F1’s brushes with disaster: Top ten lucky escapes

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Yesterday’s NASCAR race at Michigan saw a bizarre and dangerous crash in which Mark Martin’s car was skewered by the exposed end of a barrier.

There have been many incredible escapes in motor racing. Sometimes these are down to ever-improved safety standards.

On other occasions the driver involved was just plain lucky. This has often been followed by a dawning realisation changes need to be made to prevent something much worse happening in future.

There are many such examples of this happening in F1, which have usually led to new rules and procedures to improve safety.

Here are ten ways F1 drivers have been lucky to escape serious injury in accidents and incidents over the years – and what the sport has learnt from them:

The catch fencing flaw

Some attempts to improve safety at circuits, though well-intentioned, created unforeseen problems. Catch fencing, which was introduced to F1 in 1973, is an example of this.

The principle behind it was sound: rows of deformable fencing allowed the speed out-of-control cars to be gradually reduced. But they risked entangling the driver and the posts used to hold them in place them could be transformed into flying projectiles.

Two lucky escapes at the 1981 South African Grand Prix weekend* served to highlight the dangers. First Carlos Reutemann almost choked when he became wrapped in catch fencing when he went off in practice.

Then during the race Geoff Lees crashed his Theodore and was knocked unconscious by a catch fence pole:

Catch fencing was phased out in the years that followed in favour of gravel traps and larger run-offs.

Another driver who had a terrifying near-miss with a wire fence was Derek Daly. He suffered a brake failure at the high-speed Osterreichring while driving for Tyrrell in 1980 and hurtled off the track.

To his horror, Daly was confronted by a barbed wire fence. He was immensely fortunate that his car skidded around, hitting the fence backwards – had he gone in head-first the consequences would have been utterly appalling.

Monaco’s harbour

Water hazards are more a feature of rallying than F1. But the close proximity of the harbour at Monaco caused some dramas in the early years of the world championship.

In 1950 a wave soaked the track at Tabac, causing a crash which eliminated ten cars – more than half of the field.

In 1955 Alberto Ascari made a mistake at the chicane and plunged into the sea. He was fortunate to escape drowning:

Luck did not stay on Ascari’s side much longer, however. He was killed testing a sports car at Monza four days later.

The following year the Monaco Grand Prix organisers tightened the chicane to reduce the chances of a repeat. In the years that followed more extensive barriers were installed and the chicane was extended and further slowed.

More Monaco danger

The same year the new chicane was built at Monaco brought another illustration of how the circuit’s unusually tight confines pose particular safety problems.

Patrick Tambay came perilously close to clearing the barrier when he tangled with Martin Brundle at Mirabeau during the 1986 Monaco Grand Prix:

Aerial crashes are a particular problem at the cramped Monaco circuit. Of late F1’s feeder series have seen some dramatic crashes there including Romain Grosjean in GP2 in 2009 and Conor Daly in GP3 this year (son of the aforementioned Derek).

It has been said for many years that no new circuit like Monaco would ever be allowed on the calendar today. Efforts to improve safety at the track continue – this year the barrier at the harbour was moved back following Sergio Perez’s 2011 crash.

Cars in the crowd

Daly’s GP3 crash was a stern test for the strength of F1’s crash barriers. These have been developed over many years from the days of low barriers which proved inadequate for containing crashes and resulted in some incredible near-misses.

At Jarama in 1974 Arturo Merzario flipped over a metal Armco barrier in his Frank Williams-entered Iso Marlboro. Although several spectators were knocked down, and Merzario’s car ended up on top of one photographer, incredibly all were unhurt.

Later the enormous cornering speeds of ground effect cars created more problems for circuit owners. Two major crashes in 1982 showed just how dangerous they had become.

First Rene Arnoux smashed into the barriers at Tarzan during the Dutch Grand Prix, showering spectators and photographers with debris.

Then during the French Grand Prix Mauro Baldi and Jochen Mass made contact at the high-speed Signes right-hander. Mass’s car flew through the air – the presence of catch fencing doing little to arrest its progress – before striking a tyre barrier and flipping upside-down into a spectators’ enclosure, where it caught fire.

That this huge accident left no fatalities – the extent of the injuries was a few burns suffered by spectators – was nothing short of astonishing. The accident, one of several that year, certainly played a part in the demise of ground effect cars.

Oh deer

Animals on the track pose an unpredictable hazard. Stefan Johansson was fortunate to emerge unscathed when his McLaren ploughed into a deer during a practice session for the 1987 Austrian Grand Prix.

After F1’s return to the circuit (renamed the A1-Ring) the deer problem remained – there were no further collisions, but at least one memorably funny radio message involving Juan Pablo Montoya.

Johansson is not the only driver to escape injury after a collision with an animal. A bird struck Jenson Button’s car close to his crash helmet during a testing session with Williams at Kyalami in 2000

But while the drivers can count themselves fortunate to escape injury, the same cannot be said of the poor animals.

Happily those in charge of F1 have begun to react more quickly to the problem. Last year the first practice session for the inaugural Indian Grand Prix was halted when a dog was spotted on the circuit.

“Mr Halfwit” and friends

While animals may lack the sense to avoid sprinting onto a racing track, humans should not.

In the early days of motor racing access to the track was much less stringent than it is today. Pictures from races in the fifties and sixties show photographers, marshals and dozens of others standing in close proximity to the track.

Growing awareness of the need to improve safety gradually put a stop to this. But the problem of keeping some people from getting a bit too close to the action remained.

Topping the list of those who should have known better is former FIA president Jean-Marie Balestre, who had been vocal on the subject of improving safety. Shortly after the start of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in 1989 he wandered across the circuit, narrowly avoiding being mown down by Nicola Larini’s Osella.

A similar thing happened at the end of the first race of that year, when an unidentified man sprinted across the start/finish line at Jacarepagua just as the victorious Nigel Mansell arrived to take the chequered flag.

Two years later, Ayrton Senna had this incredible near-miss with a marshal at Monaco:

Two famous incidents in the early 2000s involved people trying to make protests by disrupting a race.

At the Hockenheimring in 2000 a former Mercedes employee ventured onto one of the fastest circuits in F1 with the apparent aim of disrupting the race of the Mercedes-engined McLaren cars. The safety car was sent out while the “halfwit” – as Murray Walker memorably dubbed him – was dealt with:

Then at the British Grand Prix in 2003 the safety car had to be summoned while a Silverstone marshal rugby-tackled a priest who had run onto the Hangar straight holding a banner urging people to read the bible. Coincidentally, both these races were won by Rubens Barrichello.

The terrible dangers these individuals thoughtlessly exposed themselves to do not need spelling out. Others who ran out onto a live racing track were not as lucky as they to be missed by oncoming cars.

The bravery of the marshals who tackled the two most recent track invaders at F1 races deserves the highest praise. But the same cannot be said for this marshal who ran in front of Sebastien Buemi’s car during a show run in Japan last year:

Fortunately the only injury was to his pride.

Hit by flying debris – and cars

While we’re on the subject of Buemi, remember his bizarre crash during practice in China two years ago when the wheels came off his car? That wasn’t just a lucky escape for him – his wheel flew towards a cameraman, who was too busy keeping the focus on Buemi instead of noticing the large, round black thing hurtling towards him. He was lucky it only hit his camera.

There have been many instances of drivers having near-misses when their cars were hit by debris. A chunk of metal gouged into the front of Ayrton Senna’s car during practice for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in 1987.

Some drivers have even been clipped by flying cars. Martin Brundle had the misfortune for it to happen to him twice – first in the collision with Tambay at Monaco mentioned earlier.

He suffered a repeat in the 1994 Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos when he was unwittingly collected by a three-car accident involving Eddie Irvine, Eric Bernard and Jos Verstappen.

For the second time, Brundle was struck on the helmet by the wheel of a flying car, this time belonging to Jos Verstappen’s Benetton. Seeing the sickening impact in this video again it is truly astonishing that Brundle wasn’t badly hurt:

Higher cockpit sides on modern F1 cars offer drivers greater protection from this sort of impact. But the FIA are considering further measures to improve safety in this area.

Aerial accidents

Some of the most dangerous accidents occur when F1 cars get airborne.

Christian Fittipaldi’s accident at the end of the 1993 Italian Grand Prix was utterly flabbergasting – not least because it came in a collision with his team mate Pierluigi Martini:

Fittipaldi was extremely lucky his Minardi landed the right way up. This video shot by a fan gives a greater impression of the speed involved in the crash:

One year earlier Riccardo Patrese had survived a similarly terrifying accident at Estoril. His Williams-Renault FW14B came perilously close to striking a bridge across the circuit:

Patrese had been trying to pass Gerhard Berger and failed to appreciate his rival was heading for the pits when he tucked up behind the McLaren to make a pass.

Car dangers

Modern F1 cars are built to such high standards that it’s rare to see a situation where a driver might be directly endangered by a fault with their car.

This was not always the case, particularly in the days when the engine was positioned in front of the driver. Exhaust ventilation was a frequent problem, and many drivers had to abandon their cars mid-race as they were gradually being gassed and starting to pass out.

Front-engined cars also required propeller shafts, thick rods spinning at high revolutions, which passed alongside the drivers to the rear wheels. Any fault with these could have highly dangerous consequences.

Jo Bonnier had an incredible near miss at Spa-Francorchamps in 1958 when a failure on his Maserati 250F caused the shaft to fly up and deliver an excruciating whack on the backside. This propelled Bonnier into the air, still clinging to his steering wheel while rocketing along at over 260kph (161mph).

Despite the agony, Bonnier was pragmatic enough to acknowledge that had the shaft flown in the opposite direction – into the ground, flipping the car over – the consequences could have been much worse.

One of the most dramatic examples of a driver having a near miss with a car failure came during practice for the 1977 Argentinian Grand Prix. Mario Andretti was passing by the pits when part of his Lotus 78 exploded.

Fortunately for Andretti it was the onboard fire extinguisher and not the fuel tank, though his car was so badly damaged it couldn’t be raced.

Berger broadside

Finally, there are some accidents rank as truly bizarre one-off encounters. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this crash of Berger’s before or since:

The accident began when the active suspension on his Ferrari F93A incorrectly lowered the car, causing him to lose control on the bumpy pit exit.

Had Berger arrived a few seconds earlier he might have been T-boned by Derek Warwick who was driving flat-out down the straight.

Over to you

While it’s important to learn from events like this, it’s also easy to overlook them. For obvious reasons, accidents which have left drivers injured or worse leave a deeper imprint in our minds.

It’s a sobering though that for every driver who had one of these near-misses, there were others who had similar experiences but were not so fortunate.

Can you recall any other examples of drivers having near-misses in F1? Do you think the sport has drawn the correct lessons from those which have happened?

Have your say in the comments.

*This race was stripped of its world championships status for political reasons.

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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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85 comments on “F1’s brushes with disaster: Top ten lucky escapes”

  1. Robert Kubica in Montreal 2007 obviously. It looked horrifyingly yet he came out of it unharmed, sadly, he didn’t have so much luck in his 2011 rally crash.

    1. @cyclops_pl I didn’t include crashes like that because it’s not as if no-one had ever foreseen the possibility that an F1 car might suffer a major head-on impact. Indeed, it’s precisely because Kubica’s car was designed to withstand that kind of crash that he survived.

      Whereas if you take something like Derek Daly’s crash, clearly no-one had bothered to consider that a driver might go off where he did and perhaps a wire fence at head height was not the best way of containing an accident…

      I think sometimes people (and I include myself in this) are too quick to describe a driver escaping an accident as “lucky” or (this one especially annoys me) “miraculous”. We should perhaps appreciate that nowadays drivers increasingly survive or avoid major accidents because they’ve been anticipated and planned for accordingly, with safer cars or tracks, or better procedures.

      Of course that’s not to say drivers are no longer capable of surviving accidents due to sheer luck alone.

      1. I would consider Robert Kubica’s crash in Montreal 2007 to be a lucky escape, but not for the reason that it was major head-on impact because as you rightly say, the car was designed to withstand that. I would consider it a lucky escape because he was so fortunate not to have gone over that wall and straight into the cars accelerating out of the hairpin in the opposite direction. All credit to the Canadian Grand Prix organizers though, since that accident they’ve now installed fencing along the wall in case a similar incident was to ever happen again.

      2. How about Martin Donnelly’s near-miss? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hSF6_4UDTo
        Te me this one is really down to luck

        1. I’m not sure I’d count that a lucky escape – certainly Donnelly was fortunate to be alive, but he suffered career-ending injuries and has never raced in any serious way again. I saw him in the paddock at Thruxton a few years ago (he ran a team in various junior categories) and he was still walking with a limp.

          Most of the examples above seem to be of people escaping unharmed or with only minor injury.

        2. That was one of the rare occasions where the car simply failed to protect the driver.

      3. So true. I always role my eyes at news reports, inevitably from the mainstream who aren’t true fans of the sport, who constantly refer to ‘miraculously escaping without injury’ in cases where their escape is in fact precisely what should happen based on the safety preparation. I feel it gives a needlessly bad and over-dangerous name to the sport within laymen.

  2. Well, seeing how I’m not at all good with F1 history and could only really recognize the 1982 examples (due to the Autosport special), the only thing I can think of is Webber’s shunt in Valencia two years ago. Looked fairly nasty, especially with him hitting a sign mid-flight.

    1. On the same note are the jump by Petrov over the Malaysian kerbing and a bit less but still a big hit the way Kobayashi’s car got into the air at Monaco.

      1. Yeah the Petrov is more interesting. Webber’s crash doesn’t apply for the same reason Kubica’s does, it’s more of a ‘standard’ accident, the exact situations that are planned for. The very fact he was so unharmed shows how ready everyone is for such an accident. But back-breakers like Petrov and Machado in GP3 at Hockenheim I feel need more work. It’s always injuring the driver, and their backsides are just so insanely low to the ground in the car with minimal padding.

  3. Intruders on the track don’t forget. Hockenheim 2000!

    1. My bad, I missed the refference lol.

  4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Monaco_Grand_Prix

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vphJVgjYPI

    Fisichella in monaco 2004, anything could have happened (worst case: car goes over a boat full of people).

    BTW in this accident they also lost a diamond.

  5. Dimitris 1395 (@)
    20th August 2012, 14:00

    I can remember Kubica crashes in Canada (2007) and Australia (2009). Especially in his crash in Australia I remember the wheel going very close to the the cockpit. Also the Wurz-Coulthard in Australia (2007) with the whole car of Wurz passing a couple of centimeters in front of Coulthard…

    1. It was the car of Coulthard passing Wurz his head. Here’s a vid:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc0SxqHFhxY

      1. And similar to that, Chandhok when Trulli run over him at Monaco in 2010.

  6. Wow, those Clive James commentaries are fantastic. Can we all club together to buy out Bernie so we can start issuing that stuff on DVD?

    Reminds me of a dream I had last night where they unveiled the new American grand pix curcuit and it was all carved out of the walls of the Grand Canyon. Then the race started and it was Ledgard doing the talking. Luckily, I woke up at that point.

    1. They are terrific, anyone who’s not got the 1982, 1984 or 1986 reviews should pick them up.

      Sadly he isn’t in a good way at the moment:

      Clive James ’losing cancer fight’

      1. I scrolled down looking for mention of Clive James after hearing his voice on the Tambay vid.

        I’d no idea he’d done anything in F1. I suppose I’m too young to have seen some of the earlier stuff… I’ll enjoy listening to him on the rest of the vids though.

        I’m pleased to be able to drop this in: – it seems the media overdid the Clive James coverage after getting a quote out-of-context and misinterpreting it.

        http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/clive-james-reports-of-my-death-are-greatly-exaggerated-7878612.html

        1. @kris Glad to hear he’s not doing so badly after all!

  7. Martin Brundle sure was an unlucky chap. I remember his barrel roll at the start of the 96′ Aussie GP.

  8. On the subject of hitting flying debris, one of the Saubers (I think Perez) had a lucky escape in Malaysia 2011 – some ballast came off another car and penetrated (and I believe actually passed clean through) the safety cell of his C30. The ballast went through the SECU, destroying it and causing him to have to retire.

  9. I always thought the marshall at Canada last year was lucky at well. He fell down on the track with cars coming towards him.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAqrPlTw2nQ

    1. Wow that is shocking. How come no one picked up on this before?

      1. No-one? Loads of people did. It was broadcast on the world feed.

      2. Michael Brown (@)
        21st August 2012, 0:24

        Everyone thought it was funny rather than a near miss

        1. I never really thought it was funny. I remember looking away from the screen when I saw the Sauber coming. Now, when it is over, it’s kinda funny cause he fell down on track for millions of people, but he had a lucky escape.

    2. The thing I especially like about this video is how Kobayashi is leaving the yellow-zone… sideways.

  10. soundscape (@)
    20th August 2012, 14:22

    Webber at Valencia 2010.

  11. The video Brundle being struck on the helmet by the wheel of a flying car is unnerving! As Keith mentioned:

    it is truly astonishing that Brundle wasn’t badly hurt

    @

    Hit by flying debris – and cars
    While we’re on the subject of Buemi, remember his bizarre crash during practice in China two years ago when the wheels came off his car? That wasn’t just a lucky escape for him – his wheel flew towards a cameraman, who was too busy keeping the focus on Buemi instead of noticing the large, round black thing hurtling towards him. He was lucky it only hit his camera.

    Something similar happened to me couple of years back, I was standing by roadside and heard a loud sound (it was of the bus whose rear wheels came off) and just like the cameraman I was too busy noticing what exactly happened to bus instead of noticing the large, round black thing hurtling towards me. But I was lucky enough that wheel went just to my right and hit the gates of closed underground pedestrian crossing behind me :s

    1. @knightmare I can’t watch that Brundle video and not wince.

  12. One bizarre car failure which could have had pretty unpleasant consequences was the double front upright failure on one of the Toro Rossos a in China few years back. Coming down the straight, the driver brakes, and immediately both front uprights exploded, detaching the wheels and brakes. Although it happened at one of the fastest points on the track, the large run-off area meant that the consequences were red faces rather than a trip to the medical centre. Had it happened elsewhere the result could have been quite different.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgRNYuFewS4

    I do like how Buemi keeps his hands on the steering wheel and actually tries to correct the slide despite the car not having any front wheels..

    1. Oh, you already mentioned that. Boy do I feel foolish :-S

  13. @keithcollantine in the article it says Ascari was the only driver who crashed into the harbour when in fact another driver crashed into the harbour ten years later. In the 1965 race Paul Hawkins crashed into the harbour in his Lotus on lap 79 in a similar way to Ascari.

    1. @anto Well, well – I always thought the only other time a car ended up in the harbour was when they were doing the filming for John Frankenheimer’s film Grand Prix. Thanks for that, have altered the article accordingly.

    2. Something similar: I read somewhere that in 1950, a wave hit the Tabac corner on the opening lap, which flooded the track and subsequently like 10 drivers had to retire.

      1. It’s already said in the article :)

  14. From recent years, Michael Schumacher’s head-on collision almost resulted in his head-off. Seriously scary.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qve8RHYh–4

  15. William Brierty
    20th August 2012, 15:46

    I’m sorry, but I absolutely love that one with Buemi and the marshall. The sheer idiocy of it fills me with such disabling wonder that it is nearly hypnotic. I’ve got to figure out some way of having it as my screensaver.

  16. Berger in Imola 1990 (I think?) when he hit the wall at Tamburello and the car caught fire. That was scary and one of the first warnings of that turn.

  17. I think the pitlane is an often-overlooked area for safety improvement. I’ve seen several instances in the past several years where some pedestrian in the pitlane was nearly hit by a car coming down the pitlane. Of course there’s the famous video of Patrick Head not bothering to look before crossing and nearly gets creamed. But random team members on the pitwall seem to frequently walk up and down the fast lane during a grand prix, which strikes me as absurd. Many times they’re walking with traffic, so they can’t even see anything coming. Of course F1 drivers have very good skills and might be able to avoid them, but what happens when two cars touch in the fast lane? Anyone in their path will be mown down. Pit lane speed limits are low, but someone could easily be killed by an out-of-control F1 car going 60mph. Personally I think there should be a new rule: once the race begins, no one is allowed to go to and from the pitwall (barring some kind of emergency). Once you’re in the pitwall area, you stay there until the race finishes. No walking/jogging back and forth between garage and pitwall.

    1. @lateralus I think the simplest and best way they can make the pit lane safer is just to reduce the number of people in there:

      How F1 can make pit stops safer

  18. Is it wrong that I find that video of that Japanese man trying to jump over buemis car hilarious?

    Imagine what’s going through his mind as he is lining up to attempt this stunt thinking he’s James bond or something haha i mean it would have been absolutely class if he did pull it off, he would have been hailed as some sort of ninja!

  19. For me it was Barrichello’s lucky escape when he crashed in Imola 94 – at Variante Bassa, his car launching in the air before hitting the top of the tyre barriers. The same GP that took the lives of Ratzenberger and Senna.

    1. Was it at Bassa or Villeneuve?

      1. It was at Bassa, Ratzenberger had his crash at Villeneuve. Villeneuve wasn’t a chicane back then, just a fast sweep and an exposed wall. The variante Bassa was removed in 2008 when they attempted to make the track flow a bit more.

    2. You’re right, that accident hit me (excuse the pun, can’t think of a better word) from the first time I saw it. The deceleration was so fast that his head, I think, hit the front of the cockpit. He was really risking his life.

  20. I know i’ll get told off for going off topic, but reading this article made me think of Patrick Carpentier’s Laguna Seca crash in the CART series back in 2000: here

    That and Oriol Servia’s crash at the same venue: here go a long way to showing how bad gravel traps can be.

    1. @eurobrun I hadn’t seen the Carpentier one – can’t help but blame the gravel trap for that one!

    2. The way Carpentier’s car cleared the fencing was strangely similar to an athletic high jump. If only the car had landed on its ‘feet’, it would have received full marks…

  21. Also Diniz in Argentina (?) 96 when his car erupted into a vesuvian fireball

    1. Wasn’t that the same accident which caused a paper of the time to have the headline pun,
      “Diniz in the oven.” ?

  22. Ralf at Indy 2004? I remember saying:”He’s gone. It’s over,” at the time.

    1. I forgot Heidfeld’s 720 degrees at the same venue two years later.

      1. I think they fall under the same category as Kubica’s crash. I’m also thinking Firman’s crash belongs under that categorie, although he did have a wing-failure.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOhKhBG_df8

  23. David Purley deserves a mention for me.

    He survived an estimated 179.8 g when he decelerated from 173 km/h (108 mph) to 0 in a distance of 66 cm (26 inches) after his throttle got stuck wide open and he hit a wall. For many years, this was thought to be the highest g-force ever survived by a human being. He suffered multiple fractures to his legs, pelvis and ribs.

    I think a large part of the reduction of injuries in F1 accidents is also down to the athleticism of the drivers. An average person could be expected to suffer from all sorts of complications after the sort of impacts we see frequently against crash barriers. Core strength combined with low body-mass goes a long way to keeping vertebrae from collapsing.

  24. This GP2 race had several dangerous incidents – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSegiMMCS-A&feature=related
    33:30 – Gonzalez hits a whole rear wing in the middle of the track
    Immediately afterwards – Cecotto hits the caterham pit crew’s equipment
    46:40 – Car rolls over
    Somewhere I think there was a team member stepping out into the path of a car in the pit lane, but I can’t find it. (May have been a different race)

    Plus the commentator getting increasingly irate when the first safety car stays out for at least two laps extra

  25. I can’t remember this well enough to know whether it was particularly freakish, but just for my peace of mind, can anyone tell me what the crash was where I think there were already a couple of cars stopped on track and either yellows or even a safety car out already and quite a long while afterwards Alonso came absolutely steaming in and just exploded tyres all over the track? (Think that’s how it went down, I have a terrible memory for these things.)

    1. Ah, Brazil 2003. Turns out it’s the first result for “Alonso crash” on YouTube. Maybe not a freak accident per se, but kind of amazing he hadn’t heard what was ahead by that stage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJzezwkbro0

      1. He had heard what was happening, he knew that by not slowing down he could gain a few positions.

        1. What was he thinking? the two cars before came round and were slow enough to steer through, he came in at full speed!

          I remember the webber part but forgot the rest of the action

          1. Back then you could rush to the pitlane if a SC was released. It could make or break your race. I can’t remember wheter Alonso had already pitted.

  26. Murray Walker’s ‘commentary’ on the Patrese Berger incident is one of my earliest memories of F1. “Wooaahhhh” he goes, then the comment that he must be ok because “you can see his eyes”.

  27. Surely this Hans Hermann accident deserves a mention?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_wJaVFS0VI&feature=endscreen

  28. Heidfeld nearly killing the Safety Car driver (was it Bernd Maylander already?) at Interlagos in 2002: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWq8zH5GjA0

    Giancarlo Serenelli, after a brake failure, crashed on the edge of the tyre barrier in Hockenheim this year. Hitting the barrier sideways is never a good thing, thankfully the gravel slowed him down a lot.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkdpExGJx1U

  29. Inoue getting hit by a medical car is a bit of a classic isn’t it:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pa3GrLfprM

    Poor chap!

  30. Michael Brown (@)
    20th August 2012, 23:58

    http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/9674/bmwsauber7.jpg
    It’s a photo I see occasionally, but I’ve never been able to identify the track, driver or year. All I got is it’s a BMW Sauber.

    1. It’s a Williams, back in 2002, after the start failed to miss Barrichello in the Ferrari braking for the first corner so he got launched over the back of it. Very Simular to the Webber Kovalainen accident really, accept it happened at the start.

    2. Track is Melbourne ;)

  31. Sato being wiped out by an out-of-control Nick Heidfeld in Austria springs to mind:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE0qnbrFKuE

    And on that note, there’s also Liuzzi’s shot at the midfield on the first lap at Monza last year. I believe they’ve toughened up the side-impact crash tests several times, but maybe those corners are just too slow – that first chicane still looks ridiculous to me on a high-speed track like Monza.

    1. Michael Brown (@)
      21st August 2012, 0:39

      He could have hit a kerb and bounced into the air, possibly high enough to hit a driver’s head.

  32. Cf Jackie Stewart’s very narrow escape at Spa in 1966.

  33. I think Heidfield striking the door of the medical car at Interlagos, circa 2003 is a bit of an odd one to me. Amazing that nobody was injured in that one.

  34. Just thought about the 2007 european Grand Prix where Liuzzi almost hit the SC. Scary.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69JUz9BDrXQ&feature=related

  35. Forgot about Alex Caffi’s massive crash in practice at Monaco in 1991. How an F1 car could shear in half like that defies belief: here

  36. i am sorry to see that the entire Spa 1998 weekend hasn’t been mentioned. Villeneuve in O’Rouge, 1st start crash, 2nd start crash, and finally Coulthard taking out Michael Schumacher on orders from the pits.

    And Damon Hill winning in the Jordan..

    1. “Oh god!”

  37. What about Berger’s front suspension being broken by Alesi’s onboard camera falling off in front of him at Monza 1995? Luckily it didn’t hit Berger on the head or the consequences would have been dire, as we saw with Massa at Hungary 2009.

    Martin Brundle hitting a marshal at Suzuka 1994, leaving him with a broken leg, also springs to mind.

    Hmmm…just noticing that Brundle and Berger are involved in quite a few of these!

  38. How about the Michelin de-laminations at Indy?

  39. Schumacher at Hungary, 1992 was pretty bad I thought.

  40. Some truly bizarre situations there!

    Why on Earth anyone would think it appropriate to run across a circuit when they’re not 110% sure it’s safe is beyond me.

  41. What about Luciano Burti and Ralf Schumi when Burti’s roll-bar snapped in half? I can’t imagine hitting the ground head-first at speed would feel very good, especially on the old neck-slinky. Another accident which merits mention is Derek Daly at Monaco in 1980 when he was caught out at the braking zone for Ste. Devote, hit a car and did multiple somersaults over the field eventually taking out both of the Renaults if I remember correctly.

  42. I don’t know how Brundle wesnt even hurt, It looks as if it should have nearly killed him!

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