Comment by OskarS | Hacker News Reader

Comment by OskarS | Hacker News Reader

Watching the race live was a terrifying experience. You just saw an exploding fireball at the back of the field, and your blood just ran cold. F1 cars don't explode that way, it's just not something that happens anymore. And you can't imagine anyone walking away alive from it. The couple of minutes between seeing the crash and getting the reports that Grosjean had walked out of the car alive was just awful.

Seeing the replays afterwards, it reminded me of the footage of Niki Lauda's crash at the 1976 German Grand Prix. He was caught in a fiery inferno for something like 40-50 seconds, which severely damaged his lungs and face and disfigured him for life. Six weeks later, with bandages still covering his head, he was back on track, racing again. He would go on to win several championships. Luckily, it seems like Romain got away with much lighter wounds.

I was thinking to myself during the race about the 19 other drives, thinking "how do you go sit in a car and race for 90 minutes after seeing that happen?", but these guys are made of sterner stuff than me.

Thank god for the halo, and the hardened monocoque (which basically stayed intact after a 200 kph crash!), and the improved firesuits, and the medical car following at the start, and the marshals at the side of the track with fire extinguishers, and a thousand other small safety measures. Romain Grosjean is alive today because of decades of tireless work making the sport safer. Thank god for Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, Sid Watkins, Charlie Whiting and everyone else who has worked tirelessly to this end.

I also saw the race live and like you I was truly horrified. At first the commentators said “It’s a Haas!” and for some reason I assumed it was MAG for a moment. My first thought was: “He’s dead.”

I never realized that there is a medical car trailing the field on the first lap of every race. Just moments after the crash the med car driver and doctor hopped out and began extinguishing the flames and were able to help Grosjean get over the rail that he had split open.

I’m amazed that he was able to get out and walk away from that. When you watch the footage it seems like he is in the flaming inferno forever!

There are couple of criticisms that has been floating around that I don’t entirely disagree with: If the guard rail hadn’t failed the car probably wouldn’t have split in half and caught fire like that. Though to be fair, who’s to say what could have happened with an almost frontal impact at that speed, regardless of what he had crashed into.

The other one is more of an observation than an actual criticism: If he had been knocked unconscious he wouldn’t have had a chance. Though there were multiple people with fire extinguishers there’s no way they could have put the fire out fast enough to drag him out of the car. Which again feeds into the whole ‘the guard rail shouldn’t have failed, and if it hadn’t the car wouldn’t have caught fire’ deal.

All that said though, the level of safety built into these cars is absolutely amazing: The halo, the survival cell and things like that were put to the ultimate test and really saved the day alongside the brave first responders.

Yeah, it’s a fair point. The idea of those armco barriers is that they act as energy absorbers, crumpling to lessen the shock. But in this case, they basically tore the car in half. Martin Brundle made the point during the commentary that a concrete barrier (which they put up to replace the armco) would allow the car to skid along it. You could also imagine safer energy absorbers, like barrels of water or tyre stacks.

Clearly, this crash needs to be studied to see if any new safety regulations are needed for those kinds of service roads that jut out next to high speed straights. I have every confidence in the FIA to do that (both the halo and the VSC resulted from studying Jules Bianchi’s fatal crash). As far as safety goes, the FIA is (IMHO) one of the most responsible and trustworthy sporting organizations in the world.

I believe the cars are intended to split in half to dissipate some energy in the event of a crash.

There are only a few bolts holding the back end onto the safety cell. It's designed to detach in a really big crash so that it doesn't impact on the safety cell if possible.

As far as I understand, yes, the car is designed to split under extreme circumstances. But two things to add to that: If the barrier hadn’t failed it might not have happened. And regardless, the ‘split’ is not supposed to cause a fire. The split happens right by the fuel tank and thus there were lots of safety systems that were meant to prevent a fire that didn’t do enough under these ‘extra’ extreme circumstances.

The nomex suits they all wear only are designed for 20seconds in fire. (The gloves and shoes/socks are only 10secs hence his burns there).

He was out of the car within 18seconds.

I highly doubt if he had been stuck in or knocked out they would have been put the fire out in less than a few seconds more. They only had one person with the right fire extinguishers there at the time. The rest all add ones for smaller fires.

I don't know how long it took them to put it out, but all the drivers could still see the fire driving back to the pits so probably a minute or so.

In short of the many things that save Romain sunday, being able to get himself out was probably the key one.

Yes, a thousand times this. I've been following the sport for a little more than 2 decades, I was a kid when Ratzenberger and Senna died (and he was a hero for my dad and for my home country).

Watching this live I couldn't believe it, I audibly gasped when I saw a fireball in F1 in 2020.

More impressive is how the thorough enactment of safety rules really played all out in Romain's accident like you mentioned. It's easy to get complacent after a while without major accidents, in most industries, it was really heartwarming seeing how the preparation of years paid off to save a life.

Another important safety measure is the HANS (Head And Neck Safety) device. Without it, that sudden deceleration (someone estimated a peak of 53[g]) could have resulted in a fatal injury.

These guys are almost certainly used to operating for extended periods on high adrenalin doses. That helps keep you focused on your task even when you see something like this happening. The letdown comes after the race is up.

It should be said that the race was red-flagged (i.e. stopped) for nearly an hour while they rebuilt the barriers, so there was a lot of downtime there.

Also: on the first lap of the restart, another driver (Lance Stroll for Racing Point) flipped his car after a collision. He was fine (F1 cars are designed to be able to handle being flipped upside down), but man, this race seriously frayed your nerves.

Robert Kubica's crash also brought significant improvements in F1 cars safety.

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