Club Arnage

Does anyone else think that the use of safety cars this year was a bit excessive?

I know this has been a more and more prevalent option over the last few years, and I am thinking back to the years when the Audis / Peugeots were running behind safety cars for long periods in the rain, but that is surely a realistic use of a safety cars..................................?
If we put the Allan Simonsen incident to one side (and God rest his soul by the way!), I think that putting out a whole course caution over an 8 mile circuit is a bit unnecessary for the more minor barrier repairs or for cleaning debris over a a span of a few hundred meters of track. IMHO.
Why can these smaller jobs not be conducted under double waved yellows?
AND Are the drivers really ignoring waved yellows to such an extent these days that this is not a viable option??

I would like to think that maybe the ACO / FIA made a conscious decision to "play safe" during the race because of the Simonsen incident, but then again it was happening during both practice and qually.

Thoughts please.
clk

With such wet/dry/wet conditions and cars spinning off into barriers, it was inevitable that safety car periods would be necessary. If barriers need repair and cars need recovery, the marshals and safety barrier crews need to be protected. The question is... should that be a local yellow flag or a full course safety car?

The SC strategy has worked well in the WEC rounds so far, so I'm not surprised that it was used at Le Mans. The number and length of those interventions was down to the weather and track conditions.

see piglets post.ive seen marshals hit by cars still racing Under waved yellows at donny safty car makes sense.these people must be protected.no racing without them.if they dont trust the way the race is managed the might go do a safer sport.

Maybe they can replace the rock-sized "gravel" with sand so the cars actually get stuck vs. catapulting over the pit and hitting the tire barrier.  (See Allan McNish, 2011)  It would relieve the course of sharp stones that inevitably cut tires and break windscreens.

At least use much smaller stones...you know...real gravel for the traps.

I completely agree that the marshals safety is equally as important as the safety of the drivers.  There must be a better way of putting out a yellow signal than having marshals on the track for these incidents. Yellow lights on the back of the repair vehicles or mobile signs? ? All the cars have radio contact, so these situations COULD be avoided without having personnel physically on the track.

Theres an optimum aggregate size for traps. Too large or small and theyre likely to allow the cars to run over the top of the trap rather than digging in and stopping. Aggregate shape also  has a part to play. Its not about using wjats cheapest or what falls to hand anymore either. The traps at LM are using the  optimum material. Ploughing huge ridges into them will increase the risk of a car either digging in and flipping or to using the 1st ridge as a ramp and flying.

Its it arguable  that the traps arent numerous or large enough at Le Mans but their composition isnt the issue.

As for armco, too resilient and the energy provided by the car is returned directly to the car, as we saw on Saturday,  although this was, on this sad occasion caused by the proximity of the tree. A barrier must be deformable otherwist it satisfies no energy dissipation function.  Once a barrier has been deformed its future resilience xannot be guaranteed,  so they must be replaced. If they were so strong that they didnt need replaced, we'd  sadly see more injuries and worse being contributed to by their properties than we see now with the 'brie' armco.

As piglet said in the new winner thread, there is also the risk that with energy absorbing materials such as tyres, theres a risk that a car will be bounced back into traffic in the event of an impact.

The problem at LM is that the majority of the land outwith the track isnt owned by the ACO and that extending runoff and altering barriers isnt the 'no brainer' at other locations.  Perhaps returning TR to an earlier line might sufficiently mitigate the risk as a starter.

There is no easy fix, but that is no reason to put the problem on the 'too difficult' pile.

I guess we all just have to remember that racing is dangerous and that people die in wrecks and come to grips with it.

Who would have thought that Dale Earnhardt would have died in the innocuous looking wreck he was in?  And the Senna wreck didn't look that bad either.

Agreed.

I'm not all that cold hearted, but, I've written before in many places that when we make racing antseptic as we're headed, it ain't gonna be no fun to watch anymore.

Virtual race cars will not excite me.

Jim, really I wouldn't have thought you felt that way.  After all, I thought you bought the farm in the cold rain at Hockenheim in '68, on a tree lined, high speed circuit, with no barrriers, protection, nothing.  I guess all along you were hanging out with Elvis, and Jim Morrison at the 7-Eleven in Kalamzoo.  I mean really, it is you Jim?  Who seriously would be as disrespectful as to take the name of the sainted Scot as their user name on a chat forum?
Guess you didn't see the footage from the Grand-Am CTC race at Mid-Ohio two weeks ago when the Mutlimatic Aston Vantage shunted heavily into the tire barrier on the approach the Keyhole?  Travelling at the higher clip than AS was at Terte Rouge in a similar Aston. Big difference, tire barriers, the wall didn't have f**k*ng tree planted six inches behind it.
Where are you going Gatordad?  Big E died because Ironhead refused to wear his harnesses mounted the way Simpson Safety advised, (that and his desire to wear a open face helmet) sealed his fate in what was a massive head on shunt, into a pre-safety barrier cement wall.  And just curious?  What didn't you find bad looking about Senna's shunt?  Spearing off into the cement wall, at a 45 degree angle the old Tamburello Corner at close to 200 MPH!
Look guys, I'm as old school as anyone on here, But the fact that in this day & age, in a race (not just a race, a sporting event) as significant as th LM 24Hrs, the fact that a car was allowed to hit a unprotected armco barrier, mounted a few inches from a stout tree, at a high speed, borders on criminal negligence.
Just curious again!  The LM 24Hrs is a WEC round right?  How does the Circuit de la Sarthe comply with the FIA safety standards regarding world championship venues?
Fax

I think the slightly excessive safety car usage might have been a reaction to the incident that happened at the Canadian GP that sadly took the life of a marshal.

That incident took place under local waved yellow flags rather than a safety car.

Lessons do need to be learned from the Allan Simonsen incident. Nobody should die in vain on a circuit.
A couple of years ago, we could be having the same conversation had Rockenfeller hit a different part of the armco at Tetre Rouge.

Do you remove the trees and ruin the "iconic" look of that corner??

Surely a length of Steel and Foam Energy Reduction (SAFER) Barrier would improve that armco, cover it in advertising and you wouldn't even know it was there!

No doubt they will make alterations to Tetre Rouge before next years race. The recent alterations were, I believe a result of the new tram line/terminus. Sadly it resulted in a corner that is now taken virtually flat out if you are to get a gun run down the first part of the hunadieres, but with very little protection should it go wrong due to its proximity to the public road. It's unlikely that the old profile will be returned so we'll probably get a chicane.

As for the SC car situation. As I suggested in another thread, surely there is a way of limiting the cars speed electronically from Race Control? Restrict the speed of the cars to 30kmh in the effected area and allow racing to continue on the rest of the circuit?

Si

what we dont want is a knee jerk reaction like imola in 94 with 5 chicanes.better run off.or these days the fancy new impact asorbing barrier.i know all drivers use the HANS system but air bags be used in race cars.in moto gp some guys have in inflation jackets to cusion impact.seems like a cunning plan to me.

Quality and class....who could ask for anything more???....

Brace yourself.  I can't find anything to disagree on in this post.
The only thing I would say is that the presence of the tree and its location/proximity to the Armco is not currently "fact" - although far too many people have mentioned it for it to be a co-incidence.

Whooopp-dee-dooo....

http://blog.parathyroid.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/AllanSimonsenTree.jpg

It's too early to speculate I think. We won't know until the coroner has his say. There's little clear TV or photographic footage to go off (in the public realm anyway), we don't have any in car data (although I seem to recall mention of a 75G impact somewhere or other.

I'm still shocked by his death. It's not the fastest place to go off and surely as it slid it scrubbed some speed off? The car didn't look as bad as some we have seen, and he was reported to be talking to the corner workers and extraction team. That tree has lost it's bark but there's not much else wrong with it, suggesting that the impact wasn't exceptionally heavy. I've done worse in my own forays into the trees.

I think that's why the news when it came was so shocking. We've seen some monster shunts at LM over the last few years and have grown accustomed to them having a happy ending. Looking back two years to Rockys crash, that was the one where you thought 'god rest' only for him to climb away from the wreckage. OK, different class of car and a different type of accident, but when you saw what was left of the car afterwards, you start to think these guys are indestructible.

I guess we will know over the next few weeks and we'll see what can be done to prevent another sad loss.

Probably some sort of internal injury/bleeding eventually took him, with all the organs being shaken up a lot, rather than any intrusive injuries...

Does anyone know the optimum distance those barriers are required to flex to absorb maximum impact? I am assuming that these need to move some distance to perform correctly?? Certainly 6 inches does not seem to be enough to me! I can see that this position would not 'normally' be considered a place where a car would / could have a direct impact (being WELL on the exit of a pretty fast / well flat really , corner) but come on! Even I could have predicted that this is not going to be good enough, there should have been tyres and conveyor belts here.

Having thought about the two enormous crashes by McNish & Rockenfeller two years ago, I fully understand how the LMP1 cars (and for that matter F1, and all other single seaters) are designed to shred equipment in order to dissipate energy during a crash.

GTE cars don't appear to have anything to shred during such incidents.

The Krohn Ferrari didn't loose much equipment during it's crash on Wednesday which resulted in a car change as did the #51 AF Corse Ferrari last year.

Just a thought.

This is not the place for sarcasm.

Allrighty. 'Just thought it made my point succinctly.  ??? :)

Sacasm aside, I'm just amazed that someone is pompous enough to dishonor to the late, great double world champion, and Indy 500 winner's name, by using it (and his portrait) as a chat forum user name.  Perhaps some of us on here should change our names to JuanManuelFangio, AlbertoAscari, or GrahamHill? On second thought, we have more respect for the deceased titans of the sport.
Fax

The alternative view is that it is a mark of respect, but as per above comment, not really the place for this discussion please. Smokie

I would tend to agree with Smokies comment on internal injuries, but we will know when the details if the post mortem are released.

My crash 3 years ago was similar to Allans in as much as I too came to an abrupt halt when my car was stopped by the armco from a 120mph spin.

I was able to communicate with the medical/rescue services and was totally unaware of how serious my internal injuries were at the time, but thanks to all involved on the day i'm lucky enough still to be here.

If that picture really is of the crash site, it's pretty shocking, but I guess we should bear a couple of points in mind: 1) the barrier had to be repaired very quickly after the crash. It's entirely possible that the mountings had shifted in the impact, and that the original barrier was further away from the tree (although that clearly didn't prevent the car from hitting it). 2) The ACO actually has a reasonably good record for protecting drivers in recent years. There are far more gravel traps and double-layer tyre barriers than there used to be and we've had some truly appalling smashes from which the driver has walked, or at least limped, away. As has already been pointed out, the crash site was on the exit of the corner, well away from the "normal" trajectory of a spinning/crashing car. My guess is this was a combination of poor oversight, sheer bad luck and the fact that a street circuit which has to be reopened to normal traffic very quickly can never be made entirely safe.

I've been to a zillion races at Daytona and the wreck that Big E was in did not look "that bad" to me sitting in Roberts Tower.  Very few drivers wore the HANS device until after he got killed.  As for Senna...well, I was probably using a bit too much hyperbole there.

BTW, there is a picture of "the tree" posted on another thread I think.

Having in the past looked at where the crash took place, yes the trees are just behind the Armco. Remember at the time thinking it wouldn't be good if someone hit them as there was no give in them. When Terte Rouge was re-profiled i thought it was a good thing as it angled the cars away from them. Sadly it was not to be.
Perhaps as we have been without a fatal injury, safety has stalled and now is the time to look into safety further. Having spent a few Friday nights at the Stella bar watching the Armco being tweaked by the local council crew it always made me wonder how Armco should be fixed. Most of the Mulsanne is pipes set into the ground with the Armco uprights slotted into it. This needs to be replaceable so is not cemented into the ground it is wedged in places with wooden wedges. Not sure about that...
As for tyre walls, they have to be fixed so they won't explode over the track when hit, and stop cars from diving underneath. Remember Kovalinen in his Mclaren skating over the gravel and submarining under the tyre wall, stopped short of hitting him but snapped the chassis, fortunately it held together with the kevlar.
Also sadly this weekend another driver Andrea Mame was killed in a 5 car crash in the Lamborghini support race at Paul Ricard before the Blancpain race. I think a review of driver safety in GT cars is definetly called for.
There are no easy quick answers

I worked at TRL in Crowthorne for a while, back a few years ago, and was lucky enough to witness a few Armco tests.  

The video below is not one of them, but gives you an idea of how far a barrier would be looking to move, to absorb the impact.  They are DESIGNED to shear the bolts and that shearing also helps with energy dissipation.  Clearly IF a tree was as close as it appears to the barrier, then that is going to ruin its effectiveness, and will potentially leave the ACO up a certain street, and very seriously lacking a paddle.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTodeeJ3-co

I wuz gonna agree but it's obvious that ther is a majority that just don't get it...

God help us.....