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> Grosjean survived due to every person and every piece of technology working exactly as they should. I think this misses a couple of key points. The only reas

> Grosjean survived due to every person and every piece of technology working exactly as they should. I think this misses a couple of key points. The only reason his car tore in half and caught fire was because the barrier failed spectacularly. It’s absolutely not supposed to do that. LeClerc had a bigger crash in Monza this year, and it wasn’t nearly as dramatic. So this incident was caused by a piece of safety technology failing catastrophically, with a whole bunch of other safety tech working as intended to save his life. Also it’s good the marshals and medical crew were there so quickly (as the medical car follows the pack on the first lap). But they basically contributed nothing to Grosjean’s survival. He was completely engulfed in flames for 18 seconds. He survived because his flame protection worked (he got his burns from using his hands to climb over the hot barrier, not from exposure to flames), and because he wasn’t incapacitated by the crash. If he had been knocked unconscious or injured too badly to move, he would have burnt to death in there. The couple of fire extinguishers they had on the car weren’t doing anything to a fire of that size.

nafey 6y ago
Can you please explain how the barrier failed in a bit more detail?
- thspimpolds 6y ago
  It caught his nose between one of the ribbons of rail. That caused his car to pierce the barrier instead of having its energy dissipated. Also there is a theory that the pole holding up the rails didnt shear off at all and thats why the car got snapped in half.
- tsomctl 6y ago
  I'd say it's didn't necessarily fail, it was just a bad design. It consisted of steel posts in the ground, with stamped steel sections running horizontally. Grosjean's car got wedged in between two of the horizontal rails. It actually succeeded in stopping the 150 mph car from flying off into the desert. In comparison, a smooth concrete barrier would cause the car to just slide along it (hopefully).
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  Well you’d expect the barrier to either be rigid enough to survive the impact (like a concrete barrier would) and have the cars safety features absorb the impact, or to crumple in a way that absorbs the impact. To me it seems like the Armco is just a bad barrier for that part of the track, because when he hit it, his car penetrated between the horizontal parts of the barrier, but the chassis was torn in half when it encountered resistance from the upright support beam (which really should have given way as well). I don’t know if this Armco wasn’t up to spec, but the way this barrier performed, it made the crash as bad is it could possibly have been. Compare this crash to LeClerc binning it at a similar speed/angle into the tire barrier at Monza. https://youtu.be/K0WzAatudAo https://youtu.be/K0WzAatudAo It seems that literally any other sort of barrier would have performed better here, and since this is a fast part of the track, you’d typically expect this to be something that had already been considered.
  - justin66 6y ago
    I don’t think there was anything defective with the Armco barrier. It just turned out to be the wrong thing for that part of the track. It seems to me that the concrete barrier they erected after cutting out the broken section wouldn’t be a great thing to drive into at 140mph, either. I’m curious to see if they have tires in place there next weekend. Incidentally, I’m pretty sure areas where the Armco rail can’t be replaced with something safer and more modern due to space constraints are the reason some classic tracks are not rated by the FIA as safe for F1. I think that’s part of the problem with Watkins Glen.
    - AmericanChopper 6y ago
      I agree, I think tires or barrels would be a much better choice for that barrier. But I think the concrete is an improvement, because at that angle you’d expect it to deflect at least some of the force, but it’s pretty borderline. > Incidentally, I’m pretty sure areas where the Armco rail can’t be replaced with something safer and more modern due to space constraints are the reason some classic tracks are not rated by the FIA as safe for F1. A lot of classic tracks wouldn’t get grade 1 status if they were built today, some of them are just kept on the calendar because they’re too classic to remove. Monaco and Spa are two examples. I don’t think they’d drop Spa, and they’re certainly not going to drop Monaco, but those circuits are not up to modern safety standards.
- andoriyu 6y ago
  Here is a video that covers that "good" barriers supposed to do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkpvPWB3jMk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkpvPWB3jMk . They supposed to slow down (gracefully, not 50G we saw) and contain the car. Different corners (slow/fast) use different designs. Barrier technically failed at both tasks. You can argue that ripping the car in half was containing, but that wasn't supposed to happen.

nafey 6y ago

Can you please explain how the barrier failed in a bit more detail?

thspimpolds 6y ago
It caught his nose between one of the ribbons of rail. That caused his car to pierce the barrier instead of having its energy dissipated. Also there is a theory that the pole holding up the rails didnt shear off at all and thats why the car got snapped in half.
tsomctl 6y ago
I'd say it's didn't necessarily fail, it was just a bad design. It consisted of steel posts in the ground, with stamped steel sections running horizontally. Grosjean's car got wedged in between two of the horizontal rails. It actually succeeded in stopping the 150 mph car from flying off into the desert. In comparison, a smooth concrete barrier would cause the car to just slide along it (hopefully).
AmericanChopper 6y ago
Well you’d expect the barrier to either be rigid enough to survive the impact (like a concrete barrier would) and have the cars safety features absorb the impact, or to crumple in a way that absorbs the impact. To me it seems like the Armco is just a bad barrier for that part of the track, because when he hit it, his car penetrated between the horizontal parts of the barrier, but the chassis was torn in half when it encountered resistance from the upright support beam (which really should have given way as well). I don’t know if this Armco wasn’t up to spec, but the way this barrier performed, it made the crash as bad is it could possibly have been. Compare this crash to LeClerc binning it at a similar speed/angle into the tire barrier at Monza. https://youtu.be/K0WzAatudAo https://youtu.be/K0WzAatudAo It seems that literally any other sort of barrier would have performed better here, and since this is a fast part of the track, you’d typically expect this to be something that had already been considered.
- justin66 6y ago
  I don’t think there was anything defective with the Armco barrier. It just turned out to be the wrong thing for that part of the track. It seems to me that the concrete barrier they erected after cutting out the broken section wouldn’t be a great thing to drive into at 140mph, either. I’m curious to see if they have tires in place there next weekend. Incidentally, I’m pretty sure areas where the Armco rail can’t be replaced with something safer and more modern due to space constraints are the reason some classic tracks are not rated by the FIA as safe for F1. I think that’s part of the problem with Watkins Glen.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    I agree, I think tires or barrels would be a much better choice for that barrier. But I think the concrete is an improvement, because at that angle you’d expect it to deflect at least some of the force, but it’s pretty borderline. > Incidentally, I’m pretty sure areas where the Armco rail can’t be replaced with something safer and more modern due to space constraints are the reason some classic tracks are not rated by the FIA as safe for F1. A lot of classic tracks wouldn’t get grade 1 status if they were built today, some of them are just kept on the calendar because they’re too classic to remove. Monaco and Spa are two examples. I don’t think they’d drop Spa, and they’re certainly not going to drop Monaco, but those circuits are not up to modern safety standards.
andoriyu 6y ago
Here is a video that covers that "good" barriers supposed to do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkpvPWB3jMk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkpvPWB3jMk . They supposed to slow down (gracefully, not 50G we saw) and contain the car. Different corners (slow/fast) use different designs. Barrier technically failed at both tasks. You can argue that ripping the car in half was containing, but that wasn't supposed to happen.