Comment by slowwriter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by slowwriter | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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