F1

Fatal accident at Interlagos

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 34 total)
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  • #129193
    karan01
    Participant
    #166239
    davey
    Participant

    Tragic as it is, the news story is incorrect. Roland Ratzenberger didn’t die at tamburello he died after going straight on at Villeneuve corner.

    #166240
    Ned Flanders
    Participant

    I was surprised how little coverage this story got. I only heard about it yesterday…

    #166241
    sw6569
    Participant

    yeah, i was just looking through the roundups but i can’t find any mention of it – although it was mentioned briefly by Massa in his recent interview, that if he wins he will dedicate the victory to the victim who was a close friend of his.

    I had a brief chat with a few people on twitter about it. Its a terrible shame, but it also strikes me as a bit of a freak accident that could have happened anywhere. RIP.

    #166242
    Ned Flanders
    Participant

    To continue the Twitter discussion, I agree it was a freak accident to an extent, but I still maintain that if there was run off to the side of the track, those cars would have just slid off out of harms way. The reason that almost all straights on modern circuits are ‘ruler drawn’ is because they are so much safer. As spectacular as high speed kinks are, they are dangerous

    #166243
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Requiescat In Pace Gustavo Sondermann.

    #166244
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Shortly after the incident, well-known Brazilian drivers Rubens Barrichello, Bruno Senna, Nelson Piquet Jr and Luciano Burti have paid tribute on Twitter, with the last of them urging the circuit organizers to alter the Curva do Cafe corner to avoid accidents of this kind in the future.

    Great… another chicane at an awesome (all-be-it dangerous) corner.

    #166245
    Prisoner Monkeys
    Participant

    but it also strikes me as a bit of a freak accident that could have happened anywhere

    It’s not the first time an accident has claimed a life there. There was another almost identical one there a few years ago; a stock car driver (I can’t remember his name) went wide, hit the wall and ricoheted back across the circuit where he was collected by another car (you can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F22ZuPzogxU) And it was the scene of Webber’s infamous accident in 2003, when Alonso collected debris left on the circuit, leading to the race stoppage.

    Great… another chicane at an awesome (all-be-it dangerous) corner.

    It’s unlikely because there’s no room. The back half of the circuit from Juncao climbs steeply and circles up around to the start line; Subdia dos Boxes is one of the highest points of the circuit. But on the inside of the corner is Bico do Pato, the hairpin – and that’s one of the lowest points on the circuit. Any chicane would require Bico do Pato to be moved backwards and the inside of Subdia dos Boxes to be filled in, because the outer wall cannot be moved back; just outside the circuit is a major arterial road.

    The only reasonable solution would be to lengthen the circuit coming out of Juncao, then cut back across with a Tamburello-style chicane. Or, better yet, a replica of Tamburello; for a chicane, it’s actually quite a neat little complex. The idea of such a corner would not be to slow the cars dow, but to change the racing line going into Subdia dos Boxes so that if a car does go off and cut back across the circuit after glancing the wall – at a lower speed, as the chicane would shave a little off – it will be off the racing line.

    #166246
    Icthyes
    Participant

    I don’t really see anything that can be done to make that corner itself safer. The problem is how close the wall is, a key factor in both fatalities mentioned.

    #166247
    Prisoner Monkeys
    Participant

    Which is why you have to reprofile the section just before it to change the racing line going into the corner. It’s the only solution that makes sense – unless the organisers want to copy the infamous Beirut chicane from 1994 …

    #166248
    Icthyes
    Participant

    Not really, just move the wall back and don’t have it and the race track at a converging angle.

    #166249
    Prisoner Monkeys
    Participant

    That can’t be done. There is a major arterial road behind the grandstands on top of the wall, and a neighbourhood right behind that. There is no space to move it back.:

    http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4409280

    #166250
    Icthyes
    Participant

    I didn’t realise there were grandstands there.

    The problem with making a new Tamburello is that at some point it approaches the inner hairpin, as demonstrated here: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4409899

    Whatever solution you come up with, the problem of the wall will always be there, because the cars will be using that part of the circuit at speed. You would have to have a much sharper, slower chicane like this: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4409907

    I don’t want to sound callous but these are small accidents that escalated. I know the proximity of the wall was a major factor in this but this could have happened going down any main straight in F1, as we saw in Suzuka last year. I think it’s a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to start calling for the circuit to be chopped up. The accident could so easily have happened a few hundred metres down the road and there’s nothing you can do there to change it.

    #166251
    cubejam
    Participant

    I say don’t change it. Motorsport needs danger. Without danger drivers will think they’re invincible.

    #166252
    Faraz
    Participant

    Gustavo Sondermann R.I.P Tragic.

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