Medical air to helmets. When/why was it stopped?

I did some research on this one and could not find an answer. Does anyone know when and why the practice of having an air tube that fed medical air (in the event of a fire) to a racing driver stopped? As best I can remember this was instigated around 1976 when Niki Lauda had his crash and the last I remember seeing it was about 1992. I'm not sure why they would have gone away from the pratice as is makes a lot of safety sense.

Does anyone have more information. Just curious.

 

I'm merely guessing here based on the timing you mention:

a) there haven't been any significant fire accidents
b) it is cumbersome to have another connection to the helmet
c) Wasn't it around the early nineties that the FIA introduced the "get out of the car quickly" test? I remember that was one of the major reasons for why MS with a broken/healing leg couldn't have just go back into the cockpit, despite electronics for gas and brakes etc. So maybe the FIA thought that if the driver has to be able to get out of the car quickly, the air supply becomes redundant.

The fire accident with Heidfeld in Hungary was best proof of that the system works. Also other really big shunts (Kubica in Montreal) have shown that the safety measure prevent fuel fires for the most part. Even pitstop fires like Verstappen in Hockenheim in 94 looked more dramatic than they were as it was brought under control immediately.

Just my guessing 2 centimes.

 

My (now somewhat "sketchy") recollections;

- "They" introduced the air-bottle (and the "skirt" round the bottom of the helmet) when the theory was that "it's not fire that kills 'em, but lack of oxygen". IIRC, numerous studies of the time confirmed this - Drivers weren't burnt to death, but rather suffocated was the thinking.

- This was in the days of "catch fencing" (another royally bad idea) when it could take many minutes just to reach the guy inside the mesh fence.... His on-board extinguisher also fired the air-bottle and supposedly allowed him to keep breathing.....

Then came Sid - As has been said recently, maybe *the* greatest asset these guys have ever known - He postulated that the *last* thing we wanted to do was feed the fire with O2! What "we" needed was;
- To stop the fire in the first place! - Hence fuel cells and breakaway-valves etc.
- The ability to get the guy out of the car, fast. - Hence no more Nurburgring with 1/2 mile between marshall stations etc.
- The early days of the "survival cell" - Let the car disintegrate around him and he can breathe, even if unconscious, for a long enough time without feeding the flames.

And the air-bottle went the way of the doh-doh.

Cheers,
Ian

 

The Med Air lines were discontinued when the high cockpit sides were instituted in 1996. The bottles were not O2, but mixture of air and was inert. if you look at the rules back then there was also concern that the drivers could be getting "enhanced" air - meaning no air in the bottles but water that was discharged over the course of the race to make the car under weight or even heavier substances.

Also the FIA mandated that you had to be out of the cockpit in 10 second.. .the connection frequently kept that from happening.

At the same time Sid Watkins carried med air, as well as O2 and cardiac recovery on the med cars...

 

Good question.
Good answers.

 

If you're in a fire, do you want to be suffocated by a lack of oxygen or burned by the oxygen-enriched fire around your face?

 

As mentioned above, it wasn't "oxygen enriched" - it was plain old air - CLEAN
air - no smoke in it like the air from the fire. Not pure 02 - that would not be good.

Jedi

 

Sounds like the main reason and best protection against a fire is to get out of the car within seconds.


...something that might not be possible by an accident deformed canopy.

 

Not a lot of accidents these days that lead to injuries... a testament to the innovative safety features! There has been some pretty amazing wrecks over the past few years that have not even resulted in a skinned knee.

Most of the injuries will be caused by the impact itself. It is all about reducing the forces that are in play. The brain / nervous system does not like incredibly fast deceleration forces.

 

Coup cotrecoup, as you would know spike.

 

I thought I remember reading that medical air doesn't burn. Is that right?

 

"Medical Air" technically is for patients with an oxygen toxicity issue... it has
lower oxygen and higher nitrogen than "regular air". Probably is less flammable
due to the lower O2 content. But not great for someone doing strenuous
activities like driving a car at 180 MPH.... I don't know for a fact, but strongly
suspect the air in race cars prior to 1992 was just "clean air" - regular air,
pumped in to the helmet in the off chance the air from a car fire would be
suffocating.

Jedi

 

Correct - the "medical air" when it was really air, was simply compressed ambient air. perhpas with more nitrogen to keep it drier, but that was it. No way was it pure O2 or any specific concentration.

If you remember back in the early 80's - Brabham used to cool their brakes with water... but really it was a way to keep the car from being under weight. same thing with the Medical air bottles. frequently there was nothing or at best water in the bottle that was fed into the exhaust and dumped as harmless steam. and or sprayed onto the headers ... or fed into the Air to air intercoolers...

 

First off, the connection to the bottle from the helmet was a simple push on silicone hose, the intercom wiring often was more concern to unhook.

Secondly, the underweight cars were bought UP to weight post race by topping off the water tanks (which happened to be several gallons), [more if you introduced lead shot as per Tyrrell], so nothing to do with the medical air bottle, which was approximately 1.5" diameter and maybe 6-8" long.

Been there done that.

 

Firstly, my bad for trying to save a keystroke by replacing "air" with O2! - I never meant to imply it was an oxygen bottle.......

+1

It was also wired into the extinguisher circuit; Someone once accidently fired the system in the shop and once we'd finished either laughing or crying - depending on responsibility for the clean up - we heard a distinct hissing sound. The extinguishers discharged in a few seconds but the air bottle continued feeding a pretty low pressure stream out of the tube for quite a while. We stopped it until we disconnected it by simply pinching the feeder tube.

As for the lead shot used by Tyrrell, that was *supposedly* a water injection system as "water cooled brakes" had been outlawed by '84 IIRC - Cost them *very* dearly as they were excluded completely from the championship that year - No travel subsidy in '95 and more importantly allowed the turbo guys unanimity to change the rules - Something which only Tyrell had blocked as the only NA team left on the grid by this time.

Cheers,
Ian

 

This.

+1

And in the 80's it was common for some teams to fire off their fire bottles during qualifying laps, thinking those 8 lbs would add speed (ALFA).

I was at Detroit when Tyrrell was 'caught', but the idea caught on here. I have stories of local racers that won a race, then driving slowly thru the pits on the way to the post-race scale, only to be handed a 'can of Coke' to drink, only it wasn't Coke. Don't laugh - one of those times a guy 'made weight' by just two pounds - and five of them came from a 'can of Coke'.

 

Hmm - I've never heard of 'em actually firing the things deliberately..... Makes a hell of a mess! There were however consistent rumors that many of 'em ran in quali with empty bottles....... Add in super small quali brakes and tiny fuel tanks etc and it's a wonder the FIA didn't start weighing 'em like they do now - At random, all the time during the meeting.

The Tyrrell thing was almost a joke - It left the pits after the last stop spraying lead shot all over the pit road; It was pumped in under pressure and some inevitably escaped from the breather! The other guys were seen sweeping their pit boxes clear of the stuff!......

Cheers,
Ian

 

Let’s take the driver out of the car and make the cars un-manned units... similar to the un-manned military aircraft drone idea and then make F1 more boring to watch… Actually I was kidding about the un-manned car idea and lets not!

 

How often were we working into the late/early hours, only to hear that all telling, "Bang.....hiss....".
"Keep working lads, glad it weren't our car........". Such a distinct sound, could only be one thing, LOL!
But we probably all did it, ... once! Lesson learned.

 

+1

As long as it wasn't your car it was pretty funny.......

Cheers,
Ian

 

In fact, even if you haven't heard it before, you still know pretty much immediately!..... I guess partly the reaction of others, but my "first time" was when working (slaving!) for a pretty miserable #1 mechanic in F3 - Fortunately, it was him that fired it (else I suspect I would have been!) and I *knew* what it was even before he went nuts.....

Fortunately, I never fired one myself.

Cheers,
Ian

 

What can you possibly drink that has the volume of a can of Coke and weighs two pounds?


(btw, love the old stories you guys tell here - keep them coming!! )

 

lol...you're kidding?

 

No, but as you're asking I guess I'm mixing up the imperial units again A can of coke should be roughly 250ml, right? And 2 pounds = 1kg?

 

Don't get me started on ounces.

I have lived here now for over 20 years and still not a clue what that measurement is.

Metric rules!