Well, that was different, to say the least.

Anyone want to take a punt at the grid order?

Chaos comes to mind.

How the hell did Massa get hit by that debris through?

They're saying it was a piece of Rubens' suspension that hit him. Ouch.

BBC sport now saying that Massa is in intensive care and is due to undergo surgery for a fractured skull.

Get well soon Massa

Edit: I am now also hearing that the piece of spring from Barrichellos car penetrated the helmet and hit him in the eye. Really am feeling quite sad about this.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/jul/25/felipe-massa-fernando-alonso-hungarian

Nobody said racing was safe. First Henry Surtees gets killed by a wheel off another car, and now this.

I guess that's why they get paid so much for doing it.

Well well well I doubt if many would have predicted that result.

How the devil did Eddie Jordan manage to predict it !

All of a sudden that title isn't looking so secure for Button. He needs to pull his finger out if he wants to win.

Good race over all.

I wonder what the chances are that Felipe got hit by that spring.

Firstly it's a piece of the car that hasn't changed in years. It has never been problematic in the past never mind falling off altogether.

Then it bounced down the track staying on the racing line.

Then Felipe drove into it at 100+ mph and it happened to be at exactly head height.

The only reason it made contact with his face is because it hit the visor!

I just hope he gets well soon.

Given it's strangely similar to the accident that killed Sirtees earlier this month, I think it's possibly much more likely than we think. I don't really see how you can avoid this sort of event - driver's head being struck by object - other than by having enclosed glass cockpits like you get on fighter planes.

Actually, I'm not sure why F1 cars don't have them. They're better aerodynamically than open cockpits and aren't necessarily going to be bad in the event of a fire - you could make then quick-release by various means and the main problem in getting out of a F1 cockpit is the space you have to climb out of is very small, which wouldn't necessarily be the case with an enclosed cockpit. Weight is obviously an issue but I'd imagine you could make one out of polycarbonate or similar that would weigh pretty much nothing.

Jon

Historically, F1 has always been an open car sport, and once you stick a roof on it, then it's a different breed. It's not F1 any more.
I think there'd be a (yet another) big upset if there were suggestions of enclosed racing.
It's motor sport FFS, it's meant to be a bit dangerous. Time was it was cork helmets and airtex shirts, drivers would turn up still pissed from the night before.

Just read that Renault have been suspended from the next race due to letting Alonso out with a wheel loose.

Harsh penalty but I guess, in light of the nature of the death of Surtees that it's a fair penalty.

Surely a much more simple and relevant comparison would be to the closed cockpits you get on some of the LeMans style race cars lol

I dont want to see F1 with a roof. It should remain open top. It is strange to have two similar accidents so close together but I would imagine Massa had more chance winning the lottery than being hit by a stray bit of car in the face. Obviously it happens but then someone wins the lottery too. I think its just a freak accident.

Harsh penalty on Renault. I guess having accidents concerning bits falling off cars they're forced into showing to be doing something but its a bit of scapegoating.

It's like I said to Mrs. V... you can say a lot about that man Jordan, (and I do mean a lot!) but he does actually know more than a lot of people give him credit for.

Most of the Le Mans cars to me seem to have a fairly traditional arrangement - they have a metal 'roof' and glass 'windows' like a standard road car - like this. What I was thinking of was much more like the bubble cockpit you get on a WWII and beyond fighter plane - a shaped piece of glass or plastic that's essentially hemispherical. If you roughly retain the current F1 driving position, putting a metal roof on really does make it much harder to get out of in a hurry. A polycarb bubble with some sort of quick release mechanism would only make a second or two's difference to getting out of car that might be on fire.

There are a few Le Mans cars with bubble cockpits though I can't seem to find an image of one from the last few races. Something akin to this concept job is what I'm thinking of.


Can you give me a good logical reason why? None of this 'Oh it's always been this way' stuff. A 2009 F1 car bears little resemblance to a 1980's F1 car beyond that fact is has 4 wheels and an enormous engine. The F1 championship is now racing in several places that 20 years ago were unoccupied desert and very happily abandoned racetracks that had hosted them for decades. F1 has never given much of a damn about 'tradition' when either speed or money would have to be sacrificed to keep it. The only thing that's guaranteed in F1 is change.


Either we've had two lottery wins in a month, which is farcical, or it's much much more likely than that. It seems to me that we've actually just been badly underestimating the chances of this happening before now.



They always are. Thankfully Massa is apparently unlikely to have suffered any long term brain injury from it and will hopefully make a full recovery. But the point is between this and Sirtees racing has now been given a very obvious warning.


Probably they're being made an example of in the wake of this being the second example of such an injury in a short period but you have to say leaving debris on the track through incompetence rather than ill-fortune (i.e. a racing incident or an unpredictable component failure) should be harshly treated. It's putting people's lives at risk.

Doing 200MPH will always have it's inherent dangers. There are some things you can't mitigate against. But when you can, you do. I don't think Massa's family really give much of flying one about F1's traditions right now.

Jon

All valid points.

I think, if done the right way, then some kind of roof/bubble structure could definitely improve safety (from debris) and potentially provide towards the growing problem of getting the cars to overtake each other by adding a new "layer" of aerodynamics.

A good point they made in the commentary is that unless they give the cars the same grip in the dry as they normally have in the wet then overtaking is going to be very unlikely.