Jules Bianchi thread for updates and discussion

[drunkenmaster]

So why did they change their approach and give us the virtual safety car? Because they have a responsibility.

Precisely, why have a safety car at all, why have barriers, why have penalties for hitting other drivers if all safety is down to the driver.

The simple fact is that going around under double waved yellows a driver is both going as fast as possible because the RACE is still going, yes, a RACE< not a sunday drive in a park. If you want the drivers to stop RACING, you have to enable a situation that you know stops them RACING. Double yellow flags even if they worked as intended do not stop racing, they just slightly slow it.

When you are racing around a track with safety barriers and run offs, that is the decision you are making. Do I speed through this corner, what is the risk, the risk is I might go off and hit a barrier. The decision the driver makes isn't and shouldn't ever be, if I go too fast around this corner will I hit a massive moving concrete block that will almost certainly kill me.

That is the issue, going off didn't kill Bianchi, going off and hitting a truck that should never in a million years have been released into the track without COMPLETELY neutralising the race is what killed him.

Did Sutil die, is his going off that different to going off under a yellow? More importantly have we seen literally hundreds of cars go off in serious rain conditions under yellow flags.... absolutely. Brundle kept bringing up(over the past what 15 years) the incident where was it him that hit a freaking recovery vehicle where a half dozen cars went off on the same corner under yellow flags because the cars were simply not capable of staying on. The truck should never have been out then. A safety vehicle should never be released into a clear and obvious dangerous corner. That corner in Japan is known to be bad in the rain, the chance of someone else going off in the rain was too high. He died because he hit the truck instead of hitting a safety barrier.

People are also completely ignoring the fact that had he gone slower he may have had less downforce, LESS grip and still gone off, other cars with more downforce may have been able to go either faster or slower and not gone off. Rain is an unknown, changing conditions. It really shouldn't take a rocket scientist to know not to put a huge moving dangerous obstacle onto the outside of a dangerous corner in dangerous conditions.

 

[Skeeter]

No ones forcing their hands, good god the lack of thinking in this thread is shocking.
Only ~20 places on the planet and no pressure. Yeah ok. Good god, stupidity is high. Then comparing it to another stupid comparison. Once, he rod that. And he racer many times when he didn't feel safe.

Knew I shouldn't have come back in here.

Stupidity is indeed high.

 

[bayo000]

Can't believe people are saying that the crash wasn't Bianchi's fault at all. Say Hamilton span out in that corner 20sec earlier and he was just getting out of the car and Bianchi hits him breaking his legs or whatever. You'd be all calling for his head and for him to be banned from F1 for dangerous driving.

 

[this_is_gav]

Can't believe people are saying that the crash wasn't Bianchi's fault at all. Say Hamilton span out in that corner 20sec earlier and he was just getting out of the car and Bianchi hits him breaking his legs or whatever. You'd be all calling for his head and for him to be banned from F1 for dangerous driving.

I don't think anyone's said that, have they? Perhaps Glaucus, who's last post I couldn't even translate into human. Or DM who I ignore.

Bianchi wasn't entirely to blame in that the decision should have been taken out of his hands, but he was complicit and it ultimately cost him his life.

 

[DRZ]

Why is everyone so binary?

Bianchi was going too fast for the conditions - that much is entirely self-evident.

The situation he was in - being encouraged to go as fast as possible under all conditions - is a trait of motorsport, a risk that comes with the territory and one that has been created by a culture of competition that naturally exists in sport.

Do the FIA have at least some burden of responsibility for the safety of their competitors? Absolutely yes. The text of the double-waved yellow rules are abundantly clear. Drivers must slow down and be prepared to stop. Under the regulations as they existed at the time, double-waved yellows were insufficient for the situation but a full SC would probably have looked silly (but would possibly have prevented the accident). That said, everybody knows full well that people try and minimise the impediment of yellow flags to the maximum extent they can get away with. Everyone involved knows this is and always has been the case.

In my view there were two errors of judgement. Firstly, Bianchi failed to judge the situation adequately. If he couldn't even corner due to the water, how on earth was he "prepared to stop"? There was only one person in control of that car - Bianchi - and he made that choice. Secondly, the race director and his team failed to take into account the full risk of the situation and thus failed to judge that double-waved yellows were inadequate for the situation. They should have deployed the SC and have basically admitted this by introducing the VSC for these situations where it might be ambiguous.


As an aside, I think we'll see a drastic reduction in the number of double-waved yellows in future as a result because basically if you feel that the situation is double-waved yellow risky, you might as well enforce that on the competitors with the VSC.