Am I the only one who thinks Brawn GP should get banned from Valencia as well? Okay what happened was just an accident but it shouldn't happen in F1 and it could have even killed someone (God forbid). It would definitely give them time to recheck everything for Spa.
No it was an accident, I would hope it doesn't take any action by the FIA for BrawnGP to be going over their cars with fine toothed combs right now to figure out why it happened. Honestly I don't think Renault deserve a race ban either. A tongue lashing from Flavio directed at the pit crew should be issued tho.
without knowing all the inner details- I feel the 2 incidents are distintly different. In Brawns case- if a mechanic had recently worked on the spring and failed to secure it properly (and I don't know that this isn't the case), then I'd be more inclined to agree. As far as I know, the spring coming loose was some sort of mechanical failure -which sometimes happens randomly and without warning. That's quite a bit different than releasing a car onto into race traffic when someone had occasion to know or at least question the security of that wheel.
I think you are. Why should Brawn get banned? The unit in question that failed was a Sub Assembly, probbally suplied to Brawn GP as a complete assembly by their suspension supplier, They would have needed a Crystal Ball to know the unit would fail and cause this situation. As reported Its a freak happening! Then Brawn Held Button back in Q3 to check his car before he took to the track again.
No ban for Brawn. They had a mechanical failure and the end result was the spring coming loose. Then the loose spring managed to hit FM in the helmet. It was the "Swiss Cheese" principal coming into play here. If the mechanical part had not failed, The spacing was not what it was between cars, If Massa had been on a slightly different line. We would not be talking about this. The odds of seeing this happen again in the near future are about as good as me winning the powerball jackpot tomorrow evening. The only way Brawn GP to face a ban is if they had several failures of this type all season long and have not found a solution.
No ban is necessary for Braun or for Renault. I brought this issue up in another thread to point out the silliness and hypocracy of the banning of Renault by the FIA and many of the though incorrectly that I was arguing for a Braun ban. My apologies for not making that clear. While they sit out Valencia, does anyone think that Renault is going to use that time to practice tire changes? Does anyone think that they needed to tell Fred that he had a problem. He was trundling around, being passed by one and all, trying to get back to the pit...he clearly knew he had a problem. We have seen cars trailing front wings, endplates, rear wings, tire carcasses and other larger pieces much larger than a wheel cover trying to get back to the pits with no action taken by the Stewards. Are the drivers just supposed to park the car as soon as they feel that something is amiss? This was a knee jerk reaction by the Stewards to the Surtees and Massa incedents. It is unnecessary, unhelpful and perhaps somewhat political, but had nothing to do with safety or racing. For those of you who are of the "stuff breaks" camp, go back and read your Carrol Smith books. Stuff doesn't just break, we either underdesign it, don't properly maintain it, or we (drivers) break it. All of the "freak accident" and "act of god" stuff is just trying to shift the blame away from where it lies.
... They should make them go slower it would be safer for everyone.... That's a joke. It was a very unfortunate racing incident. Everyone needs to take a deep breath.
+1. Agree with this here. Accidents DO happen and I'm positive that the guys at Brawn feel dreadful about this one. The FIA has, IMO, been overly aggressive in penalizing ordinary racing and it'd be a shame to start penalizing mechanical failures or reliability issues. Penalizing Renault for knowingly releasing a car with a faulty wheel nut is a different problem. The unfortunate fact is that open cockpits (and frankly racing in general) carry inherent risks. This was an unusual case and coincidental to young Surtees' accident, but one that illustrates those risks.
With due respect - we're all entitled to our opinions, but in the end, that's all it is. The great Carrol Smith printed his, but that buys him no special exception to the laws of physics. Are we to presume a manufacturing problem unrelated to design, maintenance or use is out of the question? How about transportation damage, metallurgical faults or basic tolerance accumulation? As an engineer, I'll take the hit that we rarely, if ever, consider every possible scenario a part may encounter and for that, we could be blamed for "under engineering". But to consider a random mechanical failure, of rare statistical significance, or even race incident related component damage at the same level of culpability as the failure of a crew member to secure a wheel during a frenetic pit stop seems to be a stretch to me. Should it warrant a ban at Valencia? Perhaps not...but it certainly seems a much more avoidable occurance than the Brawn/Ferrari mishap.
Can't say I'm familiar with Carol Smith's books but I share the sentiment. Injuries happen, collisions happen, DNFs and mechanical failures happen, but there is a cause behind each of these.
I certainly understand your point and there are many shades of gray along the line between black and white (Smith's opinion is on one sharp end of that). Much has been written on these pages about Braun's mechanical failure. I have not seen information as to whether the loss of the spring from the Braun car was a mechanical failure, incorrect installation, poor design, poor maintenance (which I doubt) or any combination of the above. If definative information is out there, please point me to it. In the end, mistakes were made and/or componants failed. One resulted in injury to a competitor, the other did not. It seems that if you are concerned about safety, you either punish both or let both off or at least take into account the levels of culpability in meteing out punishment. The FIA did not do that. It is there that I have the problem, not with Braun or Renault.
+1 Even more, the spring flying around was a rather minor danger compared to a wheel at that speed. Massa will most likely return to his family this week. Surtees won't.
As I mentioned in my first post, I have no special insight into the Brawn spring incident other than the impression that this was a mechanical component failure and not a breach of duty- but I could be wrong. And while I understand your point that both were failures with very different consequences, I'm still at odds that punishment should be comensurate with consequences of the failure and not the reasonable avoidability of the failure itself- even in the absence of consequence. I think we can agree that this is a dangerous sport and actions or neglect that increase the danger are of greater significance than unpredictable component failures. As I said - if the spring had been recently serviced, or even if there had been any other similar failures or reason to suspect it, then I'd be on your side. But like you, I have no knowledge of that. I equate the punitive merit more along the lines of - a drunk driver that gets home and harms no one is more culpible than an alert responsible person that hits someone because there was an unexpected oil slick at an intersection. Yes- different results but I would argue the drunk to be more worthy of punishment than the driver that hit the oil slick- even though he cuased physical harm.
Jav: I am not calling for a harsher penalty for Brawn due to the consequences being worse. In Brawn's case, I still cannot find any information as to the sequence of events that led up ot the spring coming adrift. I see a lot of people talking about "mechanical failure" when in fact we don't know why it happened. In Renault's case, the only thing they might have been able to do was to get the car stopped before it left pit lane, if the RF tire changer communicated that to the rest of the team in a timely manner. Once it left, it was committed to a lap or to retirement. I think the FIA's penalty was more about a show of force and smacking Flav, as well as responding to the Surtees incident, than it was about safety. This is not the first time that a car has left pit lane and shed a tire or wheel cover. It has happened to other teams with no penalty and in fact it happened to Alonso at Hungary before (rear wheel lost at turn three). This ruined his race but no penalty or suspension was issued. The FIA is making it up as they go along and this reduces the sport to a farce. I see the comparitive nature of your analogy, but I would view them as seperate incidents. The drunk is certainly culpable and should be punished regardless of the outcome. By the same token, the responsible person still hit someone and should not get off with a free pass. He still lost control of the car and ended up injuring someone who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. In this instance, each should be responsible for their actions.
Parts can fail and thats the end of it. If they start banning people for something like, something that can be out of hand of the team (parts are sometimes made by an independent company who happens to supply the part). Next they start banning teams for having blown an engine and smoke got in the way for the camera's. After that drivers will be banned for having loose shoe laces.
The best books in racing. A Brawn ban should at least be looked into. Especially if it ends Massa's career.
No ban for Brawn - it was just an accident that could have happened to anyone - if you want to ban someone, why not the circuit for the kerbs, bumpy track. Bas is TOTALLY CORRECT in his prior post - post of the day and for sure post of this stupid thread. Carol
I totally agree. No ban just because a car unexpectantly breaks and injures someone. It's tragic but it is the nature of the business.
I know in motorcycle racing everything has to be safety wired to prevent anything that comes loose from separating from the bike. Any similar requirement in F1?
+1, 100%. While this is an excellent debate, the very nature of laying "blame" in racing is a precarious one. These cars are designed on the bleeding edge of technology with the full knowledge that they may fail. Given the ban on testing, we can virtually guarantee that expectation at some point in the season. To penalize such a thing is to remove the incentive to innovate and to push the envelope as it is known today. In the most general sense, the ability to innovate demands a certain ability to err. Surely, safety must remain paramount but so too must our tolerance for failure.
