Formula 1: Suzuka GP Preview

mellowtiger83 said:Why am I seeing zero smoke from locked wheels? There should’ve been plenty of smoke if they were locking up, especially since the track was wet.

How come Sutil spins out way easier at that exact spot—and even with much less speed?

Where are all the crash replays?

And where’s the onboard footage? I know it exists—there’s gotta be tons of cameras on those cars, right?? They’re practically required by the rulebook!!

Wheels don't smoke when they lock up on a wet track.

As a massive fan of rain racing, you really should know that.

Or maybe you've just never actually seen a lock-up in the rain. If you haven't seen it, I guess you'll just have to take my word for it.

All things considered, I have observed quite a few instances where drivers managed to walk away from accidents entirely unscathed, such as
Berger-imola, Barichello-imola, Donnelly, and Kubica.
I wish that same fate for Jules.

gentlecobra23, I have zero clue what you're even talking about—honestly, it's like you landed here from another planet or something.

mellowtiger83 said:Basically, I've seen plenty of drivers walk away from massive wrecks totally unscathed—think Berger-imola, Barichello-imola, Donnelly, Kubica, and so on.

That’s the kind of luck I'm wishing for Jules.

Look, sinek, Donnelly spent years in a wheelchair.

Calling that "walking away without consequences" is a huge stretch.

ruggedhawk20 said:Sinek, Donnelly was in a wheelchair for years

He is far from being clear of the consequences

It was already a settled matter🙂 .

Shit happens. This situation with Bianchi is an incredible web of circumstances, eerie beyond belief.

The condition wasn't critical. Sutil had a slight slide; it wasn't alarming. In my view, the crews could have called the safety car sooner, but they didn't, and I don't blame them.

mellowtiger83 said:She was just flawless.

Martin Donnelly is useless.

I saw some chatter elsewhere saying Bianchi didn't make it.

Nothing's been officially confirmed yet.

George Anderson5 said:This is horrific. The driver just bounced everywhere. If he pulls through this, major props to him.
Really hoping he’s got the strength to fight it.
And honestly, that video tells you everything. You've got a marshal waving a green flag like a lunatic when they shouldn't be.

Look, that flag doesn't even matter in the end.
It looks like it was meant for the track section behind that turn... the real issue is what the official was doing at the previous position. 😉
Beyond that, we have to wonder if everything was working right in Bianchi's car—specifically if he had any yellow flag alerts on his steering wheel. Usually, drivers get a yellow light on the dash when there's a flag situation on track.

silentbadger17 said:Maybe I’m just being thick or blind, but if that red dot marks where the accident happened—and assuming he was traveling in a straight line (which is usually how it goes once you start aquaplaning)—he would have spent most of his time flying through the gravel before getting launched right into that excavator sitting on the asphalt. 🤔

Exactly. He skidded through the gravel, and what’s even worse is that transition from the gravel back onto the paved access road; it practically launched him straight into the excavator...



This is the split second before impact. You can see him transitioning from the gravel to the pavement, and the front end is completely airborne. That effectively killed any chance of him correcting his course...

ruggedhawk20 said:It’s on the race organizers—they didn't have cranes ready by the track, and Charlie Whiting didn't demand them, so instead they just had these guys pulling cars out with excavators

Real geniuses over here think the same way

http://www.lequipe.fr/Formule-1/Actu...e-faute/504885

shadowhawk24 said:Exactly—he caught air over the gravel, but the real killer was hitting that driveway pavement coming out of the dirt—it basically launched him straight into a backhoe.

This is that split second right before impact—when he hits the transition from the gravel to the asphalt and you can see the front end just lift off the ground. At that point, there's zero chance of correcting anything—it's game over.

That’s exactly my point—there are plenty of situations where you can basically hang the brakes by a thread.

since mellowtiger83 was asking like he was actually surprised— I mean, where were his brakes—the ones that are supposed to drop a car from 200 mph to 40 in a heartbeat?

I basically just told him—they were in the car, sure, but they were totally useless.

Doesn't even matter why.

ruggedhawk20 said:Brakes only work sometimes—super rare cases, really. One condition is that the wheels actually have to be spinning and there’s gotta be some friction between the tires and the road. As soon as you lose either one of those? Your brakes are basically useless.

By the way—whether we're talking about Indianapolis or just looking at the stats—Suzuki Hamilton actually managed to overtake Rosberg on lap 29 of 53! 🙂

ruggedhawk20 said:gentlecobra23, I have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. It’s like you landed here from another planet... just totally out of sync with the rest of us.

If you don't get it, I'll make sure everything is explained to you clearly enough...😁

ruggedhawk20 said:I was reading somewhere else that Bianchi didn't make it.

Nothing's been officially confirmed yet, I guess.

???

Indianapolis is a brutal track, honestly.

You have to include the drivers who took some massive hits but managed to walk away from them, much like Timo Glock.

In my opinion, the runoff areas just aren't deep enough.

Drew Bennett68 said:Suzuka is a total beast of a track—absolute nightmare.

Throw in the ones who absolutely wrecked their cars but walked away—you know, the legends. Timo Glock.

The takeoff zones are way too thin—total joke.

Indianapolis is a nightmare—but you'll forgive it, because there’s one that's way worse.

Check out this list of winners at the Motor Speedway—pretty wild stuff.

It never even crosses anyone's mind to widen the runoff areas—just keeps things predictably messy.

If you can't handle the heat, stay off the road. Period.

He should just pack his bags and find a new hobby—seriously.

Indianapolis is an incredibly dangerous circuit—but primarily for the bikers, who find it impossible to even meet the FIA's safety standards, let alone satisfy them.

@ ruggedhawk20.

Martin Donnelly has his right leg amputated. I’ve been looking at some photos and he seems to be standing and walking just fine; it's a prosthetic situation.

Given how that crash went down, I still maintain he's incredibly lucky. He’s fully functional as a man, and perhaps even physically.

God forbid anyone else goes through that.

And as for Robert Kubica, he can go ahead and celebrate another birthday after what happened in Canada. That wreck was absolutely staggering. I watched it live, and honestly, in my mind, I had already written him off.

Joshua Scott said:Indianapolis is an exceptionally dangerous track, but primarily for motorcyclists; it doesn't even meet the FIA safety standards for them, nor could it possibly do so.

Danger is simply baked into the DNA of motorsport. There is no avoiding it, and that’s precisely what gives the sport its particular allure. What happened to Julian Bianchi isn't something you can just prevent through better planning; it was quite simply an unbelievable convergence of circumstances.

The moment we start believing riders are safe, something goes wrong. A spring failing in a Massin gearbox is a fine example.

gentlecobra23 said:No one is really to blame here. You can't point a finger at anyone with absolute certainty. It just isn't that simple.

If this is true, Julian Bianchi was hitting 125 mph at the moment he went off.
You simply don't drive like that under those conditions, especially after double yellow flags have been waved.

Drew Bennett68 said:Indianapolis is a dangerous track.

Then there are the guys who walked away from massive wrecks, like Timo Glock.

The runoff areas feel too "thin" to me.

Indianapolis is exactly how a track should be, at least from that perspective.

Though they've stripped some of the character out of it lately by paving over what used to be gravel traps.