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Dup said:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/29012007/344/car-owner-blames-hammond-crash.htmlWhat puzzles me though that it doesn't have brakes? Surely brakes would disintegrate at those speeds?
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It does have brakes but as you said i can't imagine they would be much cop @ 288mph.

As agw said he had .4 seconds to react to the tyre blow and take evassive action. Tbh i can't believe hammond would be blaimed for it, fair enough the tyre was starting to look a bit iffy before it went but i imagine he was concentrating on the road rather than looking at the tyres, not to mention the fact he was pretty low down in the cockpit so would he even have been able to see the front right?
 
I don't think it's at all fair for Hammond to be blaimed - that's just nasty!

For a second or so before it blew out it did change slightly but come on - at 288mph you're not going to be concentrating so hard on the tyres that you notice a slight change before a blow out!
 
Maybe by 'brakes' he was referring to the parachute.

Launch that and you will at least keep the thing pointing forwards due to the drag. You would also slow down v.fast.

I imagine that actions like that require split second reactions that only come from months of training. Hamster had probably had at most a couple of hours.
 
Well, the blame should go both ways. The car owners and team for not spotting the defective tyre before he set off and Hammond for not spotting the delamination while driving.

Hammond put his life in their hands like other people have. It was down to Farrells team to look after the car and driver. It's no good saying Hammond was at fault for the crash when he couldn't have stopped a tyre blowing. The team however could have spotted something wrong with the tyre before he even set off, leaving them the cause. Hammond could have prevented the extremety of the crash, but it could not have been prevented mid-run. As far as I see it, you press a button and hold on, you're just a passenger in a land going rocket.
 
Dup said:
Well, the blame should go both ways.

Hammond could have prevented the extremety of the crash, but it could not have been prevented mid-run.
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Sorry...how could he have prevented it? 0.4sec to prevent a crash is V.unlikely. Could you have done it?
 
Booner! said:
Sorry...how could he have prevented it? 0.4sec to prevent a crash is V.unlikely. Could you have done it?
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this isnt a reaction time debate

the onwer said

"Mr Hammond had a puncture and carried on with the tyre deflated", adding that Hammond "stood on the brakes" after the blowout.
Once these cars are in motion you don't touch the brakes. You stay on the prescribed line and should always be aware of the unexpected"

which actually says that if hammond had not stamped on the brakes, then the accident wouldnt have happened. So 0.4 seonds or whatever hasnt got anything to do with it. Just if he'd ridden it out, and let the car come to a stop naturally, it wouldnt have happeend.

but tbh i think thats total BS. The car was going to loose control if it had a blowout regardless of whether he brakes surely ?

and didnt they say in the original footage that there were no brakes ? i would watch the footage back but i've got no soundcard on my work pc :(
 
There was definately something dodgy about that tyre on the second run though. JC even pointed it out. It just looked slightly deformed on the inner wall.

It doesn't look like he touched the brakes anyhow. The chute didn't deploy and the direction the car veered also suggests it was nothing to do with braking but more to do with the impossible physics of a tyre burst at 280mph...
 
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He said: "Mr Hammond had a puncture and carried on with the tyre deflated", adding that Hammond "stood on the brakes" after the blowout.
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He's saying there that hammond "carried on with the tyre deflated".

Is he stating that before the run hammond was told there was a puncture, but carried on anyway? If Hammond ran the car when he was advised not to, then it's clearly his fault.

Or is he suggesting that hammond "carried on" driving "with the tyre deflated" suggesting that hammond should somehow, at the moment of the blowout (I'd suggest the word "puncture" to be a bit of an understatement myself) have immediately stopped the car and got out? Hmmm, something I think would be difficult to acheive at 288mph. However, he then goes on to state that Hammond "Stood on the brakes" and that "Once these cars are in motion you don't touch the brakes." So what exactly was Hammond supposed to do, stop... or not stop?

Or is he suggesting that the slight bulging seen earlier was indicative of a puncture, and at that point Hammond should have started the braking procedure, again this needs refering to the "stop or not stop" above. That's ignoring the fact that, at 288 mph, Hammond probably has no idea what shape the tyre should be (look at the tyres on top fuellers, they stretch like mad!), or the fact that it only deformed briefly before the blowout, or the fact that the camera was well above Hammonds head and that the view he had of the tyre could well have been less obvious than the view we got, or the fact that, at 288mph, in a car that you have never driven before, you'd probably be so high on adrenaline that watching the tyres for signs of puncture is not necessarily something you would be concentrating on.

I know there was the parachute option, but there is no suggestion that the braking affect of the parachute would have prevented the accident. I would suggest a large deceleration focused on the rear end would have shifted the weight towards the front of the car causing a nose dive which would force the stripped wheel down on one side producing a steering effect and rendering the vehicle unstable anyway.

What the guy is shying away from was the fact that he thought it was a good idea to let an inexperienced driver attempt to drive a complex (in relation to driving a car) vehicle at full speed without adequate training. Something went wrong and he now wants to pass the buck.

It's like NASA letting JC take the space shuttle "for a spin" and then, after the ensuing fireball, saying "well, we did tell him not to crash it!"
 
Shouldn't have run with the tyre like that period. Lucky enough to get away with it on the 2nd run. Should have been seen and checked rigourously before running again and corrected.
 
MrLOL said:
this isnt a reaction time debate

the onwer said

"Mr Hammond had a puncture and carried on with the tyre deflated", adding that Hammond "stood on the brakes" after the blowout.
Once these cars are in motion you don't touch the brakes. You stay on the prescribed line and should always be aware of the unexpected"

which actually says that if hammond had not stamped on the brakes, then the accident wouldnt have happened. So 0.4 seonds or whatever hasnt got anything to do with it. Just if he'd ridden it out, and let the car come to a stop naturally, it wouldnt have happeend.

but tbh i think thats total BS. The car was going to loose control if it had a blowout regardless of whether he brakes surely ?

and didnt they say in the original footage that there were no brakes ? i would watch the footage back but i've got no soundcard on my work pc :(
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My thinking as well, as 280mph when the tyre bursts the car will instantly drop on one side causing a steering effect in that direction (in this case taking him towards the grass).

IIRC from the first shots the car does have brakes but they look like standard disc brakes like you would find on a road car / track car. I wouldimagine these would provide zero braking effect when you are being thrust along by a jet engine.
 
Lashout_UK said:
Shouldn't have run with the tyre like that period. Lucky enough to get away with it on the 2nd run. Should have been seen and checked rigourously before running again and corrected.
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Unless it was caused by a puncture picked up during the early parts of the run, but that still points to shoddy track maintenance rather than driver error.
 
agreed. i remeber when it happend and there was a huge debate on how it happened here on the forums....so so many people were putting it down to driver error. I myself said jetcars arent exactly the most complex of machinery but a lot of guys here wouldnt have it. It's in no way a driver error. he did what he could in such a small space of time. half a second from puncture to being off the track and upside down....

You can see in the video the tires developed a fault rather quickly. It is always possible the the tire itself had an inherant fault from the factory which nobody was able to find prior to that run. its also possible that they didnt check the tire over thoroughly enough before the run which is THEIR fault, not Hammond's. however Richard Hammond didnt drive the car off the track. there's nothign there suggesting he was at fault.
 
volospian said:
So what exactly was Hammond supposed to do, stop... or not stop?
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thats a very good point the wording of his quote is rather ambiguous

i read the part afterwards that said

"Once these cars are in motion you don't touch the brakes. You stay on the prescribed line and should always be aware of the unexpected"

which implies that he shouldnt have braked. but then this quote

"Mr Hammond had a puncture and carried on with the tyre deflated"

reads like carrying on with the puncture was a bad idea

make your mind up man !

and as already posted, the car crashed to the right, the exact same direction the car would have dropped when the right tyre blew out, implying the veering off course was more to do with the blow out than his braking

as for that clip of the tyre running with bits comming off it was that 0.8 seconds before the crash as Hammond suggested, or on the 2nd run as i read jeremy to imply ?
 
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