All-purpose open-wheel (F1, IRL) racing thread

Holy shit!

 

Jesus, that's insane.

The driver involved was 17 year old Sophia Floersch, and apparently she's relatively OK. She has a spinal fracture.

According to the driver behind her the marshals flashed an errant yellow light on the straight and the driver in front of her hit the brakes. She had no time to react, clipped him and went airborne.

 

Given they were going into a turn it was difficult to figure out how that could have happened. Makes some more sense now.

 

Glad to hear her surgery went well and she may fully recover.

Injured F3 racer Floersch thankful, confident after surgery

The scariest thing to me: Her car had already flown over the catch fencing and into the secondary barrier before any of the course workers or photogs had a chance to duck. How that didn't wind up a major tragedy is just pure luck. It certainly reminds me there aren't many "completely safe" places to watch a race live. You never know when or where a car will become an unguided missile.

 

It was incredibly lucky. It's crazy to me that she's apparently going to be OK and no one was killed on the scaffold.

You wouldn't expect anyone to hit where she did. Typically the car would end up in the runoff area well to the left of where she made impact.

 

One Saturday morning at Pocono, I decided to walk all the way down to the end of pit lane and watch Cup practice from the pit exit/turn in to Turn 1. All the time I stood there, I kept thinking, "Boy, if someone lost it right here, they could easily flip over this low catch fence and wind up in the middle of the motorhome lot." And damned if someone in the ARCA race didn't do just that three hours later. Landed right next to where I had been standing earlier.

I've always been concerned about low the wall is between the front stretch and the pits at Dover. It wouldn't take much for some car to clear that and wipe out a bunch of pit boxes, plus all the people who watch from behind them. Same thing with the SMI quad-oval tracks that don't have a pit road barrier.

 

And here's turn one at Monaco:



The straight leading to the corner isn't as straight as it is in Macau, but it isn't wildly different. The barrier is about five feet high. Same wreck there, she could have ended up in someone's balcony.

 

The age of the drivers has been getting lower and lower. 17 is too young and inexperienced to be driving such a powerful car on a street circuit. Formula 1 has been bringing on younger and younger drivers, Max Verstappen was only 17, Lance Stroll was 18 when they began. If the cars are so easy to drive quickly that a 17 year old can do it then they are creating these situations where something goes wrong and the driver hasn't the experience to react. This type of thing will only increase as time goes on unless the FIA makes the cars more difficult to drive so the drivers need to have much more experience to drive them.

 

17 is, what, two years too young to play in the NBA but it’s just fine for elite level auto racing? Ridiculous.

 

Or the front straight at Indianapolis, especially since the de rigeur move coming off Turn 4 now seems to be to go as low as one can to the inside wall for air resistance reasons.

 

Yeah, but that's bullshit on the NBA's part. There's no valid reason for it.

I don't have an issue with the driver ages. F3 is a feeder series -- the vast majority are 18 or 19 years old.

Guys are getting to F1 younger and younger but it hasn't been any kind of safety issue. Verstappen is aggressive but hasn't made mistakes out of inexperience. Stroll has been saddled with a hideously slow car but likewise hasn't caused any problems.