Raikkonen may miss test following heavy crash

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In the round-up: Kimi Raikkonen may be unable to take part in this week’s Silverstone test following his violent accident at the start of yesterday’s race.

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Ferrari unsure if Kimi Raikkonen will be fit to test (Autosport)

Marco Mattiacci: “Kimi is OK. We checked several times and we will take a decision about the test, and what to do with the test, so we see after today. I want to be 100 per cent sure that he will be fine before [he does it]. But there is no major issue at the moment.”

Lewis Hamilton ‘gutted’ to be denied duel for British GP victory with Nico Rosberg (Sky)

Hamilton: “I was gutted not to have a wheel-to-wheel race. I don’t want anything bad for my team-mate. I want him to be at his best and me to be at my best so we can really see the difference.”

Ricciardo says Button needed one more lap (Racer)

Ricciardo: “I think one more lap would have been tough because Jenson was coming. I’m really happy with the podium. I knew we were a better car than eighth on the grid. I was a bit surprised during the first bit to not be as quick so I said let’s try something different to make it work. Today I was pretty jacked up, so it’s nice to be up here.”

Niki Lauda criticises red flag decision (BBC)

Lauda: “Formula 1 is over-regulated. They are never going to hit [the barrier] again. They take care of every little detail and a lot of people will switch the television off.”

Massa wants crackdown on Mercedes’ slow formation laps (ESPN)

Massa: “All of these cars go very slow on the formation lap. We stopped on the track and my clutch went up to a very high temperature so it didn’t work. I started to move the clutch, but the car went into anti-stall so I dropped to last [at the start].”

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Comment of the day

Like so many of us yesterday, reader Piffles was enthralled by the titanic scrap between Alonso and Vettel for fifth, but was also disappointed by one aspect of the battle…

Very good battle, and top class driving from both drivers: absolutely no complaints. As Alain Prost said on Canal+, this kind of thing is exactly what we watch F1 for. It’s a shame we had these unnecessary, childish, backhanded, dishonest, hypocritical, disgraceful arguments over the radio. Alonso & Vettel need to get put back in their place with a pair of good slaps in the face. Grown men don’t go complaining to their mammas when things don’t go their way.

Of course, if the tracks were designed properly, going “off-track” would risk resulting in accidents like Raikkonen’s a little more often and drivers would therefore be inclined to respect the track limits a bit more.
Piffles

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On this day in F1

Ronnie Peterson scored a superb win for Lotus in the French Grand Prix at Dijon 40 years ago today. Driving a Lotus 72, the original design of which had been introduced four years earlier, he resisted the everything the more powerful V12 Ferraris of Niki Lauda and Clay Regazzoni could throw at him around the short Dijon circuit.

Here’s some brief footage from the race:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGN-aib-DBg

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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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62 comments on “Raikkonen may miss test following heavy crash”

  1. Agree with COTD, but I think we are all being a bit harsh here.
    I mean these guys are competitive machines, of course they will try to get every single advantage, if anything this showed me just how ruthless and tenacious they are when racing.

    1. @nixon I agree with your comments. I think Senna, Prost, Schumacher and a few others in between have really upped the desperation level, and the ruthlessness level within the sport over the years. However, I think this is what is generally accepted in society these days, I see it not only in F1 drivers, but the teams, the FIA, but also in other sports, and even within work environments.
      Just to clarify, I do not condone the level of ruthlessness. However, when the sport is run by one of the most ruthless/tenacious businessmen on the planet, then, I can hardly blame the drivers.

    2. I do think that this track limits is all a bit overhyped. But I am of the opinion that a driver is there to drive their car. It should more or less be the drivers team’s job to report other drivers for their actions. The drivers in the cars should respect the limits of the track and leave the rule policing to the pitfall.

      1. i think the issue was not the whining. the fia made it clear that you can not exceed track limits. vettel complained because alonso was exceeding track limits and vice versa. quite frankly they both should have got penalties(due to rules). i think the fia should just get rid of the track limits rule.i dont know why everyone is complaining about the radio. both drivers points very valid.

    3. Re: the COTD, hard to imagine Jim Clark doing the same, but I guess we are in a different era now. However much current driver’s multitasking skills are to be touted with all the gabbing (by some drivers), driving, adjusting, etc., I think there is a lot to be said for just shutting and driving. Let the teams and stewards sort it out, if they must. By drawing so much attention to it, the drivers stand more of a chance that the stewards might feel a need to get involved.

      1. if you have grass in each side of the track, instead of mor te asphalt, then you gonna think twice before going of the track. Unless you’re insane as Alez Zanardi in the Corkscrew

      2. Yeah, definitely hard to imagine, they didn’t have radio back then.

    4. @nixon I don’t think we’re being harsh. Maybe it shouldn’t be directed ONLY at the drivers.

      The issue on track limits appears when you let it appear. If there weren’t so many run off areas, we’d not have such problem.

      It’s the old story. Tarmac run off areas gives solutions to 1 situation (cars digging out and flipping over on gravel) but bring many disadvantages (track limits, not as effective to stop cars with serious damage or on the wet, motivates people to stay on the throttle even if they are out of the track…).

      Only as comparision, in Austria they were very aware of the limits of the track, appart from turn 8, the only place with tarmac run offs that allowed them to go off the track (turn 1 has a massively tall kerb now). So there’s a solution already but they don’t want to take it…

      And to be honest, Kimi’s crash was more of a consequence of the tarmac run off. Had it not been there, he’d not have gone on the track at that speed…

      1. petebaldwin (@)
        7th July 2014, 10:53

        Solution for me has always been simple. Wet astroturf.

        Whenever it rains and anyone gets on the astroturf, they spin. It’s almost guaranteed.

        It wouldn’t affect the run off zones – just the exit to the corner and would certainly stop people running wide.

        The fact is, drivers run wide because they are allowed to. you don’t see many running wide at Monaco do you!?

      2. @fer-no65
        Absolutely correct, but I meant we’re being to harsh on their complaining, not abusing track limits.

    5. I too think it’s being harsh. The radio rants just made the battle even more interesting. Those guys are not robots and will use every (legal) means to beat their opposition. I don’t blame either Seb or Fernando for complaining over the radio, that’s part of the game.

      1. I think there was confusion over the track limits ‘rule’ that caused this situation. In quali there was a no tolerance rule, and then for the race, obviously there was no no-tolerance rule or else several drivers would have been penalized. So then it became about no lasting advantage, which is often going to create debate, but since both SV and FA were doing it, I figure the stewards simply decided that any advantages one gained were being countered by the other, so better to let them race and not harm the show with boardroom decisions, especially once NR was out and the winner was a foregone conclusion barring reliability issues.

        Only just a little earlier DC had commented on the fact the fans and drivers complained about shades-of-grey inconsistent enforcement of the rules, so the stewards were taking a more hard-line approach, and then the fans complained about too many boardroom decisions affecting the outcome, so the stewards were going to start backing off again. It’s a tough balancing act to please everyone, and you are never going to do that.

        But what has not escaped me is that once again the drama was intentionally brought to the fore by those in control, to allow us to hear, amongst all the radio comm, those childish comments. Without hearing those comments, and with a better understanding of what would be tolerated and what wouldn’t, this battle could have been even better for the fans and the drivers, who would then have understood we were watching legitimate racing without the childish whining.

        So I blame F1 for intentionally being unclear of the limits for the fans and drivers, and intentionally having us hear the resulting childishness, to create a soap opera where it could have been ALL about the racing.

    6. At that speed, with all the adrenaline flowing, past rivalries and whatever, no one should be blamed for complaining for things like this

  2. Niki Lauda is probably the only person who can suggest that safety is becoming overdone, I don’t agree that the track owners/promoters the BRD could just ignore the possibility of lightning striking the same place twice but I was surprised that they did not have a temporary fix like a section of tyre wall that could have been moved quickly into place.

    1. @hohum I agree that something better can be looked into, rather than replacing a rail. However, the way that tyre walls work, is that they are secured into place, so that when a drive flies into them, that they don’t bury the driver, so it may not be as portable as you had hoped.
      Niki is a dinosaur, and some of his comments are very much his own opinion. Although, I generally defer to his better judgement on the topic of F1 safety, in my own humble opinion, I would rather have a 1 hour delay and fix the rail, rather than have a freak accident occur and another driver hit the barrier and having a worse outcome than Kimi’s shunt.

      1. @dragoll,@fer-no65, In this case, partway down a straight one would not be surprised to find concrete barriers but as there was a hole with sharp edges in the armco it was more dangerous than concrete, hence my suggestion of a section of tyre barrier for the very unlikely event of another car hitting that part of the fence, I bet Kimi wishes he hit a tyre barrier there.

    2. @hohum As @dragoll says, tyre barriers could be a lot more difficult to put in order after a crash. They go bolted on one another, and the rows are secured into one another aswell, plus there’s that piece of rubber that covers them all up, and there’s also a barrier after them.

      I don’t think there’s anything more easily replaceable that works as well as the steel barriers and take less time to replace.

      The trouble is that you need quite a lot of people to work on it, taking the old barrier out that’s all deformed and hard to work on, straightening the pillars and bolting the new barrier. 45 minutes for something that stops cars travelling at 300 kph isn’t that much…

    3. They should cover all rails with that impact absorbing sponge.

    4. I found his comments strange because when he was asked by the commentary team from the F1 app during delay what he felt about actions taken by race control he seemed to suggest he thought they were doing the right thing.

      Also, whilst I agree it was a place which was unlikely to have a second accident, but a driver of Raikkonen’s quality had just had an hefty accident there, so it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that there could have been another shunt in a similar place. If the possibility of an accident occurring is the sole criterion for having barriers of the correct quality in place we would end up having very little of the track lined by barriers.

      The actions of race control were entirely justified in my book.

      1. @geemac My understanding from Lauda’s comment during the down time was that the red flag was the right decision due to the amount of debris on the track, but taking the time to repair that Armco in that spot was unnecessary. Sure, do it if it is in a traditional spot that any car overcooking a certain corner would likely hit, but at that spot he was just speaking to the very slim odds of another contact. So I think he just considered that the odds of two cars hitting that spot of all spots would have been like being hit by lightning.

        I too wished they hadn’t felt the need to take the time, but it’s not like I was outraged or anything, and I had been recording the event anyway, so I just fast-forwarded through much of the delay. I also wonder if the entity of Silverstone et al have no choice in this matter from an insurance standpoint. The odds may have been extremely slim of another contact at that particular spot, but if it had and the consequences were dire the lawsuit would be massive.

        1. Not just the consequences of a lawsuit, if there was another accident there, slim though the chances would be, a driver, marshal or spectator could have been injured.

          1. Yeah that’s what I meant by the consequence of another hit being potentially dire, and therefore a lawsuit potentially being massive.

  3. It’s a shame we had these unnecessary, childish, backhanded, dishonest, hypocritical, disgraceful arguments over the radio.

    That’s what I’ve been saying for a while. We need to hear way less team radio than we do now because it’s making a bad impression.

    1. @hunocsi I wouldn’t want to hear less team radio as that would detract from the positive messages we hear about driver strategies and it gives us an insight into the drivers, as lets face it, its the only time we don’t hear PR polished comments from them.
      Instead, I would call for the FIA to step in and respond to the comments live on radio, to put the drivers out of their misery. Or perhaps tweak the rules a little, and instead of the rules surrounding how a team “officially” protests about the legality of another teams car, to include an “official” means of raising issues of “exceeding track limits” or “on track behavior”, so that a protest is officially lodged, with a fee, in a formal manner, so we keep it all above board.

      1. maarten.f1 (@)
        7th July 2014, 6:38

        @dragoll

        Don’t think they should really charge a fee, the rich teams will be able to afford that easily. What they should do is the same as they have in field hockey: You have one opportunity to lodge a protest during the race. If you are right, you retain that opportunity. If you are wrong, you’ll lose the opportunity and you won’t be allowed to do it again. So effectively you’ll be allowed to lodge a protest during the race until you are wrong.

        However, this won’t stop drivers complaining. It’ll just stop the teams from taking it to Charlie.

        1. @maarten-f1 While I think your heart is in the right place, the problem with your idea is, if they lose a protest, and something else happens, then they can’t protest again, and whats to say that it wasn’t a game changer, if a rule has been broken, it should be policed no matter how many times it may or may not occur…
          Also, lets face it, these cars are traveling over 300km/h, it would be insane to think that marginal calls of 50/50 chance could go against you, even to someone with all the camera angles in the world… How many times have you seen in cricket the 3rd umpire not having the “exact” frame of when the ball hits the stumps in relation to where the batsman is….
          Hence why I think fees are a way of limiting the request, or…. make it free to complain, but ensure that the team lodge a “formal” document which outlines crucial information such as date/time, description of the infringement, which ruling they have suspected to breach, who was involved, how this impacted on their driver, etc, etc, etc… To make sure that if a team was prepared to back their driver, that the FIA only had to take the protest, fact check it quickly and basically rule upon it, then and there. I’m not one for red tape, but red tape could be a deterrent in its own right for protesting…

          1. maarten.f1 (@)
            7th July 2014, 15:23

            @dragoll but that would exactly be the point of it. It makes the teams more cautious before they start complaining with Charlie. So if it’s marginal, don’t complain. Charging a fee, or adding more red tape won’t stop it. They’ll just spend more money, hire someone dedicated to this, etc.

            And it doesn’t take away the stewards’ abillity to look at incidents on their own initiative. It’ll just cut down on the whining the teams do.

            But either way, if the stewards and the FIA don’t mind, they should just keep doing whatever they’re doing. It’s just a bit laughable to hear the whining the teams and drivers sometimes do.

  4. During the epic Alonso/Vettel squabble, and the rest of the race, we didn’t get to see much of Bottas’s epic drive from P14 to second. I thought that was a shame.

    1. He did most of his work early on and we saw that. Especially going round the outside of Button in Stowe, that was wonderful.

    2. @scalextric
      whenever I saw onboard of Bo77as it looked slow, effortless, but obviously quick,
      kudos to Val
      Great driving , well deserved points and hip hip hooray for Williams,

      1. I dont mean”slow”
        I meant he made it look easy

  5. Good racing in the 74 FrenchGP, someone forgot to tell them to stay 2 seconds back to save their tyres.

  6. Lauda: “Formula 1 is over-regulated. They are never going to hit [the barrier] again. They take care of every little detail and a lot of people will switch the television off.”

    As for someone how survived (just) to a crash because there were no barriers, that’s an appalling thing to say.

    They were not supposed to crash there the first time out, what if it happened again with the barrier damaged?

    F1 is dangerous enough as it is, even if all the precautions are fulfilled (Max Chilton was very lucky, and without Massa, Kimi could’ve suffered it a lot more). No need to cut time on things that make racing safer…

    1. OmarR-Pepper (@)
      7th July 2014, 4:26

      Remember when many drivers went off in brazil in 2003?

      1. Right or wrong on Lauda’s part, the fact is the odds were extremely slim of two cars hitting that spot. If asked ahead of time nobody would have picked that Armco section as being a likely candidate of getting whacked once, let alone a second time. And Lauda addressed the concept that at a traditional spot, like at a corner, where several cars have or could be understood to go off from much more normal events such as overcooking the corner, especially on a wet track, then sure repair THAT Armco, as the odds of it getting hit again would actually be much higher than for the spot where KR hit. And even then, at spots where the odds are higher, they generally use tires, and once the car is cleared the racing continues. The fact that there were no tires at the spot KR hit would to me indicate it was far from an expected spot to be hit. And then it simply becomes a debate about even the slim odds of being hit by lightning still carrying a chance you could be hit by lightning, so ‘get off the golf course’. But racing will always carry some odds of danger.

  7. I completely disagree with Lauda.

    As unlikely as it is for someone else to crash there, the chance cannot be taken. One hour of waiting (and Silverstone making tons of money off of extra beers being sold) is well worth helping to ensure the safety of both the drivers and the marshals. Just look at the BTCC at Thruxton this year, that could have been really ugly, especially the driver (I forget who it was) that used the damaged barrier to launch into the air.

    An argument could be made for speeding up the marshals by having them practice replacing elements off the barriers, but who knows how hard it was to disassemble the damaged guardrail.

    There is a reason F1 hasn’t had a fatality during a GP weekend since 1994, and that is because the FIA do a good job monitoring all of the minor details when it comes to safety. There isn’t much the FIA do right, but safety is certainly one of the few things they have right.

    Except for the excessive asphalt runoff areas. If there was a gravel trap there, the accident wouldn’t have happened the way it did. And drivers would not complain about track limits as much either.

    1. BTCC accident was Simon Belcher at Church in Race 3.

    2. Your right, it could have been worse with gravel there, the car could have dug in and Kimi would have went head first.

    3. I disagree with Lauda as well. It’s a shame the article only quotes him and not the full conversation with Eddie Jordan taking the opposite view as it aired on the TSN broadcast in Canada, which uses live BBC audio.
      Fixing the armco was absolutely the right thing to do, regardless of the delay.

    4. I’m afraid I have to take exception to the comment about Church at Thruxton, I have marshaled on that post several times in the past and although I was not there for the BTCC this year, I can tell you that the term “barrier” can only be used very loosely to explain the outside of Church, especially at the point where Belcher hit, it can only really be described as a mound of earth. Even slightly further down track where the marshals stand all you have is two wide stack of tyres banded together, but not actually attached to anything, it certainly is not the safest place to be. That would be the reason why Belcher and Fosters (I think it was) accident looked so bad, the car was naturally launched by the design of the track and the distinct lack of any gravel trap.

      With regards to the barrier replacement, this is not carried out by the marshals, it is controlled by the circuit and event staff hired in especially. At Donington BTCC this year I was on post where James Cole and Rob Holland had there big accident and destroyed the concrete wall. As was the case here, the only fast way to protect a damaged section of the track perimeter is to place a temporary tyre barrier in front of the damaged wall.

  8. BJ (@beejis60)
    7th July 2014, 5:41

    So Prost wasn’t thinking his moves in the 89 Japanese GP were unnecessary, childish, backhanded, dishonest, hypocritical, and disgraceful arguments to the stewards and race dircector?

    1. I think that part of the comment was not made by Prost.

  9. I think what has happend with Lauda is that he is now the old person who says we are safe enough already. But back in the 70s he was oneof the drivers who said the sport is too dangerous and he effectively had people like Lauda today saying it is not. I’m not trying to say Lauda doesn’t care about the drivers or doesn’t care because he himself is not driving but simply saying that that times change but sometimes people’s opinions and expectations and standards don’t.

  10. If Massa has complaints about the Merc’s slowing down too much at a safety car restart, I’m sure he’ll be pretty irked by their having to stop completely after a safety car next year.

    1. next year sc comes in. drivers do a formation lap and start the race. interesting that the mercs being slow ruining his clutch effectivly caused him to be invloved in avoiding kimis crash

    2. The best way for him to solve the problem is do what he did in Austria, and beat them. Then the formation lap can be any speed he likes.

    3. I think he is complaining about the formation lap.

  11. I think Lauda is right. The chances if that barrier being hit again are so slim. Just ensure its fixed it up before the next event.

    This isn’t being complacent about modern safety. It’s just simple risk analysis.

    If it was a barrier at a corner, sure, but this was on a straight.

    1. The chances may be slim but the consequences could be appalling.

    2. And in the slim chance someone hits that barrier again, a simple crash will turn into a fatality. Slim chances happen all the time, they happened to Lauda, Villeuneve, Senna, and because the FIA takes care of safety well, we havent had anyone dying in the last 20 years.

      1. Anyone….except three marshalls! FIA thinks a lot about driver safety, but not so much about all the other people involved in the sport.

  12. Massa doing his usual bit of blame shifting again. Yet all the cars around you didn’t have that problem, now did they?

  13. Sligtly off-topic, sorry for that.

    I remember a thread that was talking about Vettel’s and Webber’s misfortunes, stating (and rightly so) that the misfortune was around the same. Can you find the thread, because I couldn’t? :(

      1. Thanks a lot Keith :)

  14. Again that FOM person in charge of deciding what bits of team radio gets aired shaped the whole race. Now we’re commenting on how much Vettel and Alonso complain rather than the quality of their driving.

    I really don’t want to hear the team radio. Let the driving do the talking not the lawyers.

  15. Funny how Massa complained that the formation laps are too slow, yet on this particular occasion (near the back of the grid) he would have spent less time stationary than he would if in a more regular grid spot! So basically he fluffed the launch, had a crash, and then blames Mercedes. He’s an odd little man at times!

  16. One weekend we have people complaining all the drivers act like PR-machines. The next, people complain about Vettel and Alonso on the radio (or Perez’s joke, but I’ll let that one slide).

    1. Personally I’ve never really been concerned about drivers being PR machines or not, and I certainly think we get enough comments from them, in the heat of the moment especially, that shows their human side. But for me the SV/FA banter that F1 decided we should hear, took away from the racing that was going on and only helped confuse people as to what was and wasn’t allowed. Obviously in hindsight neither driver was penalized, therefore neither did anything wrong, therefore why didn’t these drivers know at the time that a little discretion was being used to allow them to race.

  17. Did anyone else notice that Kobaysahi managed to avoid Raikkonen whilst Massa (who was further back) did not. The Massa mistake was compounded by the fact that Raikkonen was traveling left across the track, Kobayashi went further left and did some rallycross on the grass but avoided Raikkonen whilst Massa who was behind Kobayashi (and had more time to avoid the accident) sort of tried to go right, (behind the departing Raikkonen) but actually lost the back end and slid in to Raikkonen causing further mahem. So full marks to Kobayashi for an ace piece of driving and as regards Massa it adds to his reputation for poor driving when it matters.

    1. I think you will find most, including myself, disagreeing with you. It is easy to second guess in hindsight from your armchair, but try being there in the heat of the moment when it is about a split second decision. By all accounts the overwhelming response to FM’s decision to crank the wheel to the right in order to at least not nail KR head on with the nose of his car, has been huge kudos to FM for his quick thinking that might have saved KR much more serious injury than bruises. I think it is wholely unfair to rate one driver’s reaction over another’s in an incident like this, as no two drivers can be in exactly the same spot. With KR’s car moving across the track as it was it is irrelevant that FM was behind Kobayashi, and therefore somehow must have been driving poorly to have hit KR. That’s not how it works.

  18. Lewis gutted for not having a wheel-to-wheel race with Nico??? OMG, the mind games are still on!!! But seriously now Lewis, you’re better off that way, no? Making up for your retirement in Melbourne and winning easily in front of your home crowd? Except if you meant that you wanted to pass Nico on the track first and then have him retired! But I guess you’ll have to settle for what happened unfortunately…

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