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Hindsight

FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
08/10/2014

Like everyone else, I am shocked and saddened by Jules Bianchi's accident and wish him a complete recovery so that he can fulfil his considerable potential.

Since Bernie has received stick in some parts of the media, let us not forget that it was he who put driver medical care on a thoroughly professional footing by the appointment of Prof. Sid Watkins. As Sid details in his autobiography, he in turn, recruited top medical talent from around the world.

The days are long gone when drivers would say that you had to choose the circuit on which to have a big accident.

A crash in Formula One makes headlines and I have been sickened by the wisdom some in the media have been displaying. Yes, the race could have been stopped earlier, with hindsight. Yes, the safety car could have been deployed, with hindsight.

With hindsight, nobody would have boarded the Titanic.

Charlie Whiting is a very experienced official who has the respect of the pit lane. He owes a duty of care to the drivers, and is conscientious in pursuing that responsibility. but motor racing is dangerous and always has been.

Oh, and shit happens.

At the front of the field drivers were giving it their all and were not leaving the track, indeed, there were some spectacular overtaking moves in terrible conditions. We saw drivers demonstrate skill that the rest of us can only dream about. It is that skill that draws us to Formula One.

Apparently, an earlier start was suggested and that would have avoided the worst of the weather, with hindsight. To read some correspondents, you would that thought it was cast in stone that rain would hit when it did. I cannot be the only person who has heard of rain being forecast during a race and it has not happened. And those have been forecasts made on the day, to the minute, with the latest satellite information.

It is not yet clear why the race did not have an earlier start, though it has been said that it was suggested. It has been said that the organisers were apparently against it because it would have disrupted the plans of so many people. They had sold tickets so they had an obligation to stage a race.

It has also been suggested that FOM did not want to disrupt television schedules. Once a channel has started to televise a race, it is locked in, even if the event is abandoned after two laps behind the safety car.

Missing from most assessments is the matter of 'face', so important in Japan. The Grand Prix is Japan's most important international sport event and not to start on time would hurt.

After the race some drivers complained that they had not been consulted as to whether they should start, but they all did. I can remember when drivers boycotted races they thought were too dangerous to run.

Is there not a Grand Prix Drivers' Association? Trying to get drivers to agree on anything, except self-interest, is like herding cats. The time for complaint was before the race, not after it.

In 1976, the Japanese GP was run at Fuji in much worse conditions. Niki Lauda thought it was madness to race and so withdrew after a couple of laps, yet he could have secured the World Championship. Niki has conspicuously not apportioned blame for Bianchi's catastrophe.

Adrian Sutil was caught out by standing water, his car aquaplaned and he became a passenger. Immediately double yellow flags were displayed and most people got through the corner at least once.

For whatever reason, driver error, car failure, a puncture, Jules left the track. What would have resulted in no more than a harmless 'off', like Adrian Sutil, resulted in a calamity.

The website of the Daily Express, a low-end British newspaper, has published a video showing green flags at the corner seconds before Bianchi arrived. That was a non-story, what matters are the flags shown at the marshals' post before the corner and they were double-yellows.

The marshals behaved impeccably, but some miserable hack tried to make them culpable. It was a case of a newspaper feeding on misfortune, as so many of them do.

Bianchi crashed into a recovery vehicle. Should the organisers have left Sutil's car where it was? Were the marshals not doing all they could? Sutil's car was not obstructing the track, therefore there was no reason to employ the safety car.

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READERS COMMENTS

 

1. Posted by Martin B, 06/11/2014 21:11

"@authentic-albertan - As I said in my post below - in Macau they use very long boom cranes behind the barriers. This is obviously partly because the Macau track very narrow in most places but also it is much much safer.
"

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2. Posted by Martin B, 06/11/2014 20:58

"I prefer the article by Chris Balfe for several reasons (no offence Mike!). 1) I thought Charlie was appointed by Max, who also did so much for safety, but of course I bow to your knowledge and experience Mike, no doubt. 2) As I have said in a comment in Chris' article, if TV companies can change schedules for a Wimbledon final which happens to go on for 5 hours instead of the expected 2-3 hours, then why can't F1 do that? Might it be because FOM offered them "guaranteed" schedules in order to secure higher value contracts? 3) Please don't overdo the "face" thing. I have lived in Asia for 25 years and it is very often used as an excuse to gain an advantage, especially in business 4) boycotting races? Well yes, one only has to look back at history, or if you are lazy, watch Rush. 5) I don't know why the gutter press in the UK are blaming marshals, that is despicable. They probably don't even know they are volunteers in most places. If you watch the slo-mo there was a marshal between the crane and the barrier but I believe he was extremely lucky and got away fine. I made a comment @ Chris's article that that corner had multiple crashes in a couple of laps some years ago so why are they still putting the recovery vehicles outside? Using long boom cranes inside the barriers at known 'trouble spots', as they do in Macau. Otherwise it's a good article Mike which I mostly agree with you wholeheartedly."

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3. Posted by Paul RB, 24/10/2014 17:07

"First class article Mike, written not only from your extensive knowledge base but also with sensitivity. Our obsession with finger pointing and apportioning blame, no matter the subject, is one of the most regrettable aspects of contemporary behaviour - that and finding somebody to sue! "

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4. Posted by stigman, 16/10/2014 19:55

"Why is it taboo to discuss the decision about calling out the tractor on an outside corner in rain conditions and a quickly deteriorating track. The chance that another car went off where Sutil went off was not only possible, but even likely.

I don't care that Charlie chose not to call out the SC, but in those conditions, if he chose not to use the SC, why bother with the tractor? They spend millions of dollars designing and equipping the tracks to protect the drivers in any off track excursion, but then put a massive tractor in the way? That's the bit that doesn't makes sense to me."

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5. Posted by Steve W, 13/10/2014 10:34

"Look, a 60kph speed limit on all the cars at all times during a Grand Prix would solve this safety problem once and for all. Simple."

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6. Posted by authentic_albertan, 10/10/2014 0:07

"Simply said -- I was shocked that the safety car was not deployed immediately. It is definitely the case that there were a compounding immediate set of risks on the track: worsening track conditions (which likely took Sutil off the track) and the tractor used to recover his car. I find a strange lapse of judgement from the usually impeccable Whiting that the safety car was not immediately deployed. I hope that this is the opportunity to improve the safety for the drivers.

I could only hope that this is the opportunity to improve safety without damaging the racing that I love dearly. Quite honestly, it is not unimaginable to create a recovery vehicle protocol that has tractors with sufficient safety equipment to allow them to be collided with, or rather out of the way cranes, or simply annul the racing with a safety car until the circumstances allow full blooded racing (that we all love) to resume."

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7. Posted by CrisBCT, 09/10/2014 21:21

"I'm wondering if Bianchi actually slowed down properly for the treacherous track conditiions along with the double waved yellows...

My thoughts go to him and his family, like us all, I wish him a speedy and complete recovery."

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8. Posted by CrisBCT, 09/10/2014 21:13

"I wonder, if the safety car had been deployed, whether it would have been at a point on the circuit where it would have caused Bianchi to slow down even more than the double waved yellows. Was he following Sutil but only seconds behind him? Would the deployment of a safety car have actually made any difference to Bianchi's speed???? perhaps not...

Seems like those now calling for a safety car have not necessarily thought things through."

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9. Posted by Oldbuzzard, 09/10/2014 19:57

"What a great way to summarize what happened to Jules - "Shit happens". My comment is not "the finger of blame", it is what really happened, as I saw it on TV. Sutil's car had aquaplaned off the track. The course was on Green and the corner was on Yellow. A large recovery vehicle was driven through the safety barrier and onto the runoff area at the turn before the safety car was deployed. Bianchi's car aquaplaned off the track and hit the recovery vehicle. That's what happened. That's not blame and it's not hindsight, that's what happened. Not shit. "

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10. Posted by airman1, 09/10/2014 19:05

"Mike's piece is spot on, and I agree on all points but one. I did not observed an immediate need to deploy a recovery vehicle so fast. Especially in those conditions, even if the procedure called for it. This is not a hindsight, I thought this while I was watching the race "whoa, that was fast, SC is not even out", and yes SC was deployed on other races for apparently smaller accidents than Sutil's, so someone could have said "wait one, hang the rules, let us see what is going on first" even if Jules hit Adrian's car am sure he would have suffered a lot less than he did, but it is what it is, as Mike sad, someone will have to be blamed for it, and we will, for sure have more silly rules....."

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11. Posted by stoney, 09/10/2014 19:02

"There a difference between learning lessons and blaming people's actions with hindsight."

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12. Posted by miss d'it, 09/10/2014 15:03

"@ratchet69

Yes tyre barriers are great. But, unfortunately, Jules car would have went through the gap for recovery, as the FOM banned video shows. He would then have encountered marshalls, a mesh fence and possibily spectators.

An incident that was compounded by circumstances that played out."

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13. Posted by scf1fan, 09/10/2014 11:12

"There is blame and then there is honest effort to identify the root cause of the issue so it can be avoided in the future! Changing the start time may or may not have changed the outcome; we have no control over the weather. We might choose to go out in it or not, but once the decision is made all we can do is to continually evaluate whether we should continue or not for the conditions as we see them. But that is a continuous process and making the first error or mistake does not excuse blindly making additional errors or mistakes.

Yes, "shit" does happen, but if you decide to camp out under the latrine, it goes from a possibility to an absolute!

The absolute here is that a geometrically dangerous piece of equipment was sent out onto an active track before the conditions on the track were adequately (and manageably!) controlled. There was no reason for "instantaneous" decisions that put additional lives at risk! Sutil could have safely sat in his car for a few more minutes with 0 impact to the rest of the proceedings. At that point, when it was decided to retrieve Sutil's car, the decision making process should have gone something like; Do we have control of the track? No! (Sutil went off due to the conditions of the track, not the condition of his car or the race, so it could be the next car arriving at that corner would (and eventually did!) have the same outcome.) Is anyone's life in imminant danger? No. (Ok, so there was no need for an "instantaneous" decision. Would the track be safer if Sutil's car was removed from the corner? Yes. Can Sutil's car be removed from the corner without further risk to the track workers and/or the drivers without getting control over the track? NO! Then send out the safety car and gather the field and/or park the field if necessary. They've done that for much less concerning conditions, so why not here??

The hindsight here is that they eventually did do all those things; it's just that they were making those exact same decisions reactively when they should have been making them proactively. That will be the tradgedy of this race."

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14. Posted by Cobra Driver, 09/10/2014 11:06

"Unless you have strapped on a high performance race car and have taken to the track in good weather and bad, do not suppose to preach to an informed journalist such as Mike Lawrence. This piece is right on point."

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15. Posted by Spindoctor, 09/10/2014 10:17

"Shit does indeed happen - that's precisely what was said every time a driver died in the "good old days".

It's not clear to me what exact point is being made in this piece. If he's giving the British gutter press a good kicking, then I agree 100%: their moronic jingoism & sentimentality is an embarrasment for any Brit.

If, on the other hand, he's suggesting that there's some kind of fatalistic "inevitability" that more shit will happen, and in much the same way, then I cannot agree.
"Hindsight" helps us to identify the causes of the accident more clearly, and it will hopefully allow us to devise means of preventing similar accidents in future.

I think it's reasonable to question the use of heavy tractors\JCBs to remove crashed cars from gravel\run-off areas whilst cars are still at or close to, racing speed. Even in the dry its a risky tactic, in seriously wet conditions, as we have now seen, its worse. That's not to blame the organisers of this race, they were following more or less a standard practice in F1. We simply need to learn a lesson. It's lessons like this that have made F1 safer over the years.

More culpability might attach to FOM \ FIA \ CVC et all for running the race when they did. I rather suspect that a combination of greed, arrogance and intransigence resulted in running at the wrong time, but maybe that's where I agree with Mike. Who could have known? We'll all think a bit harder in future, perhaps.

Like everyone else I am shocked by the injuries to Jules Bianchi, and I too wish him a full recovery."

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