Billy Wyatt

You will now see a safety car every time a car goes off with or without need of crane.

FLM911

Lauda said it well afterwards.

"The Sutil accident was way off the line and under normal circumstances we would not discuss it as the car was picked up right away," he added.

"Where you park the car was very close, so from this point of view the decision was right [to pick the car up with a crane]. But in the end, it was wrong."

He said 20 years without a fatality and so many narrow escapes have lulled the world into a false sense of security.

"Motor racing is dangerous," he added.

"We get used to it when nothing happens and then suddenly we are all surprised.

"But we always have to be aware that motor racing is always dangerous - and this accident today is a coming together of various different things.

"One car goes off, the truck comes out and the next car comes off and this was very unfortunate."

FGL28

I do not think it will be that draconian. However we will see more Safety Car deployments. Places like COTA have lots and lots of runoff areas so it probably be the same. Bad weather older circuits more deployments

multi21

It's ironic that at the outset of the broadcast, they said that Suzuka was one of those tracks that doesn't have the extended asphalt surface runoff areas and instead has gravel traps. I paraphrase, but they said the drivers like this as it penalizes mistakes. In this instance, the mistake was huge and no scrubbing off of speed approaching the wall.

There was a thread a few years ago that argued that speed actually increased when you go off on slick or rain soaked grass. This may be the case here with hydroplaning...

theporscheguy

Very unfortunate. Hope he makes a full recovery.

winders

Absent a force providing acceleration (e.g., the engine or gravity), speed cannot increase when leaving the racing surface.

996FLT6

Yeah pretty much going full speed off racing surface if u spinning speed is close to when when u get an off. You have a slight chance if u didn't spin and just trying to steer car. Other than that hope someone up there is looking after u. Mike

baddogz28

Horrifying. He got very lucky to survive... Hopefully he makes it outta the woods. Stable but critical are the most recent reports I've seen.

rockitman

A full recovery from that would be amazing...much worse than I expected.

Raven 666

I watched the Telecast of the Race live and it didn,t look that bad due to the camera angle that was televised ,it just looked like he clipped the rear of the recovery vehical at speed ,,,but I must say after seeing it from this new angle ,,DAMN that,s a big hit and frightening to watch ,,,,,,best of wish,s for a successful recovery and god bless..............

mark kibort

peter...do you think that someone can survive a 130mph to 0 crash in about 16 feet? I would say the reports are incorrect. I don't have the G numbers, but I would say that the speed would have to be a heck of a lot less to survive.
Just like the the crash at COTA. impact was far less than 130+mph.

mark kibort

we are in agreement there!

mark kibort

That was my guess before I tossed that video in an editor
7 frames at 30fps, if a car length is 15 feet, that's about 4 car lengths, so that's 60ft/sec x .68 about 45mph.

mark kibort

45 is more believable than 130, but 90 seems right due to the video being at at least a 45 degree angle. right there, bump up 45mph by 1.41. so 70-90 is believable.

I hope he can recover from this. that is a very ugly incident.

LuigiVampa

Video from the internet gone courtesy of the F1 attorney overlords.