What F1 car is this? and

I am starting to think that this was a 1 in a million type of failure and that the tub is indeed allowed to break off if the leverage between the front wheels/suspension and the fuel cell if just enough. I.E. the front part of the tub hitting sideways on the edge of a wall the rear portion of the tub still moving sideways. It way seem shocking to allow the legs to become exposed but i think it would be less dangerious than having the tub crush in on the driver and sever the femoral (SP?) artery and having the drive bleed to death in the tub.

Just my view of it.

Beast

 

No! Under no circumstances is the tub suppost to break in this place. Or any other place for that matter.

In a high speed crash with this occuring, the likely result would be a double amputation. There is no possible safety benefit to having it break like it did.

The tub is designed to be the last line of defence for the driver after all the other parts of the car have disintergrated in a crash. It is supposted to stay entirely in one piece, and has done so in all F1 crashes within the last 5 years.

 

then why was it built that way?

some questions cannot be answered. maybe they left that for the posibility of a front engine (ok just kidding).

Now seriously, If the Tub must not break, they it wouldnt be really smart to make it a 2 part piece.

Maybe thats the drawing for an Inner part, and outside is covered by a complete outside shell. I mean the drawing doesnt look like the whole cockpit, just like something that would go inside of it (inner part).

Some modification was made to the outside shell??? something failed in the outside shell?

 

I'm amazed too if the monocoque would consist of two pieces (why not call it a duocoque then...). But why would Corse Clienti talk about a weakened bonding if it was one piece after all? I'm anxious awaiting an answer via my friend. Hope to keep you posted.

Ciao, Peter

 

Okay, there still seems to be a lot of speculation and confusion in this thread.

Here are the facts:

The car is an original unmodified Ferrari F399 chassis from 1999, with the serial number 193. It is not the chassis that Schumacher crashed at Silverstone in 1999, which was #192, and was retired after that accident.

The safety tub does have a construction point in the place where Kroymans' car broke. It has been there since the original design in 1999, and all Formula 1 cars since either 1997 or 1998 have it. The construction technique hasn't changed.

The section where Kroymans' chassis split is not suppposed to break under any circumstances. It was designed that way, and the fact that it did is why Ferrari are shocked and are conducting an investigation.

Here is what we don't know:

Why did the car split at this bonded construction point, when it was clearly designed and expected not to?

Will this accident have implications for all other F1 cars with the same design?


Now I should have answers to the above two unknowns by September 6.

 

Thanks man, good job.

 

Oh man im not gonna be able to sleep until then. Hehe.

But serioiusly thanks a lot to all of you here in Fchat for shining some light into this issue. Another reason why i love this place. We went from a picture with no leads, to discussing the construction of the tube.


George

 

Well, its september 6

Any news!!!???


thanks,

George

 

Okay, I've received an update.

Currently, all the F399's cannot be raced by their owners and have been sent back to the factory in Maranello for examination.

 

Yet they raced them at the Nürburgring last weekend. Any news if the Kroymans accident was an isolated one?

 

You sure? The 1997, 2000 and especially the 1998 cars look similar to the F399.

What do you mean by isolated? No other F399's (or any modern Formula 1 cars for that matter) have had a failure like this, except for possibly Schumacher's car at Silverstone in 1999. We don't know for certain if the failures are related, however judging from the photo similaries and considering both are F399s, there is a chance. Whether there is a risk of this happening again with F399s only, or rather with all other recent Formula 1 cars as well, we also don't know.

 

See this post:
http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=134397239&postcount=24

There's definitely an F399 in the pitbox. I'll have to review my video footage if it raced or not but I believe it did so.

Re: isolated: no comment ;-)

 

I read that Ferrari said there was some sort of structural failure of Schumacher's F399 during the Silverstone crash in 1999. I've never seen an elaboration of this; anyone know exactly how it failed? Until we do, we really can't link this failure with the one seen on Kroymans' car, besides using coincidentals such as the cars being the same model year, etc.

As we concluded several weeks ago, the breakage of Kroymans' car comes down to a failure in the bond that holds the two parts of the chassis together. Bigodino (and others) stated a while back what some of the possible causes of this failure might be (aging, heat, etc), but again we really don't know the cause precisely at this stage. Ferrari's investigation is still underway and any explanations will remain speculation until they've explored and tested every possible cause.

 

You're good! ;-)

There were more F1's but I'll have to check my photos at home (I'm at work now, sorta).

 

This was in Autosport Magazine:

Ferrari is investigating why one of it’s F399 chassis tore in half during an accident in a historic race at Laguna Seca in the United States. Technical director Ross Brawn said: “We have got the car back at the factory and we are looking at it. Although it’s the same model as the one Michael had his accident in [at Silverstone in 1999], it’s a very different sort of accident. In michael’s he had a front impact and the wheel came back into the cockpit and that’s what broke his leg. With this one – as far as I understand – the car went backwards into a barrier and the wheel became stuck in the barrier as the car spun around it, putting a tensile load on the car.”

 

Hey guys why aren’t you looking at some of the obvious facts here before going on for 6 pages! First, the car in the pits is surrounded by official Ferrari Technicians. Second this is one of the wealthiest Ferrari collectors in the world. They aren’t going to sell him something that isn’t the real deal. And they aren’t going to be there at an official Ferrari day with the car giving factory support if it isn’t the real deal.

Have none of you ever read any books about Formula One car construction? Carbon fiber tubs are “laid up”. In other words preimpregnated resin carbon fiber weave is laid up on a tub negative. The way they lay the weave is very important. The a aluminum honey comb is laid on top of that and then more carbon fiber. Then it’s put in a bag with a vacuum line running out of it. Then that’s all placed in an autoclave and baked while the excess resin is sucked out. They do it in two different pieces. A top and a bottom. When the two pieces are done they remove them from the negatives and then glue (bond) them together. The direction of the weave dictates how the loads are delivered threw the tub. You can’t calculate for everything that can go wrong. Loads are sometimes applied to the tub in ways you could not have anticipated and when that happens you get shear because the tub isn't laid up to accept those loads.

Racing cars is dangerous. People seem to forget this these days. You can’t produce a car that is going to be 100% safe. It was a Ferrari and the tub failed. It happens. It’s happened to other F1 cars and Indy cars and it will happen again. You have to make compromises in designing a race car. Lighter usually means weaker. You design it to be as strong as it can while being as light as possible and as safe as possible.

 

True ... but all F1 tubs are crash tested before they are allowed to race them. Yes the test may not reproduce this cars accident ... but they still have to be strong.

Again I feel that Ferrari will simply be consentrating on working out whether this is an ageing related issue or not. If ageing related ... they will not care and just retire the old cars. If not they will care very much and they will have to come up with a new method of making a tub, because one can imagine that the next Ferrari tub to get crash tested, er, just might get a bit more of a side load , ie. the FIA will add a new test.

Pete

 

Ahh, very interesting! Two questions have now been answered:

How Michael actually broke his leg (never before seen an official explanation in the 5 years since the accident).

The exact nature of the Kroymans crash, although going by the impact damage to the car it was pretty easy to work out.

Actually we established the car was real and unmodified several weeks ago.

 

Not to stray too far off the topic, but IMHO it was also never revealed what caused Michael's crash. I heard one mechanic didn't close one of the brake line valves.

 

That has to be a load of rubbish ... remember they do a warm up lap. If the mechanic did not close a brake line valve (or nipple) then he would have had a soft brake pedal during the warm up.

Personally that crash was 100% MS fault. He had his usual (for back then) very bad start and was WAY OVER driving to make up for it. He expected Irvine to get out of the way and went into that corner about 50mph too fast ... his brain woke up and realised he was going way too fast ... but it was too late. Slammed on the brakes (hence the big lock up) and thus straight lined it into the barrier.

MS is fantastic ... but especially in those days when he made a mistake it was a big and stupid one. If you watch his driving from the start of that race until that corner, it was like watching a madman, with petrol over his genitals.

Ferrari concocked that story to take some of the heat off their driver ... and also I guess not to make themselves look stupid for pouring all their effort behind a driver that just acted out a bit of very amature driving that looked like somebodies first ever race in a gokart.

Pete

 

In short he couldn't match Eddie!

 

In this race 150% true .

Eddie always did better starts than MS ... and then he had to lift and try and help MS into the first corner. Many times this caused confusion ... and I always felt sorry for Eddie. Just because MS fnck's every start Eddie had to give away any advantage (on the rest of the field) he managed while MS slowly got up to speed.

Pete

 

Andreas,

it was not the fault of the mechanic but more the fault of an vibration in the drivetrain that caused the rear break junction to fail. I recall reading this in a copy of racecar engineering. I will have to take a look thru my library to see if i can find the article about it.

Rob

 

Rob,

What is told to the press (er, us) and what really happened are often not the same thing ... I still believe unless Jean Todt personally tells me otherwise that it was a driver error. I watched the start of that race over and over again and I still cannot understand what MS was trying to do from the start until that point ... just crazy.

Pete