Massa crashes after being hit by heave spring

[timbo]

It's absolutely imperative that the causes of the spring's release on to the track are investigated and measures taken to make it impossible in future. Yes, it was an unlucky "freak" accident, but a 1kg spring should never have been bouncing around an F1 circuit at head height!

+100

[ESPImperium]

Im just glad that his HANS device did its job and stopped his head from slamming into the steering wheel and causing more damage to his head.

[mpbx3003]

Im just glad that his HANS device did its job and stopped his head from slamming into the steering wheel and causing more damage to his head.

Did it? It looks like he slammed his head on the steering wheel to me. The skull base fracture suggests that he did.

[myurr]

I agree, Brawn GP should be punished severely for this. It would have been one thing had they had a minor suspicion there was something wrong with the suspension, but it sounds as if they knew this exact failure was going to happen. Given that I've never heard of this sort of failure, it seems odd they would have known about the nature of the problem.

Brawn GP are no worse than McLaren for letting Kimi carry on racing with a flat spotted tyre until his suspension failed. I'm sure Brawn would have given the rear of RB's car a thorough once over but would not have necessarily been able to identify the part that was failing. Don't forget the cars are under park ferme and so they may not have been able to replace the parts suspected of having an issue during the qualifying session itself. Every team in the pitlane, including Ferrari, would have done the same as Brawn - try and do the best they could working around the problem they had to try and get the best out of qualifying. After that they could then properly inspect all the parts.

It's not like this is a common occurrence and it is a case of the part failing rather than coming undone.

This is a tragic accident and I sincerely wish Massa a speedy recovery. But we must remember that accidents will happen. Sensible precautions must be taken, but you'll never be able to totally protect the drivers from every unlikely eventuality.

[ringo]

A redesign on the helmets is the next most logical thing; i am thinking of bullet proof visors and an extended forehead on the helmet. The extended part would be made of impact energy absorbing material, something more pliant than what the rest of the helmet is made of.

i would suggest heart rate monitors in the car and eye movement detectors, this way the team will know how their driver is doing and they should be able to wirelessly stop the car in the event of an accident. This would be the only time the teams would have any feedback control of the car.

The EPS foam in helmets is amongst the best materials available in terms of energy absorption across a wide temperature range.

As I stated in the discussion about Surtees, it wouldn't take another inch or two of EPS to have absorbed the impact energy, it would have taken several inches. Several feet, in the case of Surtees. At which point, the argument is, ok, now we have this monstrous helmet that's more likely to get caught on things, are we really better off?

The notion of any system to stop the car can be put aside right now. I can think of far too many instances of "helpful" systems failing in the past season or two alone; putting such a system on the car's brakes would be asking for serious trouble. Again, would we be better off with a system like that? Not in my view.

Not even an incy wincy emergency brake??
these things are drive by wire right? closing the throttle with telemetry could have reduced speed and the damage, maybe not prevent the incident but mitigate it.
They should be able to implement a simple shut off system. If it was manually operated by someone in the pits it would reduce any glitches like what we see with the ferrari pit light system.
Kill the throttle and mash the brakes; maybe massa would be in the gravel and not the wall.
I am not saying this is a perfect solution or that teams cannot take advantage of this idea in the race, but we would have seen that green bar go down in the video.

[Ray]

Don't forget the cars are under parc ferme and so they may not have been able to replace the parts suspected of having an issue during the qualifying session itself.

Doesn't matter if they are under parc ferme conditions! They knew they had a part of the suspension going away, Rubens said it was feeling weird so they should have stopped the car and changed whatever they could. I could care less who would do it like Brawn did. They knew they had a part failing in a critical part of the car, yet chose not to stop it from going back out and look what happened. Someone was very seriously injured. To invoke rules as an excuse for a dangerous situation is not the right attitude.

[jason.parker.86]

I can not see how anyone from the pits could have stopped or even reduced the impact. The time between him hitting his head and crashing is not long enough for the team to know anything is up, and even if they did and they had a magic button to enable the car to slam on full brakes etc, this could probally be more dangerious especially if another car is behind!

[ESPImperium]

Im gonna float arround a little something, could Brawn not replacing the part when they realise that in Rubens words "is about to go" be put under corperate neglegence laws??? or worse???

Theese techniacal reports are gonna be verry interesting to read up when they come out tomorrow night, or for when i see them, Monday.

[Scotracer]

Can't see the image posted already but it's a bit of a mess.

[mpbx3003]

I understand that every team would have done the same, but that doesn't make it right. Point is, they knew the central damper was failing, and they neglected to deal with the problem, knowing it was likely to fail soon. Formula One has to get rid of the tendency to put their drivers, and others, in unnecessary risk just to get a few points or positions on the grid. If it takes a stiff penalty to Brawn GP to fix the problem, so be it. Fixing the damper is allowed, as they changed Button's in Q3. Rubens wasn't driving at 100% due to the failing part, so he wasn't likely to make it into Q3 anyway.

[WhiteBlue]

I think that this one really was a freak accident. They will probably find that nothing much can be done about it. If you test a helmet with the same impact on different places you will probably find that there are few places where it is as weak as it is at that particular point. 5 cm higher up and the cupola structure of the helmet would have protected him much better. I also still think that perhaps a bigger overlap of the visor and the helmet might have helped. That may be something they could be simulating and testing as a follow up to this crash.

[mpbx3003]

I'm really not convinced the spring is the biggest cause of injury here. Massa's head slammed into the steering wheel in a way the HANS device should have prevented, and his injuries seem more consistent with the result of hitting the tyre barrier. Sure, the rogue spring probably knocked him out, but the second crash is what really hurt him.

[Ray]

Im just glad that his HANS device did its job and stopped his head from slamming into the steering wheel and causing more damage to his head.

Not only did his head appear to hit the wheel very violently, it also rattled back and forth very rapidly and with alot of force. That is what literally killed Eric Medlen in his Funny Car a few years back. I would bet money that the spring knocked him out and the impact with the barrier caused his injuries that are threatening his life.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CReE6IklDr4[/youtube]

Watch his head as he goes over the first set of curbs headed towards the tires. He's very obviously not fully awake and his head is bobbing up and down all the way until he impacts the tires. He hits so hard that, if you slow it down, you can see the back of his helmet all the way to the back bottom edge and the complete left side of his helmet. After the initial impact you can also see his head violently ping-ponging off the sides of the cockpit. THAT in my opinion is where his head injuries came from. The spring knocked him out and the barrier impact, plus hitting the steering wheel, is what caused his injuries. It can be argued that the spring broke the visor and weakened the helmet, and the hit on the wheel finished it. Not to mention there was absolutely no movement from him directly after the last hit, indicating it might have knocked him back out after somewhat regaining conciousness.

Amazing enough he was okay enough to touch his face on the stretcher. I think in the first image he is still dazed but came around enough in the second to touch his injury over his eye.

[zx9rc1]

Im just glad that his HANS device did its job and stopped his head from slamming into the steering wheel and causing more damage to his head.

Did it? It looks like he slammed his head on the steering wheel to me. The skull base fracture suggests that he did.

I think he hit the steering wheel too but like in Mikas crash it happened very quickly

[timd]

It is incredibly bad luck.

Too me the helmet did seem to move forward a little too much. I wonder if the Hans device was in any way interfered with on the spring impact?

Lets just hope that he stays stable and recovers enough to be himself and live a life with his family. It always scares the --- out of me when i see them Marshall's getting the blue tarpaulin out for a car with a driver still in it.