Technical comments only: car to car crash safety

[Edax]

Some thoughts on the track anyway.

To make Radillion safer IMO they best move the walls inward, closer to the track. That sounds counterintuitive, but the worst crashes happen in places where there is enough space for the cars to develop an unfavorable attitude to the wall but not enough space to slow them down sufficiently.

So you either move the walls a hundred meters back or you move them closer. I don’t think there is enough space to work with at Spa to do the former.

Closer means that you will see more hits, but the hits will be at a shallower angle hence the impact energy will be less and the cars will maintain more forward momentum. Although the cars will inevitably rebound their forward momentum will make it easier for followers to anticipate.

Take the wall of champions. Imagine you move the wall back by a couple of meters: the amount of crashes would reduce but the impacts would be significantly harder. Moreover the cars now have a tendency to slide out of the danger zone. Increasing the possible collision angles increases the probably of a secondary collision.

[Jolle]

Some thoughts on the track anyway.

To make Radillion safer IMO they best move the walls inward, closer to the track. That sounds counterintuitive, but the worst crashes happen in places where there is enough space for the cars to develop an unfavorable attitude to the wall but not enough space to slow them down sufficiently.

So you either move the walls a hundred meters back or you move them closer. I don’t think there is enough space to work with at Spa to do the former.

Closer means that you will see more hits, but the hits will be at a shallower angle hence the impact energy will be less and the cars will maintain more forward momentum. Although the cars will inevitably rebound their forward momentum will make it easier for followers to anticipate.

Take the wall of champions. Imagine you move the wall back by a couple of meters: the amount of crashes would reduce but the impacts would be significantly harder. Moreover the cars now have a tendency to slide out of the danger zone. Increasing the possible collision angles increases the probably of a secondary collision.

you do know that the speeds there are so high, that a wall directly or almost against the track would mean carnage? we would have had a 5 car crash on the back of Alesi.

[roon]

So Mods have we exhausted roon's original subject with its limits? Can we discuss circuit safety but still technically?

I should have been more clear a few posts ago in saying we shouldn't *only* discuss barriers. I mentioned ideas akin to barriers in the opening post. I wanted to boil the problem down to basics and discuss impacts in an attempt to remove historical and aesthetic context. Partly the intent there is to avoid squabbling about what cars should or should not be, how cars should or should not perform, what they should or should not look like. Those are quarrels familiar to this forum and should be avoided out of respect to the events of past weekend. More generally, focus on barriers removes the focus from the cars, and solid-body impacts, for lack of a better term. There are potentials for such impacts to occur on track, or with support vehicles, or with a compromised barrier, or with fences, or bridges, or with non-barrier-impacted gravel beached vehicles, so barrier design only goes so far.

Edit: truncated by moderator hollus. Original message quoted by moderator turbof1, below.

[hollus]

The OP kindly asked other posters to stay within certain limits.
That is only his suggestion. To be clear: other posters are free to respect such limits, and it might be a gentlemanly thing to do, but they do that at their own will, they do not have to.
Wildly off topic posts are of course as usual unwelcome and mods might deal with those as needed.

[turbof1]

I should have been more clear a few posts ago in saying we shouldn't *only* discuss barriers. I mentioned ideas akin to barriers in the opening post. I wanted to boil the problem down to basics and discuss impacts in an attempt to remove historical and aesthetic context. Partly the intent there is to avoid squabbling about what the cars should or should not be, how the cars should or should not perform, what they should or should not look like. Those are quarrels familiar to this forum and should be avoided out of respect to the events of past weekend. More generally, focus on barriers removes the focus from the cars, and solid-body impacts, for lack of a better term. There are potentials for such impacts to occur on track, or with support vehicles, or with a compromised barrier, or with fences, or bridges, or with non-barrier-impacted gravel beached vehicles, so barrier design only goes so far.

Unfortunately one poster is insisting to push their premise that only tire barriers can address car-car impacts, push the hands-thrown-in-air "can't be perfect" deterence, and offering non-questions as feedback (wondering aloud about how airbags work as shallow rebutal despite the basics of such systems freely known for decades). I don't know why. This is curmudgeonry not appropriate to the tone intended for the thread. The same poster went on to make a joke about Hubert's crash, which was deleted. The antagonism of the thread is in poor taste and the mods have been somewhat helpful. This poster will likely continue to post in this thread out of misplaced pride and will likely denigrate this post as well. This despite being able to start a thread about barriers specifically, or a thread about how the "motorsport will always be deadly" argument invalidates altered car design. This despite continuing to voluntarily read about ideas to safen car to car impacts when they think the premise is, as they said in another deleted post, "silly."

I thank the others who contributed to the eight pages of discussion accumulated in only three days.

I can get behind a car-only focus. I don't think anybody is refuting the importance of barriers and that they should be looked at as well to get a better overall solution, but if we want to look into high-speed T-bones in isolation than it certainly is not a bad thing to look at the car into isolation as well. However, I do want to stress some issues you cannot solve with just looking at the car and therefore I also kind of agree looking at everything. Not to exclude the car out of aesthetic -or whatever- concerns, but again to get a better solution. For instance, a big part of the solution in Bianchi's case was a change in procedures and how much they had to slow down under yellow flags. That's certainly not applicable here, but you can't exclude barriers in this story. especially when the t-bone happened because the car getting launched back onto the track. Minimizing the damage caused by a t-bone is one thing, minimizing the risk of a t-bone occurring is another.

Maybe something to note is that nobody talks about how Indycar handles this. I mean on ovals a car crash out is very likely to end up back on the track and that automatically induces a high risk of T-boning. How are they handling this?

I also implore everybody to abstain from making jokes. Under the premise "way too soon".

Looking the car into isolation, and by no means will this be a claim that makes the specific example of Hubert survivable, one approach is to increase the volume of crushable/deformable material in the sides of the car. Not just in a very specific area we have now that is the sidepods, but across a much wide area. This should increase the lethal velocity threshold.

A second idea would perhaps be a halo-like structure that can glance off an incoming car away from the cockpit/CoG.

[izzy]

So Mods have we exhausted roon's original subject with its limits? Can we discuss circuit safety but still technically?

I should have been more clear a few posts ago in saying we shouldn't *only* discuss barriers. I mentioned ideas akin to barriers in the opening post. I wanted to boil the problem down to basics and discuss impacts in an attempt to remove historical and aesthetic context. Partly the intent there is to avoid squabbling about what cars should or should not be, how cars should or should not perform, what they should or should not look like. Those are quarrels familiar to this forum and should be avoided out of respect to the events of past weekend. More generally, focus on barriers removes the focus from the cars, and solid-body impacts, for lack of a better term. There are potentials for such impacts to occur on track, or with support vehicles, or with a compromised barrier, or with fences, or bridges, or with non-barrier-impacted gravel beached vehicles, so barrier design only goes so far.

oh okay cool. It's a good thread especially for avoiding the emotion of the moment. And it is pretty obvious that car-to-car has been a bit neglected up to now.

[turbof1]

To be fair, we should discuss both and not just lay emphasis on one over the other. Approaching the problem from all angles is never a bad idea.

[Edax]

you do know that the speeds there are so high, that a wall directly or almost against the track would mean carnage? we would have had a 5 car crash on the back of Alesi.

With alesi the problem was similar. The accident was not in view but I guess he hit the wall at Eau rouge which took out most of his speed and as a bonus ejected him onto the track. If that wall would have been straightened out up to , instead of having than gnarly kink he would not have been dropped so unexpectedly in front of the other drivers.

It is all about the angles. On an old track like Spa the walls are built to protect the public and as a rudimentary means to keep cars out of trees. They are there to stop cars.

To protect the driver walls should be build to guide cars. That means maximizing the chance that a car will hit under an extremely shallow angle, and follow that wall to a safe spot. And where that is not possible there should be a sufficiently large run-off area.

I think that already is the philosophy behind the newer tracks like Americas.

[Just_a_fan]

Maybe something to note is that nobody talks about how Indycar handles this. I mean on ovals a car crash out is very likely to end up back on the track and that automatically induces a high risk of T-boning. How are they handling this?

They have different accidents, I think, with the cars generally go forwards for some distance after the initial incident, this gives the other cars time to react. They also, perhaps crucially, have spotters telling them to go high or low. This is possible on ovals but not so easy on a road course.

Looking the car into isolation, and by no means will this be a claim that makes the specific example of Hubert survivable, one approach is to increase the volume of crushable/deformable material in the sides of the car. Not just in a very specific area we have now that is the sidepods, but across a much wide area. This should increase the lethal velocity threshold.

Indeed so. I made this suggestion earlier in the thread. A deformable structure that runs along the tub, from step plane to cockpit height, would be an easy "add" to the cars. It would alter the aero characteristics but it would be, as they say in racing, the same for everyone. One might even suggest that such a change could be used to change the whole aero focus of the cars, perhaps back to having long sidepods with contoured undersides. I'm not advocating tunnels / skirts here, but a longer floor which removes some of the need to direct front tyre wake outwards. This removes the current need/desire to have a large a space as possible between front tyre and sidepod/floor. The very area that exposes the driver to impacts from the side.

We then have to ask what the unintended consequences of any changes might be. No point making the cars safer in a T-bone event if you make them more dangerous in other events, for example.

[Manoah2u]

Okay, i'd like to add something here.

A thing to concider, about 'driver protection'.

Let's first start with some things to concider. Depending on how fast Correa slammed into Hubert, it might not make much difference at all due to the 'speed' / G force effects.
Think about the abrupt stop Bianchi had, even though it's argued he also slammed helmet into the tractor.
So, even if hubert had a structure more around him, it's still a question whether the impact itself wouldn't have too much effect.

Next, we have the problem of multiple impact damages.

Hubert made contact with the car in front of him avoiding alesi, and then went hard into the wall. The first contact probably 'only' damaged at best the suspension, but even then, it does not help stopping potential. damaged suspension negatively effects grip and as such the potential to control and stop the car.
The impact into the wall then was seriously hard in itself. If i look at the speed and violence of that initial impact, then i really think that a certain amount of damage was done to the car. Very probable significant structural damage to the chassis/monocoque - cracked carbon, etc. Then, the high speed 150+mph contact between another car into the side on potentially the worst angle possible, the 'narrowest' area around the driver. still, one has to wonder, even if there would have been more protection around the driver, would the initial impact into the wall not sufficiently damaged 'any' car to the point it would have had the same result?

since recently though, F1 cars have been mandated to have crash structures on the side too, it's about where the sidepods start and many cars implement them as aerodynamic tools.
I must say, i am not aware whether F2 cars have that same protection, but i personally expect that they do. If they don't, well, then there's the easiest start there, but it also asks the question on why did this need to happen for such a thing to be present?

but, if it is present, it wasn't enough for the contact between correa and hubert.
this incident probably will be met by the fia with higher demands on the abilities of the side impact crash structures, just like not too long ago the front and iirc the top of the monocoque are mandated to be stronger. It would be a start atleast.

That said, there's something to think about -F1- cars that competed in the past. By no means are they stronger or safer than today's cars, but there's a thing to look into.
Today's f1 cars are very much the result of aerodynamics and regulations.

we know the formula by now, narrow front, wide(r) at the sidepod area, etc.
it causes the least amount of drag with the current regulations.
Pretty logical to concider that at the narrowest part, the potential physical harm from side impact,
is higher than at the wider areas like the sidepods (or even with intact suspension).
Even though the monocoque can withstand pretty much, the general design is frontal impact.
yes, there is also back crash structures for obvious recents, but let's concider the 'norm' is forward impacts,
not sideways impacts. as such, there are not too many safety features.

but, if we again mention the past, and we go back to the cars of the 70's and 80's, specifically the 'ground effect' cars, then we see a very different design philosophy.
a design where we no longer have a 'narrow' or 'fragile' area around the driver, but we see bodywork far aside the driver.

look at the cars below:






now let's look from above to the F2 car design



it is undeniable that there is less 'protective' area with current formula design.
again, i mention, those ancient ground effect bodywork would have not been any better at protection, but let's use decades of safety advancement instead shall we?

let's look at the Arrows A2



you can see that the car has far more side impact protection potential.

these cars CANNOT exist today due to the regulations.

the question we might want to ask ourselves is this:
wouldn't designs like those be better in driver protection ability?

i personally think it does.

then, do we WANT cars to start looking like this?

the problem is, aesthetically, modern f1 cars DO look better.
even if the A2 is an ugly car, as was the BT49 of brabham,
some examples above, like the lotus, come closer to pleasant designs with more protection ability.

i think with some capable engineers, a both protective and aesthetically pleasing design can be forwarded,
to look into what can be done to further improve open-wheeler formula safety.

but with that, the question is more and more starting to pop up; how much 'open wheeler formula cars' is left of that in the end, and how much does it become LMP1?

an example of a recent design proposal INCLUDING a halo-like closed aeroscreen canopy, wingless car:

the Velocity RPB-01





without the top part, or with a halo structure instead of the actual canopy, and a front wing, you essentially have massively improved driver protection potential.

does not take away the final problem though, which, despite this intended as technical comment only, does play a massive role:

i believe hubert was dead upon impact. i don't believe he actually died later on, but let's for the sake of believing that was the case.

it has become - recently more so than ever - clearer that the biggest damage to people from heavy crashes are repetitive impacts - specifically to the brains. heavy G forced impacts, many times causing 'brain concussions', are by doctors clearly warned that another 'impact' would be very damaging to the troubled brain matter, due to the nature of it's 'construction'.

Hubert slammed HARD into a wall. that crash in itself could have given him a hefty concussion already. then, the impact with correa, was another fiercely hard impact which gave another HARD blow to the brains.
finally, with no headrest present, nor halo, he also veered back one more time into the barriers.
those are 3 impacts to take into account.

this brings me back to the similar problem with car technical problems: that the cars are built to withstand substancial impact once, but multiple bangs into that same structure, is a different story, and that goes for human biology even more so, and as such brings the question: would it have made 'much' more difference in the outcome, or would we have seen a bianchi/schumacher like end result?

[Just_a_fan]

Did the Halo block the view going up eau rouge?

Apparently two other cars (Jordan King and Sean Gelael) hit flying debris and this debris was intercepted by the halo. The halo probably prevented injury, even if it may not have saved any lives at Spa.

[MtthsMlw]

Did the Halo block the view going up eau rouge?

Apparently two other cars (Jordan King and Sean Gelael) hit flying debris and this debris was intercepted by the halo. The halo probably prevented injury, even if it may not have saved any lives at Spa.

Here:

[Jolle]

Did the Halo block the view going up eau rouge?

Apparently two other cars (Jordan King and Sean Gelael) hit flying debris and this debris was intercepted by the halo. The halo probably prevented injury, even if it may not have saved any lives at Spa.

Here:
https://streamable.com/vq7oz

And saved Laakson in the F3 race on Sunday when his car went under the barriers.

[adrianjordan]

I haven't had chance to read the whole thread, so I apologise if I am repeating what others have said here.

The only way that this tragedy could have been avoided would be if the forces involved in the collision had been dissipated away, or reduced from the outset.

Firstly to the latter, perhaps a system where as soon as any car on the circuit has a collision over x g forces then all cars go into VSC mode could be looked at. Most of the technology already exists and it would immediately slow all the cars down, giving drivers more time to avoid obstacles and reducing the forces if they're not able to.

In terms of dissipation of forces, honestly I'm not sure how you'd do that in this type of collision without just creating more problems or turning open wheeled racers into LM type cars.

[garygph]

I haven't had chance to read the whole thread, so I apologise if I am repeating what others have said here.

The only way that this tragedy could have been avoided would be if the forces involved in the collision had been dissipated away, or reduced from the outset.

Firstly to the latter, perhaps a system where as soon as any car on the circuit has a collision over x g forces then all cars go into VSC mode could be looked at. Most of the technology already exists and it would immediately slow all the cars down, giving drivers more time to avoid obstacles and reducing the forces if they're not able to.

In terms of dissipation of forces, honestly I'm not sure how you'd do that in this type of collision without just creating more problems or turning open wheeled racers into LM type cars.

I wondered about the same thing and it sounds good but it many complex issues to address in my opinion. The problem being that if you are in a situation where the sudden loss/reduction of power will result in the loss of control of the car and you could land up with cars going off around the circuit causing more accidents. If everyone was just following each other down a straight and they all reduce speed simultaneously it would work but that is not the case. If you jump off the throttle you can land up with a tank slapper on corner exit or just plain loose control in a high speed corner.