Then again, in Spa Francorchamps nearly all gravel traps have been paved, and it leads to some unwanted side effects. Not only did the track become much more dangerous for motorcyclists, but it leads to people constantly running wide without any risk, which means it "falsifies" racing a bit since trying what seems impossible to do has no negative consequences for your result whatsoever (for example: cutting over the left hand turn in Raidillon, Accelerating out of Blanchimont and ending up next to the outside of the track etc.).

It's great for safety, but it lowers the skill level needed for those racing to accomplish better laptimes or to try overtake someone. Just go for it, and if you miss, no harm done, just steer back on the track in the same position you were before you tried your move, and try again the next lap.

 

Makes me wonder if a rumble strip or strip of grass would help. Enough to mess up using the runoff for racing but leave the paving on the outside of it as recovery space.

Could also make it out of bounds with a substantial penalty. The penalty could even be "race over" as it would be if a person had an off and wadded the car up if the runoff hadn't been there. At least the driver may not be injured or the car damaged.

-Mike

 

In theory they give drive-through penalties, but in practice it happens a lot less than they should. Last 24h race (Blancpain Endurance) I think they could have sent the entire field (except Manthey racing, those guys didn't even take curbs to save the car!) for a drive-through. It was ridiculous.

Last Supercup race they gave a global warning during the race "to respect track limits". Yeah whatever

 

Moreover, it is hard to have safety measures that work for motorcycles and cars. We sometimes tend to forget that there also is AMA Superbike, MotoGP, WSBK etc. happening on the tracks we love so much. The transformations done to the Francorchamps racetrack (F1 safety) have made it impossible to host another world-class motorcycle race event for instance.

 

Matt makes a good point about driving on public roads. I fly a life flight helicopter for a living and see death and life changing injuries on a daily basis from what are called accidents but in reality the majority are caused by all of the reasons Matt mentions above. My observations are that driving a dedicated track/race car with good safety equipment is a lot safer than driving on public roads.

Race track safety is obviously another story, I recently wanted "1" on Amazon Prime, I believe it's also on I-Tunes. It's really an excellent documentary which chronicles the danger decades in Formula 1 and how safety was improved to reduce the death rate.


JF

 

I really cannot accept race organizers that fail to enforce safety rules.