When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Airlifted to a Barcelona hospital after a practice crash with a concussion. Held for further testing.
“His car ran wide at the entry to turn three, which is a fast uphill right-hander, allowing it to run onto the AstroTurf that lines the outside of the track. A consequent loss of traction caused a degree of instability, spitting it back toward the inside of the circuit, where it regained traction and struck the wall side-on."
“Our findings indicate that the accident was caused by the unpredictably gusty winds at that part of the circuit at that time, which had affected other drivers similarly. We can categorically state that there is no evidence that indicates that Fernando’s car suffered mechanical failure of any kind. We can also confirm that absolutely no loss of aerodynamic pressure was recorded, which in fact indicates that the car did not suffer any aerodynamic loss, despite the fact that it was subjected to a significant level of g-force.
“Finally, we can also disclose that no electrical discharge or irregularity of any kind occurred in the car’s ERS system, either before, during or after the incident.
“That last point refutes the erroneous rumors that have spread recently to the effect that Fernando was rendered unconscious by an electrical fault. That is simply not true. Our data clearly shows that he was downshifting while applying full brake pressure right up to the moment of the first impact -- something that clearly would not have been possible had he been unconscious at the time.
“Our data also confirms that Fernando’s car struck the inside concrete wall, first with its front-right wheel and then with its rear-right. It was a significant lateral impact, resulting in damage to the front upright and axle.
“After the initial impact, the car slid down the wall for about 15 seconds before coming to a halt. All four wheels remained attached to the car, but no damage was sustained by the bodywork or crash structure between the front and rear wheels.”
Glad to hear he was not badly injured and is recovering well.
Now on to the cause, they say gusty winds, do you think they are covering up the fact that he sometimes shuffle-steers? Those F1 steering wheels aren't really wheels and that make shuffle steering very difficult.
The videos I have seen of the crash suggest that it was something called "driver error". It honestly looked like he was giving up on the lap, had a bit of brain fade, ran wide, overcorrected, and ended up in the wall. With all the stuff going on in an F1 car these days, who knows what really happened. I highly doubt it was wind...
What I really don't get is the secrecy behind why he spent more then one night in hospital, and why they transported him by helicopter if everything is okay. Why is he missing testing? Obviously he was not okay... what is wrong with honesty in this case?
^^^ LOL^^^^^^^^ This is McLaren F1.... with Ron Dennis back running the show.... there is nothing honorable or truth about he or his "button down" organization...... This article from 2009...... we all know about spygate, but they have a history and preponderance toward the dishonest
It is the third time McLaren have been hauled before the WMSC in less than two years, with the last hearing resulting in the Woking-based team being handed a sporting record £49.2million fine following the 'spy-gate' furore.
McLaren are accused of being in specific breach of Article 151c of the sporting code, relating to 'any fraudulent conduct, or any act prejudicial to the interests of any competition or to the interests of motor sport generally.'
In a FIA statement, McLaren are to answer charges that:
On 29 March, 2009, told the stewards of the Australian Grand Prix that no instructions were given to Hamilton in car No. 1 to allow (Jarno) Trulli in car no. 9 to pass when both cars were behind the safety car, knowing this statement to be untrue.
Procured its driver, Hamilton, the current world champion, to support and confirm this untrue statement to the stewards.
Although knowing that as a direct result of its untrue statement to the stewards, another driver and a rival team had been unfairly penalised, made no attempt to rectify the situation either by contacting the FIA or otherwise.
On 2 April, 2009, at a second hearing before the stewards of the Australian Grand Prix, (meeting in Malaysia) made no attempt to correct the untrue statement of 29 March but, on the contrary, continued to maintain the statement was true, despite being allowed to listen to a recording of the team instructing Hamilton to let Trulli past, and despite being given more than one opportunity to correct its false statement.
On 2 April, 2009, at the second stewards' hearing, procured its driver Hamilton to continue to assert the truth of the false statement given to the stewards on 29 March, while knowing what he was saying to the stewards was not true.
Hamilton’s father and manager, Anthony Hamilton, had contacted Max Mosley, president of the FIA, last week to express his anger that his son had been led by his McLaren team into telling lies in the aftermath of the race. He told Mosley that the world champion was thinking of quitting not only the team but the sport.
While that threat may have receded in light of McLaren's decision to attach the full blame for the incident to their sporting director Dave Ryan, it shows just how scarred Hamilton was by the controversy.
In a statement issued by McLaren, and in a further attempt to try to appease the WMSC, the team have confirmed they have sacked Ryan.
Ryan, an employee of 35 years, was suspended on Friday after the storm surrounding the case blew up ahead of the weekend's Malaysian Grand Prix.
The McLaren statement read: "McLaren acknowledge receipt of an invitation to appear at an FIA World Motor Sport Council meeting in Paris on April 29, received this afternoon.
"We undertake to co-operate fully with all WMSC processes, and welcome the opportunity to work with the FIA in the best interests of Formula One.
"This afternoon McLaren and former sporting director, Dave Ryan, have formally parted company.
"As a result, he is no longer an employee of any of the constituent companies of the McLaren Group."
The incident in question occurred towards the end of the season- opening race in Melbourne following an accident involving BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica and Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel.
It led to the safety car being deployed, behind which Trulli ran wide onto the grass at one stage whilst running in third, allowing Hamilton to legitimately pass and take up that position.
Hamilton soon informed the team he had passed Trulli, only to shortly after be explicitly told twice by his race engineer Phil Prew to allow by the veteran Italian.
At the time Prew was acting under instruction from Ryan, who was looking to conduct the situation by the book bearing in mind what unfolded in last season's Belgian Grand Prix when Hamilton was penalised for cutting a chicane.
However, Ryan soon appreciated he had made a mistake, handing third place on a platter to Trulli, leaving Hamilton to finish fourth.
Within an hour of the grand prix's conclusion, Ryan and Hamilton were called to see the three stewards presiding over the race.
It is understood that prior to meeting with them, Ryan instructed Hamilton to lie, that no order to allow Trulli to pass was given.
With no audio, the stewards based their decision on video footage and testimony from Ryan and Hamilton.
The verdict saw Trulli handed a 25-second penalty, demoting him from third to 12th, with Hamilton elevated into a podium position.
However, in the build-up to the race in Malaysia, the FIA came to hear of an interview Hamilton gave immediately after the race at Albert Park.
Hamilton confirmed the team instructed him to allow Trulli by, and it is at that stage the stewards look into the radio transmissions between Hamilton and the pit wall.
It is became abundantly clear Ryan and Hamilton lied, although the latter under orders from the former, who was soon suspended by team boss Martin Whitmarsh.
On Friday, a contrite, visibly upset Hamilton then issued a sincere apology for his actions, laying the blame firmly at Ryan's door.
Hamilton, who was excluded from the classification of the race in Australia, is now in the clear as far as the FIA is concerned.
The WMSC will now focus on taking the team to task, with another hefty fine the logical outcome.
So much misdirection and BS. I don't get it... I have no idea how these actions can ever lead to a positive outcome for the overall brand of the company tied to Ron. Maybe if there are enough people in the world with large amounts of money who want to be associated with a brand that prides itself on dishonesty... oh... wait... never mind!
This might sound far fetched given that these F1 drovers are in top physical condition, I can't help but wonder if Alonso had some type of medical condition he suffered in the car. He's without question a great driver if not the best on the grid and sure people can make mistakes, but crosswinds??? How many times have we seen glancing blows parallel to the walls? And now there is talk about him possibly missing the opening race of the season? Did he crack a vertebra during the crash??? Remember how Mark Webber kept his shoulder injury mum for the last 4 weeks of the race season back in 2009? Perhaps similar injury? Don't know but everything points to it not being a simple concussion.
Never one to miss an opportunity to dissect the Evil Empire's workings within McLaren F1, I found this; it's long but the best piece of information is based on what Vettel saw and described on how it happened especially the speed the car was carrying and angle into the wall....
Fernando Alonso's hospitalisation following his accident in pre-season testing has certainly occupied the headlines this week, though thankfully the Spaniard seems to be uninjured beyond a concussion, for which he is still under observation for.
With the latest from McLaren suggesting he will go on to fight another day sooner rather than later, attention has now firmly turned to why he crashed in the first place… and speculation has certainly been rife, even after McLaren's very blunt statement that Mother Nature was probably to blame.
Indeed, many people continue to speculate that perhaps there is more to the accident that was first apparent - did the Spaniard get a severe electric shock from the car, thus making him lose control? Were his injuries more serious than first claimed by the team? Did the suspension fail?
A dismissal of the rumours by McLaren has done nothing to dampen down the speculation and, in some ways, simply ramped it up further. So here I hope to take a look at the various conspiracy theories and what the reality of them could actually be.
Part of the reason for this slew of questions is partly down to the fact testing isn't 'televised', even to those at the track. We are reliant on CCTV feeds only, which are only placed sporadically around the circuit. In this case, there is no feed at turn three, which means the only witness to the accidents were those who saw it live. Even then there weren't many stationed there and photographers tell me few use that place for shots.
One person who did get a view – and inadvertently fuelled the speculation - was Sebastian Vettel who was following Alonso at the time and described what he saw: 'The speed was slow - maybe 150kph. Then he turned right into the wall. It looked strange.'
Looking at the evidence after the fact, Alonso's accident was indeed a strange one on face value. His McLaren went out of control in turn three of the Circuit de Catalunya, and hit the retaining wall on the inside at high speed. Turn three is a fast uphill right handed curve, and an unusual place for the car to go off on the inside, though it has happened before (ask Pastor Maldonado).
But what caused it? Well the first port of call in this scenario would be a right rear suspension failure, which could easily cause the car to turn hard right. One image posted online appears to show the car with an upper wishbone failure before it hits the wall, but in reality this picture is either cropped or from a sequence of shots taken just after the car had made its first impact with the concrete. McLaren has also stated that initial investigations show that the car had suffered no mechanical failure before it hit the wall.
So if the suspension had failed why could Alonso not steer away from the wall? Some have suggested that he was somehow incapacitated, something which was seemingly backed up by comments apparently made by a photographer who witnessed the accident, saying 'his head was bent to one side before he hit the wall.'
This has led to speculation that something in the car's hybrid system had gone very badly wrong. Honda had been struggling with the cars electronics throughout the test and two different designs of seal on the MGU-K had apparently failed. The high voltage systems on current grand prix cars are extremely potent and could render a serious injury to a person in certain circumstances.
Some conspiracy theorists point to the fact that a carbon fibre chassis is probably quite a good conductor of electrical energy and that if the high voltage circuit from the MGU-K (which we know was having issues) to the battery which is located just behind the driver shorted against the monocoque it could give the driver an extremely serious shock.
But to get an electric shock while sat inside the car would be highly unlikely (though not impossible) because the car is sat on four perfect insulators, the tyres. A quick Google video search of 'Faraday cage car' will show you how good tyres are at insulating from very high voltages indeed.
Others have speculated that an overheating battery emitted toxic gasses that knocked Alonso out briefly. McLaren went out of its way to deny that there was any fault with the hybrid system, after rumours appeared in some publications;
“No electrical discharge or irregularity of any kind occurred in the car's ERS system, either before, during or after the incident,” the team claim in a statement. “That last point refutes the erroneous rumours that have spread recently to the effect that Fernando was rendered unconscious by an electrical fault. That is simply not true. Our data clearly shows that he was downshifting while applying full brake pressure right up to the moment of the first impact – something that clearly would not have been possible had he been unconscious at the time.”
Indeed when a battery failure has occurred in a car, and gas has been released, the driver has never suffered any ill effect. Kimi Raikkonen suffered just such a failure in 2009 during free practice at the Malaysian Grand Prix. Despite being exposed to the gasses in the cockpit he was able to drive back to the pits and jump out of the car (standard practice in a hybrid failure scenario), but he suffered no ill effect. The batteries in the 2009 Ferrari and the 2015 McLaren do not differ that greatly in terms of chemistry so it's unlikely that a mystery 'knock-out gas' could have overcome Alonso so suddenly.
After the accident it took some time for the Spaniard to be extricated from the car, and McLaren team members were on hand to assist when he was. Additionally all of the marshals involved were wearing their 'marigolds' - special gloves to insulate them from potential electric shocks. Again conspiracy theorists point to this as evidence of a hybrid system failure, but in fact this is just standard practice in crashes involving racing cars using hybrid systems. It was the same with Loic Duval's crash at Le Mans last year, and Anthony Davidson's a few years ago.
Alonso was said to have suffered a concussion in the crash but pictures and video of the aftermath of the incident seem to show little or no damage to the cockpit area. Something McLaren later confirmed 'after the initial impact, the car slid down the wall for about 15 seconds before coming to a halt. All four wheels remained attached to the car, but no damage was sustained by the bodywork or crash structure between the front and rear wheels.'
The car had hit at an almost side-on angle, striking the wall first with its front-right wheel and then with its right-rear. 'It was a significant lateral impact, resulting in damage to the front upright and axle' McLaren claims.
With no damage sustained to the driver safety area it may seem strange for a driver to suffer a concussion, though – ask the right people – and they will tell you that this is seemingly possible.
I am not a medically minded person so I have spoken to some people who are and they tell me that a high deceleration could cause a concussion even if the head did not make direct contact with anything other than the cockpit surround. In addition, though the skull is restrained by the cockpit soft wall and the helmet linked to the head and neck restraints, the brain can move inside the skull and that is what causes concussion in some cases like this' I was informed.
Alonso was said to be fully conscious following the crash even though he did not get out of the car. This, however, is justified by today's grand prix cars being fitted with a warning system which lights up if a car has an impact of over a certain G level. When that is activated after a crash, the driver is instructed not to get out of the car unassisted if he does not have to, and that's exactly what happened in Barcelona with Alonso.
“Alonso was taken from the scene of the incident to the circuit's medical centre, where he was given first aid and, as per normal procedures, was sedated in preparation for an air-lift to hospital,” continues the team statement. “In hospital, a thorough and complete analysis of his condition was performed, involving CT scans and MRI scans, all of which were completely normal. In order to provide the privacy and tranquillity required to facilitate a peaceful recuperation, he is being kept in hospital for further observation, and to recover from the effects of the medication that successfully managed his routine sedation following the crash.'
With Alonso looking in doubt for the second of the two tests at Barcelona, and his picture tweeted from his hospital bed in a Spanish intensive care unit hooked up to an IV line it may seem like this was more than a mere concussion. Those more in the know medically than myself tell me that actually this is not unheard of and for a sportsman of Alonso's level, actually quite likely.
One example McLaren used to prove that Alonso was conscious and trying to control the car during the crash was that he was downshifting before he hit the wall. Experienced drivers like Martin Brundle have pointed out that this is actually a slightly odd thing at first glance as most drivers when they lose control do not downshift they just brake and steer.
However, Alonso is well acknowledged to be something of a special talent in a car, so he may have tried to decelerate the car not only via the brakes but also via engine braking, though this is certainly something of an anomaly. Additionally faced with a high speed impact with a solid object drivers sometimes do strange things, Jules Bianchi for example had 100 per cent brake and throttle demand at the same time as he headed towards the recovery vehicle at Suzuka, nobody knows why.
So perhaps there is no great conspiracy about electrics shocks, secret injuries or anything else. Perhaps things are just as they seem. But then what did cause Alonso to lose control of his McLaren?
After reviewing the data from the car and its accident data recorder (all F1 cars have aircraft style black boxes) McLaren has detailed what it believes caused the crash.
'The car ran wide at the entry to Turn Three – which is a fast uphill right-hander – allowing it to run onto the Astroturf that lines the outside of the track. A consequent loss of traction caused a degree of instability, spitting it back towards the inside of the circuit, where it regained traction and struck the wall side-on. Our findings indicate that the accident was caused by the unpredictably gusty winds at that part of the circuit at that time, and which had affected other drivers similarly (eg, Carlos Sainz Jnr)' the same team statement read.
Lots of people on social media have openly rejected this saying that it is a 'weather balloon' theory (in reference to the Roswell UFO conspiracy theory) and that wind simply cannot blow a car off the track, and to an extent they are right. The wind did not blow the car off the track, but then McLaren never claimed as much.
What happened is a gust of wind at just the wrong moment caused Alonso to make a small mistake on the way into turn three, where drivers typically run right up to the edge of the track anyway, so even a 30mm wider deviation from the normal line due to a strong gust of wind could indeed result in the rear wheel going onto the Astroturf and the car spearing off to the inside of the track. Exactly as McLaren says it did.
So Alonso's crash at Barcelona was the result of bad luck it seems, so why all the secrecy and denial? That's just McLaren's way.
Unfortunately for the team, it will no doubt face a barrage of questions from expectant media F1 testing resumes on Thursday. Perhaps only then will it perhaps put the theories to bed... or create a whole load of new ones.
Max Yamabiko
Max Yamabiko will bring you a closer look at the technical side of F1 and motorsport in 2015, from the latest developments and solutions employed to keep you ahead of the game
02-23-2015, 01:41 PM
Fernando Alonso hospitalized
