F1 - Season 2012 *spoiler*

[Martyn]

The whole thing is just a publicity stunt by Santander

[Michkov]

I'll take it for Valencia all day, but not if its a replacement for Silverstone. An alternating European GP on a road course would be a great idea tough, they could hold it in different cities each season. As for an European night race, It would be in the same slot as Montreal is now which is great to watch from a timing point of view.

[Martyn]

Some bad news.

Marussia test driver Maria De Villota suffers life-threatening injuries during testing

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/100883

[Martyn]

Some good news.

De Villota is conscious after her crash

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/100890

[Lukeno94]

Is it true she hit a lorry? If so, why was there a lorry anywhere near where she was?

[Martyn]

Yeah she hit a lorry. She went under it and hit her head on the back of it. She was doing airfield runs and was driving no more than 20mph toward the team when the car inexplicably accelerated and went under the lorry at just under 50mph. Her head took most of the impact.

Not gonna post pics here as they're horrific, the accident looks unsurvivable. It's a miracle she wasn't pronounced dead at the scene

[1nsane]

The truck wasn't in the testing area but at the pit area and it was one of the equipment of Marussia, so it wasn't really out of place. The only question is why have it in this half down position. Then again, it's one of those crashes you don't expect would happen. Would have been as dangerous situation even if the.. er.. door was higher or lower.

I'd also say it first hit the front of the car, hence many of the places stating the car got jammed under the truck, this took of some of the energy. I'd also guess that many of the places said her situation was "life threatening" simply because she was uncousious for such a long time and didn't move. Her situation got updated to stable pretty soon after she got taken to the hospital. There has been nothing about surgeries, so the amount of possible facial/hand injuries are still kinda unknown.

[Martyn]

She is in a Critical but Stable condition.

Unfortunatly she has lost her right eye

[Lukeno94]

Lost her right eye? Well, that's her racing career over then, pretty much.

[GeneSuomi]

I understood that he drove too slow and the antistall sytem kicked in and through the car to the lorry's backramp. I've never liked antistall because it prevents drivers to retire if they spin. It was introduced as a safetyfeature because stalled cars would have been a risk and now it caused an terrible accident.

[Lukeno94]

I highly, highly doubt that an anti-stall system could cause this accident. It simply puts the clutch in, and it only kicks in when the car is stationary - neither would spin the car.

[Michkov]

No it doesn't, the system kicks in when the revs drop too low whether the car is moving of not. It often happens at starts or at the getaway from pitstops. It should engage the clutch to that's whats confusing me.

[bduddy]

No it doesn't, the system kicks in when the revs drop too low whether the car is moving of not. It often happens at starts or at the getaway from pitstops. It should engage the clutch to that's whats confusing me.

It's already been stated that there was a bug in the system... probably the clutch did not engage for whatever reason.

[Trigger Happy]

Are you sure by that clutch thing as part of system? I read somewhere, that it's allegedly known that the feature confuses by sudden acceleration young drivers, who are trying to stop the car with keeping a gear shifted or so. And in that case it's maybe on driver to press clutch always (no automatic)? To keep a distinction of feature against stalling engine and not creating a direct driving aid? Just idea, I really don't know, how these things are meant to work.

[GeneSuomi]

http://news.sky.com/story/956128/f1-tes ... fter-crash

Theories suggested the anti-stall mechanism on the car kicked in as she approached a makeshift pit area, propelling her into the truck at 20-30mph.

[Lukeno94]

@Trigger Happy: Drivers do not have a controllable clutch, the whole point of the semi-automatic gearboxes is to remove that from the driver's equation, and to have it automated. And from my existing knowledge of an anti-stall system, I still do not personally see how it could be to blame.

[GeneSuomi]

If I'm right they do have a clutch lever in the steering wheel. Of course, they don't use on gear changes but they use it at starts (?)

[Lukeno94]

I am not aware of any clutch lever on the wheel.

[1nsane]

Yes, they have clutch pedal(s) on the wheel for the start and when the car is otherwise stopped. I guess De Villota didn't pull the clutch, so the car kept on trying to get some speed. I'd guess they have two different anti-stall systems for F1 cars, one for the moments when the car is completely stopped and one for the moments when it's going in slow speeds as in De Villota's case seemed to have happened. The first one keeps the car stopped but the engine running, while the second one tries to get the car back to speed. When listening to the audio from the crash, it sounds like De Villota had lifted the throttle and propably was braking, but the car kept revving back up to gain speed. Still pretty hard to clearly say what happened there though.
And who knows, maybe they have some extra strong anti-stall system for these events since the car is either going at top acceleration or crawling, so they want to make sure to not stall it as much as possible.

What makes it strange is that there's some 2-4 seconds of this same sound in the clip from the moment the clip starts. So was she just freaking out in the car because it didn't stop or what... Also makes you wonder what she was doing there in such an angle that she couldn't turn the car in that speed and time completely. In the pictures before the actual impact she isn't driving head on towards the ramp so it's pretty weird what happened during the last meters.

Welp, maybe we'll get the final verdict on the situation sooner or later since Marussia is investigating what happened.

On the other topics, I'm hoping for a wet race. Then we'll see Massa struggling once again, spinning 5+ times like he did the last time we had a wet Silverstone GP.

[Doorslammer]

It would have to be a clutch device, as the only alternative would be a high stall torque converter. Those things don't like being on a transbrake for anything longer than a few seconds either (that is, if they could even get to the rpm needed for an F1 launch).

Do some drivers still take a three pedal approach? I know some like to have a preference as to what they want as brake and throttle...

[Lukeno94]

No, using a manual clutch to change gear would be far too slow.

[1nsane]

Hmm, a bit of a consensus on what happened with De Villota seems to be that the anti-stall did kick in, as it does that little nudge you can see when someone botches the pit stall exit. There could have been a bug in the system so it just left the car in the crawling phase instead of bringing in the clutch and stopping the car in the process.

On Silverstone news, it took over 4 hours for a finnish reporter to get to the track. The journey normally takes ~30 minutes according to the announcer. The announcer was also a little late from the beginning of practice one because the journalist parking was already full. Year 2012 organizing, meet year 2000 organizing.

[Lukeno94]

It seems to have done more than a little nudge, but anyway... British parking is always a mess.

[Bouncebackability]

I'm not really surprised by this today, getting into circuits for BTCC is unorganised enough. I would hate to have imagined what today would have been like with the old roads into Silverstone, single lane country roads, When I went, on dry days you were guaranteed to spend the majority of your day in the queue into the circuit. But it is definitely about time Silverstone invested in improving the parking and camping situations, hopefully this will get them acting...

[Doorslammer]

No, using a manual clutch to change gear would be far too slow.

Yeah, well t's not for changing gear, it's for the getting it off the line in the first place.