johnny : walk away

[botsquad]

dear johnny herbert.

as much as would like to see you race in cart next season,
i hope you consider retireing from racing.

the incident at sepang was not one you would have walked away from on a cart track.

greg moore's fatal off at fontana was very similar looking.

[KC]

I doubt very seriously you would have seen the complete rear suspension asssmbly fall off a Reynard, Lola, or Swift chassis.

Has anyone heard how badly he might be injured?

[Jared]

Speedvision RaceWeek said Herbert bruised his knee.

Poor Johnny. He deserved better than that for his last race. Well, considering he had to be carried to his car for his first race, and carried away from it in his last, it was rather ironic, don't you think?

botsquad, Champ Cars are much stronger structurally than an F1 car. I believe that Johnny would have suffered about the same injury, a bruise to the knee, only to a lesser degree than in an F1 car.

[botsquad]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by KC
[B]I doubt very seriously you would have seen the complete rear suspension asssmbly fall off a Reynard, Lola, or Swift chassis.
]

you're right about the cause. i was refering to the effect.

johnny used up a life marker at sepang.

most will agree, f1 is safer than cart, in terms of stopping a car that's suffered a mechanical failure.

[Ralf's Girl]

I believe F1 is safer than CART. I haven't watched a CART race yet (but now I have digital, I'll watch the Fontana race on Eurosport next week) but looking at the fatalities record in recent years, Formula 1 has only Senna and Ratzenberger, and they were in 1994. I haven't forgotten the marshal who died this year, but I'm referring to driver safety. I think that if Herbert has a serious accident in CART, it would not necessarily kill him, but I'm worried that he could end up losing the use of his legs.

[Sharky]

F1 is a lot safer than CART. There's no doubt about that. But you can't compare the crash JH had at malaysia with the one Gregg Moore had at Fontana last year....mainly because gregg's car started to roll and hi slammed the inner wall of the circuit in a very "bad" angle. But a lot of drivers slam into the wall in every race at almost 400Kmph and they all walk out of their cars....a little dazed and confused perhaps but OK.

[botsquad]

moore, like herbert had become a "passenger". his wheels caught, while sliding across grass, the car was launched into a concrete barrier and pretty much broke into a million pieces.

no cart driver has ever hit a barrier like that,
fly-swatted into cement at 400kph and live to see the replay

the wheels of johnny herberts car, did not catch, he skidded over the gravel and into the tire barrier.

[Crash Test]

Hmm...can anyone else remeber the Sauber's roll hoop collapsing? Gees that is safe...

Even when Moore had his terrible crash at 300 and something kilometers an hour, the car's structure remained intact.

I would much rather be in a Champ Car than an F1 car for safety reasons any day...

[Airhead]

Dear Crash Test (an appropriate name for this thread), I would agree, but depending on the track. I'd rather not hit a cement wall on an oval in anything. But generally the CART car is more substantive. Does it mean it is safer?Fi cars have improved with the cockpit design being more protective over the last two seasons but one of the biggest problems is deceleration injuries. A case of shearing major vessels and dying of internal bleeding due to the forces involved rather than the body being hit by something directly. I don't know the "crumple" like effectiveness between the two, but drivers in both formulas would be open to these injuries.

[Jared]

Wait a second! F1 is safer than CART? Which drivers were concerned about possibly hitting the Turn 1 (or 13, depending on which version of the track) wall at Indy at speeds some 50+ mph less than what Indy/Champ Cars take that corner?

Both Gonzalo Rodriguez's and Greg Moore's accidents were freak occurances. I don't think drivers in any type of car would have survived those accidents.

Thank you, Crash Test, for mentioning the Sauber roll hoop.

And Ralf's Girl, if you haven't seen a CART race, and therefore haven't seen a CART accident, how can you make a judgement call on which series is safer? (I know, attack the post, not the poster, but this needed to be brought up.)

[botsquad]

johnny's accident was also freakish. he walked away

Rodriguez hit a concrete wall head-on. the day, the wall was wrapped by a tire-barrier.

moore's car got caught in a grass infield. no gravel?
and also smacked a concrete, no tire barrier, wall.

johnny banged a tire barrier after the gravel trap did its job.

conclusion: f1 does a better job protecting its drivers in the event of a catastrophic failure.

[angst]

Normally the risk of injury to a driver on ovals is bad enough, but with Johnny's already frail ankles and feet (his own family's words) surely the risk is enormous. As for F1 protecting the drivers more.... well I wouldn't like to have seen the consequences of that sort of failure at 130R at Suzuka, or the last turn at Indy. Luckily it happened at the right place as far as run-off areas go.

[bella]

terribly sorry, botsquad, my old friend, but i have to argue this little blooper.

much as i dislike to talk about it, crashing is entirely diffeent in every series. cart is incomparable. the cars are designed to hit in different ways. champcars, for example are designed mainly for side impacts, and also but less importantly, head on crashes. f1 cars are probably at about the same level as champcars were 4 or 5 years ago, as regards to strength.

what can you do on ovals? tyres would be useless (it takes forever to repair one), and every other alternative allows the car to go underneath it. totally ueless. i know, let's ban ovals altogether!

i don't know if you saw greg moore's accident, but the car stood up very well. if that was a f1 car, nothing would have been left. gravel would not have stopped the car, mainoly because it can only be set to stop a car i one direction (if you get what i'm saying). straight tarmac would have been much more helpful.
rodriguez did hit the wall straight on, but that wasn't the dangerous bit. it was when the car went over the barrier and landed on soft ground that the problem occured, i believe.

botsquad, plenty of accidents happen in cart that you don't hear about. or happoened a while ago. i could go through a few, but that would miss the point of this topic entirely.

herbert's accident was small fry in comparison. lucky f1 has the room and tracks to put tyre barriers in place.

it's sad to see johnny go, but his time is up. i think he's got his ideas all wrong about cart.

i did like the way he took the microphone (and the bait) on the grid inteview with martin. i think he'd make an entertaining alternative to martin, and maybe a good replacement for murray.

all the best, johnny.
but please, stay out of cart, and don't mess with the grown-ups.

[KC]

Comparing the stats and then making assumptions based on them is no the way to compare the relative safety of CART versus F1. Sure, more drivers have been killed of late in CART than F1, but I think this more from luck and circumstance onthe part of F1 than pure safety measures.

CART cars are designed to race near hard surfaces, like walls, F1 cars are not. This does not make F1 cars somehow safer than CART or vice versa. I will say this however, had Senna had his crash at Fontana at the same speed and angle of impact that he had at Tamburello while driving a Lola or Penske CART chassis of the day, he would most likely emerged unscathed. He may have had lower extremity injury, but would not have been killed by a front upright because of the design of the components. But all of this is still conjecture.

I do believe that CART, as a sanctioning body, does a better overall job than the FIA does at protecting its drivers. When a safety rule is imposed, it is not the immediate concern of the team to find a way to circumvent it and then have the FIA ignore it later. Once more we see a car shed its tires, and this time without contact. Johnny Herbert's Jaguar was passed by his right rear tire on the way to the gravel trap before he had struck anything. And the FIA does nothing about it.

[Airhead]

With regard to the late Greg Moore's car having stood up well. I dispute that as the driver died. It is about saving the driver by having the car shed pieces of itself under different stresses and lessening the forces transmitted to the driver. This is why in passenger vehicle crash tests the measurements are of forces on the dummies in the car at specific points on the body, eg femur etc.

Generally there is a better run off area in F1. Even on street circuits like Albert Park.

[Crash Test]

The car stood up well, because the surival cell didn't fall to pieces. The Suaber had the softest of soft soft rolls onto grass, and it fell to bits! The fact that Greg's car didn't fall to pieces is a good sign, imagine if his roll hope had failed.....what a horrific scene that would have been.

Also, where is the run off at Monaco? The fixed the chicane a little after Wendlinger was put in a coma, but appart from that, there is zippo. Look at Ralphy this year, he had a light crash and the suspension pierced the cockpit! How about Schumacher at Silverstone. Didn't the front of his car break in two after a 100km/h accident?

[Airhead]

imagine if his roll hope had failed.....what a horrific scene that would have been.

How could it have been any worse, outcome wise?

With regard to Monaco, Yes, but I believe Monaco is the exteption in F1 rather than the rule. As for the cockpit cell not failing, it didn't do it primary job. I think the shock of the two deaths in CART last season was the belief that the cars were safer. I guess safety is a relative thing. If you hit something hard enough at the right angle youre in trouble.

[Crash Test]

Yep, the outcome wouldn't have been any better, but there wasn't a great deal the car could do any better.

It was funny how after the Cart tragedies, you started to hear some Nascar people gloat about how safe their cars are...now they are dropping at a rate of one per month....what a shame...

[Airhead]

I read Dick Johnson's autobiogaphy titled "don'tell me I can;t do that" It wasn't very good. Too light on technical details but he did comment on hoe NASCAR were not the slightest bit interested in crumple zones. Just ridig structures. There answer, restrictor plates at some tracks. I for one don't get it as the difference in speed is marginal. Surely they can do better than that.

[botsquad]

Changes made to the track since greg's death:

paving the grassy area out of Turn 2 toward Turn 3.

installing a tire barrier in front of the wall on the backstretch and raising the outside fence of the track.


good for cart.

[R]

Greg Moore's car stood up well? To me it looked like it was pulverized, but maybe the survival cell was intact as has been claimed above. I saw the accident twice (as it happened and one replay) and never want to see it again.

If you hit something hard enough at the wrong angle you're in trouble... very true. The human body simply isn't designed to withstand such impacts like what happened to Moore. Any driver in any car would have been killed in such an accident.

[Liz]

Have to agree with that one - I was on the scene at Fontana and it was not the car that failed to survive the smash into the cement - it was the much frailer human being ... there is no need to go into details, but anyone who tells you Greg was alive when they got to him has a really weird definition of "alive."

Nevertheless.

I thought the same thing when I saw Johnny's accident - that was a warning shot, my son, and if your wife doesn't tell you so, she has a lot more forebearance than I would have in her shoes! And of course Johnny did not walk away. He was carried away and put on a stretcher. Although Mrs. Herbert, as I assume she must have been there with the kids, was probably in worse shape than he was.

[Airhead]

Fair call Liz,

It looked bad on TV. It's not good enough to have things so fine that the back suspension can collapse under braking.

[Alan Jones]

I'm amazed you are all arguing about accidents / driver errors and who would survive Blah, blah blah...
These guys are paid to risk their lives and I reckon when your number is up, it's up. Surely Brundles accident in Melbourne a couple of years ago looked fatal and the guy walked away, ready to race again. No matter how well they are built, racing cars will fall apart and occasionally kill someone due to the speeds atwhich they race. Isn't this one of the reasons we all follow them and admire the risks they take on a day to day basis????
As for Johnny, lets hope he leaves racing and becomes a taxi driver with Damon and the rest of the retired BRDC

[Airhead]

Come on now Mr Jones (there's something happening but you don't know what it is...)

Don't slag off Damon, anybody but poor Damon.