Safety
Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 10:49AM
A few coincidences in the last few days have prompted me to write about motorsport safety. I was due to join a panel discussion after a showing of the Senna film in London next week, but the technical difficulties of doing it from Phoenix proved too much. One of the things I was asked to comment on was the impact Senna's death had on safety.
It is true the events of that weekend prompted Max Mosley to re-light the need to improve safety that Sir Jackie Stewart started and which had perhaps lost momentum. Senna's was the last death in F1, so perhaps it worked, but it made me consider what had really changed.
The biggest steps have come with the cars themselves, and as we saw at the weekend in Monaco drivers can now survive virtually intact some huge accidents thanks to the “survival cell” that surrounds them, but what of the tracks themselves? Have we really seen such a great improvement, and the real question for me is what has been done for the bulk of competitors at National level and below?
Safety costs money, and most competitors and track owners do not have any. As a track inspector here in the US I face the problem of telling an owner he needs to fix something, only to be told he cannot afford it, and he can’t. I had a track manager tell me the other day that they subsidize track rentals by around 40% because that is what the market will bear.
The Tecpro barrier is a case in point. They may be better, but only tracks run by Governments can afford them. Jarno Zaffelli sent me information the other day on an installation he is supervising at Imola, but said that cost was not an issue. Well for most of us it is, and having tires is better than nothing. There is also a better mesh available for the debris fence, at a price, but I cannot get proper fences built now, let alone the best one.
Even for F1 tracks we still see corners like the last one in Sao Paulo, which cannot be changed till next year despite two deaths there in other events, and we have street events in Valencia and Singapore which by their nature have to be a compromise. The last corner in Korea was not a great example either, as was the wall that Webber hit. Yes we have asphalt run off everywhere these days, but again at what cost? You probably add about 200% to the area of asphalt at a track, and that is probably the most expensive piece. It was said in Abu Dhabi that the walls were moved closer to give it more of a street track feel. And now they are going to bring MotoGP there?
The cost of most tracks is about one tenth of what is spent on F1, they have to make money, so how is safety going to improve? This does not even take into account the thousand or so little tracks here in the US that operate on a shoestring without basic knowledge of safety in most cases. It’s OK having helicopters, fast intervention vehicles, surgical units and loads of fire fighters and doctors for GP’s, but what about Joe Bloe on a Saturday night in his sprint car?
All the effort is being made at the top level, but there are huge numbers of competitors at risk below that who are not receiving enough attention. Here in the US the Sports Car Club have been trying to improve things through a track review program with limited success, and they have great training for their officials and safety teams, but that is the real extent of it.
On a different note, it seems my prediction of Nick Worth's departure came true very quickly, and the lifting of the state of emergency in Bahrain did not change much on the ground.
It is true the events of that weekend prompted Max Mosley to re-light the need to improve safety that Sir Jackie Stewart started and which had perhaps lost momentum. Senna's was the last death in F1, so perhaps it worked, but it made me consider what had really changed.
The biggest steps have come with the cars themselves, and as we saw at the weekend in Monaco drivers can now survive virtually intact some huge accidents thanks to the “survival cell” that surrounds them, but what of the tracks themselves? Have we really seen such a great improvement, and the real question for me is what has been done for the bulk of competitors at National level and below?
Safety costs money, and most competitors and track owners do not have any. As a track inspector here in the US I face the problem of telling an owner he needs to fix something, only to be told he cannot afford it, and he can’t. I had a track manager tell me the other day that they subsidize track rentals by around 40% because that is what the market will bear.
The Tecpro barrier is a case in point. They may be better, but only tracks run by Governments can afford them. Jarno Zaffelli sent me information the other day on an installation he is supervising at Imola, but said that cost was not an issue. Well for most of us it is, and having tires is better than nothing. There is also a better mesh available for the debris fence, at a price, but I cannot get proper fences built now, let alone the best one.
Even for F1 tracks we still see corners like the last one in Sao Paulo, which cannot be changed till next year despite two deaths there in other events, and we have street events in Valencia and Singapore which by their nature have to be a compromise. The last corner in Korea was not a great example either, as was the wall that Webber hit. Yes we have asphalt run off everywhere these days, but again at what cost? You probably add about 200% to the area of asphalt at a track, and that is probably the most expensive piece. It was said in Abu Dhabi that the walls were moved closer to give it more of a street track feel. And now they are going to bring MotoGP there?
The cost of most tracks is about one tenth of what is spent on F1, they have to make money, so how is safety going to improve? This does not even take into account the thousand or so little tracks here in the US that operate on a shoestring without basic knowledge of safety in most cases. It’s OK having helicopters, fast intervention vehicles, surgical units and loads of fire fighters and doctors for GP’s, but what about Joe Bloe on a Saturday night in his sprint car?
All the effort is being made at the top level, but there are huge numbers of competitors at risk below that who are not receiving enough attention. Here in the US the Sports Car Club have been trying to improve things through a track review program with limited success, and they have great training for their officials and safety teams, but that is the real extent of it.
On a different note, it seems my prediction of Nick Worth's departure came true very quickly, and the lifting of the state of emergency in Bahrain did not change much on the ground.
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