FIA aims to ‘prevent injuries, not accidents’

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In the round-up: FIA safety director Laurent Mekies says the FIA’s goal is not to make crashes less likely but to make them survivable.

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Comment of the day

More wet weather tyres for Friday running? @Metallion is all in favour:

Considering how useless the Pirelli wet tyres are and how little opportunity there is to test them during a season this really should be changed for next season so they can get more data and hopefully improve them.

Yesterday I watched a clip from when they raced in Fuji in very wet conditions. I’m sure with the tyres they have these days that race would have been done behind the safety car.
@Metallion

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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15 comments on “FIA aims to ‘prevent injuries, not accidents’”

  1. Well, I can think of a very big thing imposed by FIA to prevent accidents (or incidents). Those enormous tarmac run offs.

    1. Ultimately accidents in racing cannot be prevented. Driving at high speeds with incredible amounts of concentration needed to do such an activity will eventually result in someone crashing. And minor injuries are something F1 is going to have to accept; i.e. an injury that does not impede on a driver’s ability to live his outside life normally. Serious injuries and fatalities, however are not acceptable. That’s just bad management on the part of the FIA.

      Also tarmac run-off areas should be banned (unless it is at a street circuit, the first corner or the first series of corners on a permanent circuit). It removes the use mental skill and does not punish the drivers enough for making a mistake; a good example being Petrov at Abu Dhabi 2010. Who can’t forget that?

      1. *should not be acceptable

        1. *who can forget that?

          1. Not meaning to be flippant whatsoever, but recreational, let alone advanced or professional downhill skiing, as one example of a sport, is far far more dangerous. F1 has made huge strides and has indeed sheltered drivers very well from injury, and if we want closer racing, accidents are always going to happen.

      2. I agree with what you said about tarmac runoff areas. I’d add high speed corners, such as 130R, to that list of exceptions, given that gravel can launch a car instantly at those speeds.

        I’d also say that barriers need to be intoroduced at chicane runoff areas, to prevent drivers cutting straight across. I know I’ve said this quite a lot, but the current ‘bus stop’ at Spa is a perfect example of this, the runoff area is straight on, but you can’t rejoin the track without returning to the chicane

      3. now days everyone is complaining about the run off areas and i guess at only 36, i’m getting old, because i can remember people complaining about not having run off areas and drivers being out of a race after a simple mistake and the fans not getting to see the drivers race.

    2. Exactly, the run off show the fia isn’t solely looking from the cockpit out but also from the track/cockpit perspective.
      I still can’t wrap my hand around the witch hunt #3, the Stroll/Vettel, “fresh footage of the incident emerging” I saw that onboard that same day…

      Speaking of tyres, yes they have been useless, but as Davidson said this track despite it’s history looked pretty grippy in spite of the weather comfortable and almost riverless (great job suzuka) and the spray looked to me the only factor.

  2. A MotoGP race in Vietnam would be a great idea- motorcycles are all the rage as pieces of transport there. An F1 GP? Not too sure that’s a good idea.

    If there is going to be a second race in China I hope it’s in Hong Kong (I know that’s not China, but belongs to China). Has anyone seen some of the roads there? It could be F1’s answer to the nearby Macau GP.

    1. Vietnam is in a similar position in terms of vehicle culture to Malaysia. Their cities Hanoi and Saigon are infamous for their swarming motorcycles and scooters. It wouldn’t be more than an additional tourism booster if it occurred.

      1. If mobility culture decides where we race, the Zandvoort will be a pushbike race ;)

  3. @metallion True, and I can’t see how they could miss the boat for next year. Understandable given the lack of availability of a 2017 car until early 2017, let alone the lack of wet opportunities amongst the limited days. But now they’ll already have a great amount of data and feedback from what running has now occurred on the current wets on actual cars actually racing in anger this season, so I fully expect things should be much improved next year.

  4. I hope this isn’t taken the wrong way, but can we please stop having F1 races in countries where people can barely afford a ticket, where grandstands will be near empty, where the track will cost hundreds of millions of (slightly) dodgy money which could be put to better use in nearly any other capacity, where the track and stands will be a white elephant five years on. It’s so depressingly familiar and horrible for the locals. All for globalisation but not that blatantly at the cost of the locals.

    1. ^^^ X 1,000

      I could understand why it was happening under Bernie, and respect Liberty for honoring the old contracts, but i’ve been hoping Liberty wouldn’t start making new contracts like this.

  5. Thanks for my first COTD @keithcollantine ! Let’s hope that Pirelli will improve those wet tyres.

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