F1 Fanatic

I know it’s not much to create a forum topic about, but here is some amateur footage of Fabio Leimer’s enormous crash at Raidillon that the FOM television cameras failed to capture.

As you probably thought when you saw the wreckage on TV, it was a truly massive accident and it is simply amazing that he escaped unharmed.

Oh my god. That car just disintegrated!

It concerned me how little the cars passing the accident were slowing despite the yellow flags. Had Leimer’s car bounced back onto the track, as it so nearly did, surely one of the cars behind would have drove straight into the wreckage at full speed? It’s a scary thought

@Ned: It was a pretty bad place to have an accident, for a start I dont imagine they could see the wreckage from the bottom of Eau Rouge, and secondly it’s not a corner where you can just slam on the brakes or lift right off the throttle.
I dont know when the yellows started waving at the bottom of the hill so it’s difficult to say if the cars immediately after ignored them or not, plus these cars always look fast, even when they’ve slowed down considerably.

I’m in total agreement Ned, yellows were clearly being shown, but the pack was continuing on at nigh on full speed.

Carrying that kind of speed through an accident zone is extraordinarily dangerous. I’m sure many of us need no reminding of Alez Zanardi’s truly horrendous accident over in Germany. Scenes like that make me realise how close we are to having that happen again.

Another thought to consider there is the presence of marshals. Had leimer been trapped in the car, or there been a fire, many more marshals would have been required to go right out into the track to help. Again it is not hard to forsee something truly dreadful occuring with cars continuing as though they were still in race conditions.

Isn’t it single yellow flag – no need to stop and double yellow flags – prepare to stop? Anyway, when nowadays there are big boards showing flags I believe drivers concentrate more on them than marshal posts. Especially when Singapore Grand Prix takes place in few weeks since it’s more difficult to see marshal posts in the dark.

I believe single yellow = slow down and no overtaking

Double yellow is the slow down and prepare to stop order.

Either way, they were still going too fast. And as for suggesting that they couldn’t see the accident hence didn’t slow down, I would have presumed that that was the purpose of the yellows… unless as was suggested they weren’t waved far enough down the track