and more like dropping straight off a 6 inch cliff. Scraping against the edge of said cliff would probably do no good to your floor or diffuser so drivers still won’t want to cut the corner.

    I just hope that we don’t look back at raised kerbs as one of those things that was obviously an unnecessary hazard but only got changed once someone got seriously injured. With open cockpit racing there’s always a chance of a driver being hit: just look at the bump that Trulli’s floor gave Chandok’s helmet last week. But we really shouldn’t have custom devices that have the delightful side effect of flicking fast cars at the helmets of other drivers for fun.

  15. I think doing away with kerbs completely is a good option with a low grip surface on the inside of the corner, be it grass or some other material. The only problem with this is the corners will still be cut to varying degrees and in some cases this would seen as unacceptable.
    Maybe the best answer is to radically elongate the profile of the kerb. Imagine ‘filling in’ the inside of the corner to the height of the kerb. About 40-50m from the corner, a gradual increase in height at a rate low enough to not launch the car into the air, leveling off about 20m before the corner. Then the sudden drop onto the track with the same cross section radius as a current kerb.
    This would mean out of control cars would drop as they came back onto the track instead of rise.
    Obviously this would not work for every corner but even if it was used in areas where there are large speed differentials it would be a cheap and effective solution.

  16. Don’t you think the actuel problem is the chicanes ? They put it for safety reasons, but I think having the drivers to hit the brakes so hard and so suddenly after a long straight is far more dangerous.

    I would be so happy if we could get rid of these awful 1st and 2nd chicanes in Monza !
    Just put a “soft wall” (like in US ovals) in the Curva grande (which would become an awesome corner).

    1. lol
      “…but I think having the drivers to hit the brakes so hard and so suddenly after a long straight is far more dangerous.”

      rubbish. The amazing brakes on F1 cars make braking into slow chicanes one of the safest things you’ll ever do in an F1 car. The dangerous stuff in F1 is the high speed stuff.

  17. Andrea Corbetta
    23rd May 2010, 10:50

    Hello everyone, hello Keith
    I was yesterday in “Prima chicane” during F2 race. I think new kerbs is not so different than old ones, I think could be an interesting challenge for drivers

  18. Get rid of them . Stick to the rule 1 tyre on track and you’re on the track. What’s the big deal? They are their to be driven on otherwise put a wall there.

    1. Bigbadderboom
      23rd May 2010, 11:59

      I agree, have hard and fast rules about cutting corners, reduce the kerb height and let stewards punish those that consistantly cut the corners. Introduce a yellow card system by where you get 1 warning, then a drive through, and if you continue then you get a 20 sec stop and go. Any physical deterrant is going to increase risk of damage to driver and car.
      What I don’t like about the new kerbs is the fact that anybody thats going to be sriousley injured is unlikely to be the driver commiting the infringement, it will be some poor innocent that gets landed on.
      With all the cameras, drivers helping with the stewards it should be easy to identify and punish.

  19. I think they are dangerous for now because its new but the drivers will get used to it over time I guess.

  20. The Illinois Enema Bandit
    23rd May 2010, 11:34

    You’d have thought that in this day and age a sensor could be put under the track which either alerts race control when a car cuts a turn or maybe even limits the car’s power for ~10s or something.

    1. HounslowBusGarage
      23rd May 2010, 14:06

      That’s an interesting name you’ve got there. You don’t hear much about Zappa these days.

    2. Lehonardeuler
      23rd May 2010, 19:56

      The “sensor kerb” is an interesting idea! Though it could be somewhat dangerous (and also difficult) to implement a power limitation for some time on track…
      The thing is: do we want penalties on drivers for doing something wrong that was made possible for their own safety, or do we want them to run a real risk and prevent them from doing it in the first place?
      I go with the 1st option: Safety first, but if they gamble with this commodity they should be given a penalty. Then it can be talked how hard a penalty should be (pass-through, power limitation, etc).
      But some people don’t want penalties to “mess up” races, so a “preventive” solution will suit them better.
      To sum up: Is either a penalty preventive or a safety preventive approach, but not both.

  21. that is one ugly mclaren!

    I agree with red andy here, just use progressively abrasive run off zones.

  22. Can’ the FIA install sensor so that if a car cross certain line on the track then they will be punished?

  23. How on earth did he manage to get on the inside kerb of that chicane anyway?

    Maybe they shouldn’t let dangerous drivers like that race?

    1. lol exactly

      The guy dropped the car under very little braking for the first chicane. Terrible driving.

  24. remove the high kerbs and have a clearly painted yellow area so if a driver’s wheel goes into whilst overtaking he should be penalised or let the guy behind go back infront.

  25. i’m fine with the what the kerbs do and how they do it. they pose a certain amount of risk, but risk is part of the sport. any sport, really.

  26. MouseNightshirt
    23rd May 2010, 13:16

    What lots of smaller raised “nodules”. Not big enough to launch the car but enough to raise most of the contact patch of the tyres away from the surface, reducing grip and costing time?

  27. New kid on the block
    23rd May 2010, 14:26

    Has anyone seen what the V8 supercars in Australia (mainly on Surfers Paradise) use? maybe a study along those lines of a tire inside the kerbs and maybe upgrade it to better suit F1, it manages to lift the car, but not to an insane height, and the tire thing being held by a chain wont fly anywhere. It damages the wheel or wing, but not the suspension.

    its worth a look.

    (first post! :) )

  28. Is it time for an electronic solution to enforcing the boundaries of the track?

    I presume originally the curbs were intended to prevent cars leaving the track, then we needed curbs behind the curbs. Might it be better if the standard ECU linked to sensors so that if a car moves too far off the track his revs are limited at a lower value for a period of time, for example, half a second at the revs he was on when he crossed the line?

  29. Have flat kerbs that the width of the wheel, and leave the rest as grass or an abrasive surface. That will stop them cutting the corners.

    1. i like the sound of that

    2. Just make kerbs high enough so they can never cut it, like 1 foot :D

      50 feet before the corner its at the same level als the tarmac, at the apex its 1 foot and 50 feet after the corner its back to same leel as tarmac.
      That way they will never cut it

  30. That’s a very good point, if someone was to drop it before a corner and hit that, it could cause big problems

  31. Instead of making the kerbs very high, make them very low. Its as simple as that :)

  32. How about this as a completely radical solution from out of left field and so far out of the box it is unbelievable……

    We don’t all panic and demand draconian measures because of one or two isolated incidents.

    6 Races so far. Totaling over 1100 miles of racing. Taking in to account the number of cars involved in those races, we have probably gone well past 25,000 miles in terms of distance travelled. And two marginal incidents in which no one was hurt, and a third from a different series in which no one was hurt, and all of a sudden they are seriously dangerous and we should be having them changed? Even more of a spurious link when the two F1 incidents in question were not the fault of the kerbs.

    And the tenuous nature of such a complaint is even more obvious when an even more dangerous incident happened in Monaco because of open wheels and not these kerbs – so why not change that as well???

    Or put cockpits on the cars so there are no risks to the head of the drivers???

    Or how about we cancel F1 and all watch Touring Cars instead???

    I once stood on a tennis ball and sprained my ankle, so lets make them square instead, or ultra soft so the collapse, to reduce the risk of injury because of the statistical likelihood of an injury in less than 0.01% of the time.

    So does not panicking seem quite so ludicrous compared to any other suggestion???

    1. Well said, And I thought I was the only one to think like that. There really is too much knee jerk thinking going on.

  33. It is interesting that fans and viewers can see what regulartors can’t.
    As the recent death of a luger at the Olympics showed us, anyone who has spent any time in loss control and risk analysis could have seen, the track was flawed.
    These curbs are clearly dangerous.
    If the FIA wants to stop them cutting the corners put in traffic barriers i.e. short walls. That will insure they stay on the track.

  34. Do away with the kerbs all together and have concrete on the inside at the same level as the track with holes in it (lets say 10 cm in diameter) where grass grows. If the grass is let to grow enough it will more or less cover the concrete. In this way earth is not torn up by the wheels since the concrete is at the same level to protect it. Sure the drivers will put the inside wheel on the grass but doing it with the outside wheel as well will not offer much grip.

  35. I would avoid kerbs at all.
    Go in the grass and keep what you have (tyres damage, cars damage and so on…).
    I hate a track that has some kerbs, than some green tarmac, then some concrete support…you never do a mistake with tracks like that.
    “Springboard” kerbs are only the worst of the worst, in that sense.

  36. I think it is not dangerous, but is interesting to see how those drivers in F2 weave a lot in front of each other…

    Isn´t FIA responsible for drive etiquette on this low formulas too?

  37. Secondary high step kerbing is designed to stop over cutting. Get rid of them. Put in their place an aggressive secondary kerb at the same level. Aggerssive? No expert, but something that will hurt tyres is hit – maybe hard sharp edged ridges on the teeth.

    Is an issue. Back end of the kerbs needs to stay low, and agree step down is dangerous – a wheel that finds it will drag a car into a spin across the track.

  38. Seriously, why is everyone jumping for solutions when there hasn’t even been established that there IS a problem?

    THIS is exactly what’s wrong with F1. Someone poses a critical question and then everybody starts jumping through hoops to “fix” the problem.

    Drivers should simply not fly through the inside kerb of a chicane. It’s just utterly weird that this driver manages to do this. If anyhting they should give him a “reprimand” or penalty for that.

    The outside kerb of a chicane is a more likely thing to be hit, but by then the speed is reduced and the danger is gone.

    1. Drivers should simply not fly through the inside kerb of a chicane.

      But there are all kinds of scenarios not in the driver’s control that could cause that to happen – brake failure, for example, or a front wing lodged under the front of the car as happened to Kobayashi a couple of races ago.

      I appreciate you can’t make motor racing entirely safe for every possible eventuality. But my concern here is that in trying to fix one problem (corner-cutting) a potentially more dangerous problem has been created.

      1. The kerb is on the inside of the corner. Not a place where a car with brake failure tends to go. They tend to fly straight.

        If there is any place where these kerbs are in the natural flow of the track then I would agree.

        For instance a double kerb on a right hand corner (chicane) after a slow left hand bend. Lose control and the car would fly straight over that kerb.

  39. Mark in Florida
    23rd May 2010, 22:31

    The combination curbs are dangerous.The speed bumps unsettle the car then the chassis gets up on the banking.It’s only a matter of time before some poor driver either get’s spun around into oncoming traffic or get’s completely airborne.They are so worried about drivers cutting the corners.I think that a bad wreck is far worse than someone snipping the corner.Make the stewards do their job and penalize people that cheat.

  40. If you look at the Mclaren picture, the kerb is nearlly as high as the front wing.

  41. This is the second flying F2 incident in as many months. Perhaps there is something about the design of these cars or the skills of their drivers which is conducive to flying automobiles?

    1. Well the other one was down to Ricardo Teixera declining to brake for a corner and using a rival as a launching pad… don’t think there’s much in common between those two crashes!

  42. The high kerbs, if I’m not wrong were first installed in the 2008 Singapore GP. Fisi was the first pilot to take off. NASTY! I don’t think they should be that high to deter drivers from cutting curves or chicanes. The height should be just enough to graze the floor board and chassis, but if one keeps grazing it too often damage will follow. This can handicap the car towards the ending laps of the race.

  43. HounslowBusGarage
    24th May 2010, 9:07

    Well, in answer to the question in the headline “Are F1’s new combination kerbs safe?”, the answer is probably
    “In Normal Circumstances – YES, but In other circumstances – NO.”
    In the Monza F2 clip, the driver went off the track immediately before the corner kerbs and actually hit them from the off-track side, coming back onto the track (see at 25 seconds), and under those circumstances most kerbs are going to produce strange behaviours.
    The fact that the car took off seems to have allowed it to actually go above the nose of the leading car and thus avoid a huge accident.If there had not been a kerb on the inside of the corner at all, he probably would have slid onto the track and gone straight into the lead car, with potentialy hazardous result for all the other cars following into the chicane.
    I’m not sure you can legislate or design competently or completely for an eventuality like this. Driving like this (going off track to the inside of a corner, then coming back on) is going to be dangerous whatever profile of kerb/no kerb/pit/gravel is in place.

  44. Tim Coldstream
    24th May 2010, 9:14

    get rid of corners all together, they give an element of risk

  45. How about sharp metal spikes that pop tyres? Discouraging, race-ending, and unlikely that the car will catch any air. If that doesn’t work, have a guy stand there with a ticket book ready to write fines out while the driver has to pull over and wait. Keeps me from doing things illegally while I’m driving! (mostly)

  46. If you ask me, it’s high time to go back to the ol’ half-buried tire chicane. That’ll sort the men from the boys.

  47. Not sure about this, but from what i have seen – the video as well as the flying cars so far this year – those kerbs seem to have some problems.

    So i hope the GPDA and FIA get together to have a thought about what they want to have those kerbs there for in the first place and test a better solution.

    Maybe penalizing drivers for repeated misuse would be a solution, but it would mean more overtaking having to be adressed by the stewards, which is not good.

  48. How about this, you give the crowd a box full of my lovely tomatoes, anyone who cuts a corner on a lap, an announcement is made over the tannoy and the crowd can then pelt the driver with tomatoes for the whole of the next lap.
    That would surely stop them from cutting corners!

    Love Sammy.

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