F1 - Indycar safety.

Danthus

Danthus

Danthus

Permabanned
Joined
5 Jun 2010
Posts
15,459
There hasn't been a death in F1 since Senna, 17 years ago, IndyCar has had 10 fatalities in past 12 years I think someone mentioned in the Dan Wheldon thread.

Is this simply an issue of how much safer an F1 car is or is it a combination of factors in IndyCar, the number of cars and the walls etc which makes it more dangerous?
 
Its down to the nature of cart racing

Exposed open cockpits, 220mph top speeds and concrete walls at the top of the bank are going to claim lives

Only way to make it safer would be to give up racing on the banked ovals. Which isn't ever going to happen.

At the end of the day, people die. Sometimes it happens in motorsports. The Cart drivers know what they are letting themselves in for. Its a risk they are willing to take.

Lets hope they don't ruin a motorsport trying to stop that.
 
OldCoals said:
Is this simply an issue of how much safer an F1 car is or is it a combination of factors in IndyCar, the number of cars and the walls etc which makes it more dangerous?
Click to expand...

pretty much what you said, doing 220 mph, inches apart from other cars also doing 220 mph .. with a solid concrete wall a few inches on the other side means theres going to be deaths. f1 tracks usually have pretty large run off areas and tyre walls, which help a lot but unfortunately in indi
cars there's no room for error.
 
Jim.Ow said:
doing 220 mph, inches apart from other cars also doing 220 mph .. with a solid concrete wall a few inches on the other side
Click to expand...

It's why I always wear a wry smile when someone says the usual 'pffft, oval racing is so boring, all they have to do is turn left' crapola.

Oval track safety has improved markedly in the last decade. The introduction of the SAFER (Steel And Foam Energy Reduction) barriers at many tracks has played a key part in that. But at the end of the day - huge speeds plus open wheel, open cockpit cars is always going to leave the potential for something to go wrong.
 
I think that the largest difference between indy and f1, that has contributed a lot to the continuing safety troubles in indycar, comes down to two simple facts, one has been slightly addressed by the use of SAFER barriers, the other, is the larger field, with 33 or so cars in the field, compared to formula 1's 24.

Add into the mix that most of the worst accidents happen at oval circuits, which due to their nature are sustained high speed tracks and bad things can happen, after all, the number of serious accidents involved with banked surfaces is what resulted in a lot of course changes for formula one.
 
It's the nature of racing at 200mph, accidents happen.

It's mainly because Indy haven't ruined the sport with safety (yet), if they got the F1 guys in to make Indycar safer they'd all be racing around on a flat piece of land with two tram lines and plenty of run off either side.
 
But where do you draw the line? F1 had to make changes after suffering so many deaths in the sport for so long; as it says on all the tickets motorsport is indeed dangerous and accidents will happen, but if those accidents can be prevented from ending in death then surely that's a good thing.

I for one remember Kubica's crash at Canada and I honestly thought he was dead, but thanks to F1's constant improvements to driver safety he was ok. Nevertheless it was a truly horrible feeling thinking that I'd watched someone die as I sadly did with Senna; it's not something I ever want to witness again.
 
Looking at the Dan Wheldon crash, there were 15 odd cars involved. 15 cars doing 200+ mph, some of them getting airborne, all smashing into each other and the wall, catching fire and so on - and horrific as it is that Dan died, I think its amazing that it was only one of them, given those circumstances, so they are obviously putting the effort in, in the safety department. It will never be perfect, but that's a damn sight better than it has been in the past.
 
I think this is IndyCar's moment that F1 had back in '94.

When you have cars catching fire after merely contacting with other cars you know something isn't right. I honestly can't remember the last time a F1 car caught fire after a crash :confused:
 
mmj_uk said:
It's mainly because Indy haven't ruined the sport with safety (yet), if they got the F1 guys in to make Indycar safer they'd all be racing around on a flat piece of land with two tram lines and plenty of run off either side.
Click to expand...

You have no idea how much I want to punch you. Either you have a sick mentality when it comes to sport and safety, or you are trying to be funny about a situation where a man has died.

Either is shocking.
 
Put the Webber accident last year where he went over the back of another car and took off on an Oval and add maybe 80mph to his speed an no run off. It's Ovals that are the danger points and the speeds they run. On a super oval they are never below 200mph really so every crash has the proportions of an air crash. Indycar safety has lead the world for years, fact is you can't fight physics.
 
NathanE said:
I think this is IndyCar's moment that F1 had back in '94.

When you have cars catching fire after merely contacting with other cars you know something isn't right. I honestly can't remember the last time a F1 car caught fire after a crash :confused:
Click to expand...

This is something that bothers me, too. Isn't it down to the methanol fuel that is used, being much more flammable (and more highly compressed)? Obviously, the fuel tank itself should never rupture and it would be interesting to know how the IndyCar ones work.
 
indy cars remind me of our F1 cars 10 years ago (in looks). I'm not sure they offer as much protection as the F1 shell (around the airducts above the drivers heads for instance). When I saw Webbers crash in Valencia last year, I thought to myself, there's no way in hell he's walking away from that. A rear flip straight on to the cockpit was always bad news. Next thing is, he gets out and casually walks away. At the time, he was bouncing off the limiter in 7th, so we can assume 180mph, initial contact at that speed then he hits a tyre wall.

I can't believe the onboard shots of Will Powers car. His front right wheel came swining straight for his head after he hit the side wall.

I think given the closeness of the racing in Indy car and the reduced maring of error over the F1 tracks makes it possibly more prone to serious, fatal, accidents.

I'm pretty sure the initial contact fires are oil fires. Very viscous oil suddenly gets shoved down an exhaust pipe thats crazily hot, the only thing it's going to do, in volume, is catch fire.
 
Last edited:
I would argue an indycar is at least as strong as an F1 car, I suggest even stronger. That crash would have destroyed an F1 car too, the crash that Kubica had would have been different if he'd hit head first into the fence. It's the nature of the impact and the speeds that are different, this is why Indycar is so dangerous compared to F1, their tracks.
 
Housey said:
I would argue an indycar is at least as strong as an F1 car, I suggest even stronger. That crash would have destroyed an F1 car too, the crash that Kubica had would have been different if he'd hit head first into the fence. It's the nature of the impact and the speeds that are different, this is why Indycar is so dangerous compared to F1, their tracks.
Click to expand...

Tony Jardine on Sky said the opposite was true in terms of of how safe an F1 chassis was compared to the IndyCar chassis.
 
OldCoals said:
Tony Jardine on Sky said the opposite was true in terms of of how safe an F1 chassis was compared to the IndyCar chassis.
Click to expand...

Doesn't change my view, F1 took a lot of learning from the development of Indycar chassis, not least crash testing. The safety records of both are not a reflection on the crash protection provided, merely demonstrative of the differences racing on Ovals and at best, medium safety road course like Languna Seca, Road America and others, which have in some places no fencing (see Rodriguez death at Languna)
 
It was a freak accident. If an F1 car turned upside down and smacked its driver's head on a wall then he would be dead as well.

Reminds me of poor Marco Campos at Magny Cours.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom